Stephen A Smith GOES NUCLEAR As Kara Lawson DISRESPECTS CAITLIN CLARK After Winning FIBA World Cup! 

Stephen A Smith GOES NUCLEAR As Kara Lawson DISRESPECTS CAITLIN CLARK After Winning FIBA World Cup! 

Caitlyn Clark just left Berlin with a gold medal around her neck and Steven [music] A. Smith couldn’t care less about the medal. Team USA beat France 97 to79 in the FIA World Cup final and Clark played 13 minutes finishing plus 11 on the night. Sounds like a clean win, right? A gold medal, a happy locker room, everybody smiling for the cameras.

But something happened behind closed doors in Berlin. something Stephen A found out about and it’s about to blow this whole tournament wide open. >> I said Caitlyn Clark rising tide lifts all boats as much as her presence was maximized by the WNBA. YOU PLAYERS COULD HAVE DID YOU COULD HAVE DONE MORE TO assist >> because Stephen A.

 Smith went on air and said something about Cara Lawson that might end her coaching career for good. He didn’t hold back. He didn’t soften it. and he didn’t leave room for anybody to defend her. Here’s the line. Sitting there with zero context for now. She prioritized feelings over winning. We’re going to get into exactly what that means and who it’s [music] aimed at, but sit with it for a second.

 He’s connecting Lawson’s benching decisions directly to jealousy inside that Team USA locker room. And once you see the numbers, you’ll understand why he went there. Do you think USA basketball will replace Cara Lawson as head coach? sound off in the comments below. And everybody talk about other NBA WNBA players not being appreciated. Nobody insulted them.

Nobody dismissed their contribution. WE WERE SIMPLY SAYING DESPITE THE CONTRIBUTIONS for years and years and years. A lot of people didn’t care. Fair or not, until Caitlyn Clark came along. Let’s start with what Clark actually did on the [music] floor because the box score from this tournament reads like a video game glitch against China in her World Cup debut.

 Clark dropped 14 points and 11 assists with zero [music] turnovers, breaking eight separate FIA records in a single game. Zero turnovers on 11 assists doesn’t happen for most guards over an entire career, let alone in their first game on this stage. Her plus minus that night sat at plus 30, the best mark on either team, and she walked away named player of the game.

 So naturally, what happens next? Lawson pulls back on her minutes against Italy, a game the US barely survives, 55 to 52, and Clark spends most [music] of the fourth quarter glued to the bench in a two-point game. Same story against Czecha. Same buildup, same questions, heading straight into the gold medal final against France.

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew the second. I knew the millisecond that Stephanie White got the invite to be a part of this Team USA coaching staff. Things wasn’t going to go right. I knew it. I knew it. I knew something was going to go wrong. And here we have team USA Cara Lawson in front of the camera bloiating on how great Stephanie White is and the influence the influence Stephanie White has had on her.

 And the final only makes it worse. Clark plays four total minutes in the entire first half while team USA falls behind by 14 points early getting outworked, outshot, and outmuscled by a French team that came to play. 4 minutes. You’ve got a player who can pull a defense 30 ft from the rim and Lawson barely lets her touch the floor while the whole building is sweating.

Then with seconds left in the half, Clark gets her shot. She catches it on the wing with the clock bleeding down to zero and buries a three right before the buzzer. And that shot changes the entire temperature of the game. It doesn’t just cut the deficit, it flips the momentum completely and team USA comes out of halftime like a different team altogether.

By the time the final buzzer sounds, Clark’s line reads 12 points, three assists, and a plus 11 in just 13 minutes and 6 seconds on the floor. She shoots four for five from the field and two for three from three. Numbers that work out to a true shooting percentage over 100%. That means she’s more efficient than a perfect night of two-point shooting.

 And she did it in the shortest stretch of anybody in that starting rotation. Now, put that next to the veterans who played double or triple her minutes. Some of them finished with worst plus minus numbers despite logging almost three times the playing time. Kayia Copper scored 15 points in around 30 minutes.

