Serena lauds Clark, hopes she’ll ‘preserve grounded’
Williams hopes Clark will ‘proceed to enact what she’s doing’ play Serena Williams applauds Caitlin Clark for staying ‘grounded’ (0:38) Serena Williams empathizes with Caitlin Clark on staying off social media after the Fever significant particular person confronted present criticism. (0:38) Michael Voepel, ESPN.comJun 15, 2024, 05:07 PM ET Discontinuance Michael Voepel covers the WNBA
Williams hopes Clark will ‘proceed to enact what she’s doing’
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Serena Williams applauds Caitlin Clark for staying ‘grounded’ (0:38)
Serena Williams empathizes with Caitlin Clark on staying off social media after the Fever significant particular person confronted present criticism. (0:38)
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Michael Voepel, ESPN.comJun 15, 2024, 05:07 PM ET
- Michael Voepel covers the WNBA, ladies’s faculty basketball, and other faculty sports for espnW. Voepel began covering ladies’s basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996.
Tennis sizable Serena Williams mentioned she understands why WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark avoids social media and that she hopes the Indiana Fever significant particular person tunes out negativity.
Williams, the winner of 23 Enormous Slam tournaments, spoke to media at the Tribeca Movie Competition in New York on Thursday at a premiere for “In The Area: Serena Williams,” an eight-episode docuseries that can air on ESPN+ starting July 10.
“I became bullied. Things that I needed to struggle thru, of us would be canceled for pronouncing now,” Williams mentioned of the scrutiny she and her sister Venus confronted from fans, media and other gamers after they entered the elite tennis world. “My assign in rising up, as a teen, I roughly needed to be guarded to roughly preserve sane. Exact [getting] so valuable press and doing every thing I became doing and touring the globe yearly. It became a week. It became a grind.”
Williams became requested about the attention that Clark, the No. 1 WNBA draft pick, is facing now as a first-year pro. Clark has been at the heart of comparatively a pair of media and social media debate and discussion, alongside with why she did no longer originate the U.S. Olympic basketball roster for this summer’s Paris Video games.
“I cherish that she tries to preserve grounded. She says she would no longer study her social [media]. I salvage it. I invent no longer either,” Williams mentioned of Clark. “I mediate or no longer it is so principal to simply proceed to enact what she’s doing. Irrespective of what other of us enact. If of us are destructive, or no longer that is because they’ll no longer enact what you enact. With any luck she’ll proceed to enact what she’s doing.”
Clark has frequently mentioned she tries to preserve off social media. She mentioned Thursday that she is adversarial to any racist and misogynist “agendas” online.
“Folk ought to not ever be utilizing my name to push these agendas,” Clark mentioned prior to the Fever’s game Thursday. “It be disappointing. It be no longer acceptable. Treating every single woman in this league with the same quantity of respect, I mediate, or no longer it is simply a classic human aspect that all people must enact.”
