Christine Brennan, the journalist at center of latest Caitlin Clark-WNBA race war, speaks out on claims she filed complaint against player

Christine Brennan, the USA TODAY columnist whom the WNBA players’ union said should lose credentials following a question ‘designed to fuel racist vitriol,’ has responded to an ‘inaccurate’ report that she filed a complaint against a player.

Brennan sparked controversy when she asked DiJonai Carrington if she had deliberately poked Caitlin Clark in the eye during Game 1 of the first round playoff series between the Sun and Fever. When Carrington denied having any malicious intent, Brennan followed up by asking if Carrington and her teammate Marina Mabrey had laughed about it afterwards – a notion that Carrington also disapproved of.

On Monday, espnW’s Sarah Spain reported on X that Brennan filed a complaint with the league after Carrington’s teammate DeWanna Bonner approached her about her line of questioning.

Spain cited two anonymous sources who claimed that Brennan filed a complaint to the league.

Brennan, who last week appeared on Spain’s ‘Good Game with Sarah Spain’ podcast, quickly shot down that claim.

‘Hi Sarah, this is inaccurate,’ she wrote. ‘It is false. I have not filed a complaint. I have not contacted anyone at the league. Your sources are wrong. You and I have had a long and good relationship which is why I always enjoy speaking with you. Why didn’t you call me before posting this?’

Spain replied about two hours later, writing, ‘Thank you for the call this morning, Christine. While I trust the sources that gave me this information, I do wish I had called you last night to get your comment. My apologies for not reaching out to you in advance.’

During her interview with Spain, Brennan shared that she and Bonner exchanged some words after the former’s interview of Carrington.

I asked DiJonai Carrington about that moment early in Sunday’s Indiana-Connecticut game when she caught Caitlin Clark in the eye. Here’s her answer: pic.twitter.com/DnQVYi0r6J

— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) September 24, 2024

‘I would not call it, um, heated,’ Brennan told Spain. ‘I would call it a person coming up to talk to me.’

Brennan later told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she wouldn’t hesitate to ask Carrington again about the eye poke, and told Spain that people were free to hate on her and her reporting.

‘There is nothing about me that would slough off … any of the issues we’re discussing,’ she said. ‘What has happened from some out there in terms of their hatred for me is fine. It’s a free country. They can hate me. If any of this stuff bothered me I would probably have been hiding under a bed probably in 1982 and never gotten out.’

After Brennan’s controversial questioning of Carrington – which has received more than 5.5million views on X to date – the WNBA players’ union issued a scathing statement against Brennan, whom they singled out by name.

‘To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan: You are not fooling anyone,’ the statement read.

‘The so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bait a professional athlete into participating in a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol on social media. You cannot hide behind your tenure.’

‘Instead of of demonstrating the cornerstones of journalism ethics like integrity, objectivity and fundamental commitment to truth, you have chosen to be indecent and downright insincere,’ they added.

‘You have abused your privileges and do not deserve the credentials issued to you. And you certainly are not entitled to any interviews with the members of this union or any other athlete in the sport.’

‘Those credentials mean that you can ask anything, but they also mean that you know the difference between what you should and should not. We see you.’

Notably, Brennan is writing a book about Clark’s impact on women’s basketball, and has focused heavily on the rookie sensation Clark this season in her USA TODAY columns this year.

While Clark denounced racist fans as ‘trolls’ following her team’s exit from the playoffs, several players have called out her supporters for their racist treatment of them.

On her Unapologetically Angel podcast, Reese spoke about how Indiana fans threatened her, followed her home, and made AI-generated nude photos of her and sent them to her family members.

And following the Fever’s elimination, Connecticut star Alyssa Thomas fumed over the racial abuse her team received from Indiana fans throughout the series. The fans targeted Carrington’s eyelashes, while another had a shirt that said ‘ban nails’ with large fake nails coming from each finger.

‘It’s been a lot of nonsense, I think in my 11-year career, I’ve never experienced the racial comments from the Indiana Fever fan base,’ Thomas said.

‘We had (Carrington’s) face on a serious matter that happened in this world and it’s unacceptable, honestly. And there’s no place for it and we’ve been professional throughout the whole entire thing, but I’ve never been called the things that I’ve been called on social media.’

Nonetheless, as Brennan told CNN’s Jake Tapper, she doesn’t regret asking the questions she did of Carrington that have now landed her in hot water with some.

‘The best thing I can do as a journalist is to try to give the athlete an opportunity, which I’ve done tens of thousands of times, to answer the question and tell us what she believes happened,’ Brennan told Tapper. ‘That was literally it.’

‘And as you know, first of all I’d ask that question 100 times out of 100, I’d ask it today, the athlete has every opportunity to then take that question and go with it any way she wants,’ Brennan continued. ‘And obviously she did. So that’s the opportunity that I think any journalist gives an athlete when you’re covering a story, to give them the opportunity to give their side of it.’