 Chelsea Gray had 12 points and five [music] assists in 27 minutes. Clark nearly matched Gray’s scoring output in less than half the time. And her plus minus beat three of the five starters [music] outright. So, here’s the question nobody in USA basketball wants to answer. If the production is sitting right there in black and white game after game, how does a coach bury it for an entire tournament? How do you watch a player put up numbers like that in 13 minutes and still find a reason to keep her on the bench for the other 27? Higher television ratings, higher

attendance figures. Ladies and gentlemen, that doesn’t come courtesy of a league. It comes courtesy of the players that play in the league. And in her case, she was the most popular, WHICH MEANS SHE COULD HAVE HELPED YOUR BOTTOM LINE, WHICH MEANS YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT FROM DAY ONE AND MAXIMIZED IT, but you didn’t do it.

Rewind the tape back to March and Lawson’s explanation for limiting Clark actually made some sense. She said Clark needed a smaller role because she was still working her way back from injury and the team needed a steadier hand running the point in the meantime. Fine. Nobody’s arguing with caution when a player’s coming off an injury.

 And at the time, most people nodded along and moved on with their day. But here’s where it stops making sense. Fast forward to September and Clark’s fully cleared, medically good to go. No restrictions, [music] nothing. She just finished a WNBA season with career-high numbers across the board, and she walked away with MVP honors at the qualifying tournament that got Team USA into this World Cup in the first place.

 So, what’s Lawson still saying about her heading into Berlin? That she’s another young player finding her way. Same explanation, different month, except the reason it worked in March doesn’t exist anymore in September. The excuse expired, and nobody bothered to update it. She’s another young player that’s feeling her way through her first World Cup, you know, and um she she’s really motivated and wanting to help our team win, and I I think that’s a great place to be, and I think all of our young players will take a lot from these three

pool play games, give them a lot of confidence as as we go into the medal round. And Clark wasn’t the only one getting boxed in by that thinking. Aaliyah Boston stood at a press conference after the Spain game and said the team needed to play fast and at our pace. Read [music] that again because she’s not talking about Spain’s pace.

She’s talking about USA’s own pace, the one that disappears every time the offense slows into a halfcourt set run by the veterans. Boston didn’t name anybody. And she didn’t have to. Everybody in that room understood exactly who she meant. Her numbers back it up, too. Boston finished that Spain game at a plus 21, the best mark on the entire roster, while barely sniffing extended minutes herself.

 Same story as Clark, different position on the floor. Two of the most efficient players on the team, both getting squeezed for playing time, both finishing with the best [music] permanent impact in the building. But if you went the opposite direction, it could have helped that much and facilitated you being an even in an even stronger position to get yours.

 But you didn’t do it. You didn’t do it. Meanwhile, outside the locker room, a very different message was getting broadcast to the entire [music] basketball world. FIA’s own secretary general stood up in Berlin and called Clark, “One of the biggest stars, not the biggest star, of this generation. That’s the head of the entire international governing body on the record at a press conference putting Clark’s name at the center of where women’s basketball is heading.

 He talked about the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, about ticket sales, about social media numbers nobody in this sport had [music] ever touched before. Clark showed up wearing a USA jersey. So sit with that contrast for a second. An international governing body is out here promoting her non-stop, building marketing campaigns around her face, calling her the future of the entire sport.

 And back on the bench, her own coaching staff seemed to be doing everything they could to shrink her role game after game, tournament after tournament. One [music] side of this story is selling the world on Caitlyn Clark. The other side can’t find her seven [music] minutes in the fourth quarter of a two-point game.

 Then are you willing to admit how stupid it was for y’all not to go all in speaking your peace to elevate Caitlyn Clark so therefore even more attention could have come and y’all could have reaped the benefits now you’re going to do it anyway and I get that but you see my point. This is where Colin Cowdur comes into the picture because he saw this pattern developing before most people wanted to admit it was real.

 Cow Herd talked about the sisterhood of veterans on this roster, a group protecting their own spot instead of building the best possible lineup around the players actually [music] producing. That’s a heavy accusation to make about a national team. And Cow Herd made it anyway, pointing [music] straight at the same rotation decisions that had fans in Berlin scratching their heads all tournament long.

 And once you start looking at the small moments instead of just the box score, that theory gets a lot harder to dismiss. After the Italy game, Clark stood in the handshake line with her hand out, waiting for Jackie Young to come through. Young walked right past her, didn’t grab it, didn’t glance her way, just kept moving down the line like Clark wasn’t standing there at all.

