So, a pseudo-racism controversy so predictably nonexistent that you could have called it the moment it began percolating turns out to be nonexistent. You’re an ESPN commentator and you cosigned the existence of the controversy on-air. In fact, your comments have basically become the face of the controversy in sports media.
How do you apologize? Well, in this case, you use the second-most cowardly way for a public figure to back out of stupid remarks.
The first, by a mile, is, “Sorry my point was misunderstood.” Which is to say, the onus is on you: Sorry you lacked the discernment to understand what I actually meant to say, and instead took what I actually said at face value. That still remains the undisputed champion of the terrible public apology.
But second place, albeit a distant second, was trotted out by ESPN’s Chiney Ogwumike after she unfairly maligned the entire Indiana Fever fan base as racists: “Sorry that my message was in the heat of the moment.”
Yeah, because we can always call entire groups of people bigots when we’re upset. You know how it is: After my beloved New York Knicks blew a 14-point lead with three minutes left in Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, I slammed my hand on the desk and yelled, “Those dagnabbed anti-Semitic Indiana Pacers fans! Go to your stupid German-American Bund meeting, Tyrese Haliburton!”
Sure. That totally happened. Or not.
So, as you may have guessed by now, this involves the other pro basketball team in the Hoosier State, the WNBA’s Indiana Fever. Things got, pun unintended, heated in a game between Caitlin Clark’s team and Angel Reese’s Chicago Sky during a 93-58 win for the Fever on May 17; Clark was called for a flagrant foul against Reese on this play, after which Reese tried to take a swing at her before Aliyah Boston, Clark’s Fever teammate, restrained her.
Caitlin Clark received a flagrant foul on this play.
Aliyah Boston and Angel Reese received offsetting technical fouls. pic.twitter.com/jzQYEW92TW
— ESPN (@espn) May 17, 2025
Should the WNBA apologize to Fever fans?
Now, to be fair to Clark, she committed the foul after Reese fouled a Fever player to get the rebound, something most of the clips on social media didn’t show:
This Angel Reese-Caitlin Clark “controversy” is insane. Watch the play, Reese clearly fouls the other chick — pushing her in the back with both hands — to get the rebound. Clark points to it and then when the call isn’t made, fouls to stop the open layup. pic.twitter.com/M3cpk1Qap0
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 19, 2025
However, to be fair to the refs who called the foul on Clark: If you want to get back at Angel Reese for a foul that wasn’t called, you don’t foul her on a layup, you let her take the layup. (Reese’s biggest flaw as a player, for those of you who don’t follow the WNBA, is the tendency to not only miss layups but to miss them by distances generally only traveled by Aaron Rodgers Hail Marys.)
Naturally, though, since Clark is white and Reese is black, and the sports media cannot stop talking about this fact, they couldn’t stop talking about vague allegations of racist remarks.
“The WNBA strongly condemns racism, hate, and discrimination in all forms — they have no place in our league or in society. We are aware of the allegations and are looking into the matter,” the league said in a statement after the game.
The following has been released by the WNBA. pic.twitter.com/LgSImP1x3Y
— WNBA Communications (@WNBAComms) May 18, 2025
During a segment on ESPN morning show “Get Up” two days after the Sky-Fever game on May 17, Ogwumike — a basketball analyst for ESPN who played for the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun — seemed to take the very fact that there was an investigation as confirmation that racist comments were made.
“If you’re truly a basketball fan, you would understand and agree that we have no space in our game for those types of comments,” she said.
.@McNuttMonica and @chiney share a message after Caitlin Clark’s flagrant foul on Angel Reese in Sky-Fever. pic.twitter.com/ND4sLCexEF
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) May 19, 2025
Which would have been true — had they actually been made. Cue the “Arrested Development” narrator voiceover here: “The comments weren’t made.”
The following has been released by the WNBA. pic.twitter.com/rFlKQAHmzQ
— WNBA Communications (@WNBAComms) May 27, 2025
Sorry about that, America! Carry on. Nothing to see here.
Naturally, this left a lot of people who’d treated the investigation as a “J’accuse… !” moment in the Clark-Reese racial dynamic in a lurch. And to be fair to Ogwumike, she wasn’t the only one who was in that lurch — although, given the predictability with which these Bubba Wallace/Jussie Smollett controversies turn out to be mistakes or outright hoaxes, that doesn’t make this any better.
She was the only one in that lurch, at least that I’ve seen, that actually used the Summer of Floyd™ bromide “I can do better” in her apology and blamed the fact that she smeared an entire fanbase on an investigation that turned out to be baseless.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the WNBA statement on the investigation and I want to address this with the same energy I did the first time. Because if you really know me, I always try my absolute best to uplift the WNBA, to celebrate the amazing players, the coaches, and of course, the fans. That is something that is at the core of everything that I do,” she said in a video. “But if you know me, you know I’m not afraid to say I can do better.”
Ah yes — not only a “do better” statement, but patting herself on the back for courage while delivering it! But it gets better or worse, depending on your affinity for cultural trainwrecks:
I’m never afraid to say that I can do better…🖤 (my thoughts on the wnba investigation) pic.twitter.com/PaGmcwvTPE
— Chiney Ogwumike (@chiney) May 28, 2025
“I am sorry that my message was in the heat of the moment. Because when I initially spoke on the topic, it really came from a place of care,” she said.
“It was based on first-hand conversations with people very close to the situation who raised real concerns, and they told me what they had experienced, and I felt like it was important and it was necessary to acknowledge those allegations and also voice those experiences.”
So firstly, it is not “a place of care” to smear fans at a game — and by extension, an entire fanbase — as racists based on preliminary rumors. If she really was speaking to “people very close to the situation,” guess what? It turns out she can’t trust those people.
But the most telling thing is the excuse: You don’t say or cosign lies “in the heat of the moment.” You may say inadvisable things during a heated discussion, but those heated things are — generally speaking — inadvisably true.
Say you’re having an argument with your spouse, for instance. (I’m speaking purely hypothetically here. A hundred percent. Really, dear!) You decide it’s a good time to tell them that they repeat things over and over, even when people get the point, and it’s an annoying habit. Is that inadvisable? Oh, yes. Is there at least a tocsin of truth to it? Well, probably, if you said it.
(Not in my marriage, though. My wife gets straight to the point. Seriously, honey: I mean it! Please don’t WhatsApp me a link to this article and ask me if this is what I think.)
But if you’re having an argument with your spouse and, in the heat of the moment, you tack on a spurious, groundless accusation like “and you hate the Jews, too,” then it’s probably time for you — not you and your spouse, but specifically you — to seek counseling. That’s not exactly how “the heat of the moment” works. That’s how lying or bias works, but not anger.
It doesn’t really matter how many “people very close to the situation” you may have who told you vague things: It says something about you as a person when it comes to what you’re willing to admit to believing, wrongly, in anger — which is a more apt, but less self-exculpatory, way to say “the heat of the moment.”
So, what Chiney Ogwumike is telling us is that when she hears about alleged racism on the part of an entity, she gets angry enough that she is inclined not only to believe it, but to chastise them on national television. That’s your takeaway here, Indiana Fever fans. You shouldn’t buy the apology — any more than you would a “sorry you misunderstood me” apology — until Ogwumike really is ready to “do better,” not to spreading a pernicious lie out of “a place of care.”
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