WNBA Criticized for Misspelling Caitlin Clark and Napheesa Collier's Names

The WNBA recently misspelled Caitlin Clark and Napheesa Collier's names in a graphic during a live, televised game, and now people are dragging the league for the fumble.

On Saturday (May 17) night's broadcast of the Seattle Storm and Phoenix Mercury game, the WNBA shared a graphic highlighting the top performers from the league's opening weekend slate of matchups. The graphic mentioned players such as Kelsey Plum, Paige Bueckers, and Brianna Stewart. However, the league butchered Clark and Collier's names.

In the graphic, Clark and Collier's names were spelled "Caitlyn Clark" and "Naphessa Collier." Fans were quick to call out the embarassing mistake and proceeded to drag the league for screwing up something pretty simple to avoid.

"We gotta do better dawg," tweeted one person. Another wrote, "It's the spelling mistake for me. Like why are we spelling players name wrong. It really isn't that hard to spell correctly."

A third person said, "When will we realise that simply copy pasting a player's name from a Wikipedia page or a team website is much more reliable than asking the graphics team to remember how names are spelled."

Despite the misspelling of their names, Clark and Collier had themselves a stellar opening weekend. Collier had 34 points, four rebounds, and four assists in the Minnesota Lynx's victory against the Dallas Wings. On the other hand, Clark had a triple-double of 20 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists, but she also had a tense moment with her rival Angel Reese.

Midway into the third quarter, Clark had fouled Reese across her arms as she went up for a layup, and the contact caused Reese to fall to the court. Reese quickly got up and darted towards Clark, who had left the scene.

After reviewing the play, Clark's personal foul was upgraded to a flagrant. Reese brushed off the foul during a postgame conference while Clark asked fans and reporters not to make the situation deeper than what it was.

"Let's not make it anything that it's not. It was just a good play on the basketball. I'm not sure what the refs saw to upgrade it. That's up to their discretion," said Clark. "We watch a lot of basketball; it's a take foul to put them at the free throw or rather give up 2 points. I've watched a lot of basketball in my life. That's exactly what it was. I wasn't trying to do anything malicious. That's not the type of player I am."