 This happened on live television in front of a full arena. And the clip spread within minutes because there’s no version of that moment that reads as an accident. >> That’s Jackie Young. She did not shake Caitlyn hand and shake Caitlyn had her hand out, bro. She walked clean past Caitlyn. It said, “Excuse me, Jackie Young wouldn’t even know who you are without CC.” These are facts, bro.

These are facts, bro. Look at this. They supposed to be teammates. You got the same country across your chest and the level of disrespect is unbearable, bro. >> Then there’s Kalia Copper. Clark buries a logo three in the fourth quarter of that same stretch. The kind of shot that gets an entire bench off their feet without anybody thinking twice about it.

Copper doesn’t move. Young, sitting right next to her, leans over and tells her, “You better clap.” Only then does Copper offer up a flat, delayed clap with nothing behind it. Earlier in that exact sequence, a stray ball comes flying at the back of Copper’s head, and Clark reaches out and knocks it away before it hits her.

 Part 500 of fellow WNBA players not wanting to support Caitlyn Clark, even when they’re their own teammate. Except this one got caught in 4K. So, basically, Caitlyn Clerk hits this three in the USA game and then you see Jackie Young looking at Kalia Copper and says, “You better clap.” Now, you might be asking yourself, why did Jackie Young did this? Well, I believe that a lot of videos have come off of the bench and how they’re reacting to things and they didn’t want to get caught not clapping for Caitlyn Clark.

>> Clark protects her. Copper still needs to be told to acknowledge her. So the question becomes pretty simple once you line those moments up next to each other. Is this strategy is Lawson genuinely convinced this [music] rotation gives team USA the best chance to win every single game? Or is something else going on here? Something that has nothing to do with X’s and O’s and everything to do with who [music] gets to be the star of this team? Because here’s a detail that makes the whole thing messier. Dejonai Carrington,

Clark’s most vocal rival on the court and Jackie Young’s real life partner, showed up at the arena during that Italy game holding Young’s player of the game trophy. Fans connected that dot fast, [music] especially with Carrington’s own history with Clark already sitting out there in the open, including a playoff incident from 2024 that the league had to review.

Nobody’s saying that trophy moment proves anything on its own. But once you stack it next to the handshake, the clap, the minutes, it stops looking like a coincidence and starts looking like a pattern with a lot of names attached to it. I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to do. So, she is the top four scorer on the team.

 She’s leading an assist and it’s just non-stop. This is why there’s always comments about it because we’re always catching situations. >> And that’s really what this pattern suggests [music] when you step back and look at the whole picture. This isn’t about basketball IQ or tempo or chemistry that needs more time to develop.

 This reads like a group of veterans protecting a hierarchy they built over years, refusing to hand it over to a player who didn’t pay dues the way they did, even when that player is putting up better numbers in a fraction of the minutes. Coaches don’t bury their most efficient player by accident. Not this many times, not across this many games.

 Which is exactly the theory Steven A. Smith picked up and ran with. Except he didn’t stop at implying it. He said it directly on national television with Cara Lawson’s name attached to every word. Steven A. Smith looked into the camera and said, “Cara Lawson, prioritized feelings over winning.” Six words and every single one of them lands like a gutshot to a coaching staff that just won gold and somehow still can’t escape the conversation about how they got there. You know basketball.

You know basketball. You know basketball. You know basketball better than me. You know basketball than any of the pundits. You know basketball better than most of the men that play basketball. THERE IS NO WAY IN hell you just accidentally left Caitlyn Clark. >> Break that phrase down piece by piece because Stephen A wasn’t just throwing out a catchy sound bite for a highlight reel.

 He’s saying Lawson had two paths in front of her the entire tournament. One path means building [music] the rotation around whoever’s actually winning you basketball games, no matter how many years they’ve been in the league [music] or how many championships sit on their resume. The other path means protecting the egos of veterans who built their careers before Clark ever stepped foot on this stage.

 Keeping them comfortable, keeping their minutes safe, [music] keeping the locker room politics smooth, even when the box score is screaming at you to make a change. Steven A’s saying Lawson picked the second path over and over, game after game, and called it coaching. And this ties directly into something Steven A has said about Clark before this tournament even started.

