Clark’s popularity has been widely debated

Charles Barkley was one of the first to call out the “pettiness” of WNBA veterans against rookie Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, and the TNT basketball analyst is sticking with his original stance.

Since Barkley’s original take, Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese seemed to take a shot at Clark on social media (which was denied by her mother), and more famously, Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter hit Clark with a blindside hip-check, resulting in a flagrant foul.

Barkley seems flabbergasted, considering he thought the WNBA was “[hitting] the lottery” with the “shining star” in Clark entering the league.

The Hall of Famer first praised Clark for focusing on her job.

“The thing I like about her, she doesn’t say a word. She’s never said a word about anybody. She just shows up and does her job,” he said.

Barkley says Clark was inevitably going to get some sort of rookie treatment, “but I didn’t think she was going to have to worry about all this petty nonsense that’s going on.”

And it’s made the WNBA look bad, he says.

“This is not the old days where any publicity is good publicity,” he said. “It’s really bad publicity for the WNBA, because we’re not talking about basketball. Any time you have a sport, especially this sport, and you are talking about negativity… when you’re talking about all this pettiness and negativity, you’re not talking about the game.”

Barkley even admitted he had no issue with what Carter did, saying there’s no problem with giving rookies “the business.”

“But you can just tell [the Sky players] were going overboard,” he added.

“They act like she didn’t earn it. The woman just scored the most points ever by a man or a woman. ‘She’s only getting this job because she’s White.” Is race a factor? Yes, race is a factor. But her résumé speaks for itself… They didn’t prop her up just because she’s White,” Barkley said.

Clark’s games continue to outrate every other WNBA game, and more fans are flocking to her games than others.