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Sue Bird Backs Caitlin Clark After Snub in ESPN NCAA Women's Basketball GOAT Ranking

Basketball legend Sue Bird stood up for Caitlin Clark after ESPN snubbed her in a recent GOAT ranking.
Grant Young|
Sue Bird attends a ceremony to honor the Gotham FC 2023 NWSL Championship team on September 23, 2024.
Sue Bird attends a ceremony to honor the Gotham FC 2023 NWSL Championship team on September 23, 2024. | IMAGO / Newscom World

During a March 16 segment that was titled 'Is Caitlin Clark The Greatest Of All Time In College Basketball?', ESPN analysts Sam Ravech, Ari Chambers, and Alexa Philippou ranked the five greatest female college basketball players of all time — and left former Iowa Hawkeyes icon Caitlin Clark out of their top five.

In explaining this reasoning, Ari Chambers said, "In the open, we said 'What makes a top-five player? Winning.' The only thing, the only strike against Caitlin Clark, is that she has not won a National Championship. And that is the only thing that you can put against her, because the way that she has dominated the record books when she was at Iowa was something you could put duplicate."

She later said, "But how can you be a top-five player if you have not won a title?"

This snub of Clark has been met with a lot of criticism. The most recent person to support Clark's inclusion on this GOAT list is basketball icon Sue Bird, who stated her case in a March 20 episode of the A Touch More podcast.

"Listen, I think the way that I'm looking at this: No, Caitlin didn't win [a national championship]. It's why she's not No. 1 [on the list]," Bird said. "I think going to the national championship game two years in a row, basically playing big in every big game, hitting every big shot in every big moment, there's something to that clearly.

"This kid is obviously special, definitely one of the greatest of all time. And I think when I really look at lists like this, it's kind of like, do you go based on just resumé, or do you based on if we had a draft, who would you take? And there's no way you're not taking Caitlin Clark in the top five. And to me, there's no way you're not taking her in the top three," Bird continued.

"I just think that's the reality of it."

Bird certainly made a great argument there.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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