He’s called her the cash cow of women’s basketball. Flat out, no hedging. You don’t bury the player driving ticket sales in cities that never used to sell out for these games. You don’t bury the player who’s turning international basketball into a ratings event people schedule their Sundays around.

 You don’t bury the player putting your sport on magazine covers and pushing your social numbers into territory this league has never seen [music] before. That’s not sentiment. That’s just business. and Steven A’s pointing out that Lawson ran her rotation like the business side of this sport didn’t exist.

 I think Caitlyn Clark is getting screwed over here. This is a waste of time. She should have did exactly what Asia Wilson did. She should have said, “Oh, my back is hurting. I’m just going to chill. She should just be back home getting ready for the playoffs because this is a waste of time at this point.

” Caitlyn Clark, the GOAT, is being relegated to garbage time minutes. Cara Lawson did it again. Y’all were fooled with that first game where she played 25 minutes, not even realizing the only reason she played real minutes is because she got to play the whole fourth quarter in garbage time minutes. Here’s what makes his argument impossible to brush off.

 Lawson had the numbers sitting right in front of her the entire tournament. Every single game, the plus minus told her exactly who [music] was making Team USA better and exactly who was making them worse the moment they stepped on the floor. That information didn’t disappear between games. It didn’t get buried in some spreadsheet nobody bothered to check.

 It was right there game after game. And Lawson [music] made the same choice anyway. Every single time the receipts told her something different. That’s the part Steven A keeps hammering. This isn’t a coach who missed the signal once. This is a coach who saw it repeatedly and decided the signal didn’t matter. And now the fallout spreading past just one angry segment on national television.

Word is already moving that Lawson might never coach for team USA again. That FIA’s own leadership isn’t thrilled with how this played out on their biggest stage. The commissioner’s public comments about Clark’s value to this sport did more talking than Lawson ever managed in a single press conference, praising her impact on the game, while her own head coach kept finding reasons to sit her down.

 When the people running the entire tournament are more willing to hype up your best player than you are, that’s not a good look for anybody holding a clipboard. Are we done playing games? Are we done playing around? Can we get serious now? Three games in and it’s become clear as day, Kayn Clark needs to be the starting point guard of this team.

 Three games in become clear as day. Paige Beckers needs to be the starting two guard of this team. Chelsea Gray, two points, one assist today. Kyle Hopper, five points, five rebounds. They’re both past their prime. Their expiration date has arrived. So, here’s the gut punch sitting underneath all of it. They tried to sideline her.

 They tried to manage her role down to something safe and small and comfortable for everybody else in that locker room. and she still walked out of Berlin a world champion. [music] Still outproduced every single starter on a perm minute basis. Still made the entire tournament impossible to talk about without her name coming up first.

 So now Clark heads back to Indiana. Gold medal packed in her bag. And if you believe the fans flooding timelines since that final buzzer, she’s bringing something else back with her too. A chip on her shoulder the size of Germany. People don’t forget getting buried on a bench for an entire tournament.

 Especially not when the box score backs up every complaint they had along the way. Don’t be shocked if that edge shows up the second the WNBA season picks back up. And here’s the irony. Nobody can talk their way around. Winning gold was supposed to end this conversation. That’s usually [music] how it works, right? You win, the questions stop, everybody moves on to the next story line.

 Except this time, the medal didn’t [music] erase a single question about how Clark actually got there. If anything, it made the questions louder because now there’s no argument left that says the numbers didn’t matter. They mattered. Lawson just chose not to listen to them, which is exactly why 2028 is already hanging over this entire [music] situation.

 Los Angeles is coming. FIA’s already made it clear they’re building the sports future around Clark, and that puts [music] Lawson’s job status directly on the line. USA basketball has three years to figure out if this pattern gets [music] fixed or if it happens all over again on home soil in front of the entire world with even more riding on it.

 Do you think USA basketball will replace Cara Lawson as head coach? Sound off in the comments below and don’t forget to like, subscribe, [music] and turn on all notifications as we’re bringing you all the action and top stories. Click the video on the screen and we’ll see you in the next