Caitlin Clark is the first WNBA player to make it on the cover of a flagship global edition of the NBA 2K franchise. However, rather than celebrating the milestone, a vocal section of fans turned their attention to the cover illustration itself, claiming it barely resembled the Indiana Fever star. That debate eventually prompted WNBA legend Candace Parker to weigh in.

“Global… We not talking about the state or the nation. We talking about global… Well, some people, because you can never satisfy everybody, nobody’s ever just clapping like, ‘Good job,'” Candace Parker said on Wednesday’s episode of her Post Moves podcast, co-hosted alongside Clark’s teammate Aliyah Boston. 

She also read out a specific post from X that had been making the rounds: “Mick on X said they really used an AI picture of Caitlin Clark that barely looks like her for the cover,” she read aloud.

While Candace Parker and Boston were clearly pushing back against critics who seemed determined to find fault rather than celebrate the achievement, they could not quite bring themselves to fully disagree with the observation either. Like the post Parker read out and many others circulating online, both acknowledged that the stylized cover illustration does bear limited resemblance to Clark.

They also roasted the in-game character rendering with equal candour, joking that Clark’s player model looked like a “copy-paste” combination of Portland Fire forward Bridget Carleton and Fever head coach Stephanie White. 

“They really did use an AI card. But it’s still better than this version of Caitlin’s player profile. Because this looks like a mixture of Bridget Carleton, Caitlin Clark, and Stephanie White, your coach, all mixed in one. That’s what this looks like,” Parker said.

Despite how fans may have received the actual illustration, the Indiana Fever star was over the moon to have gotten the opportunity. The NBA 2K series started in 1999, and even as a kid, Clark would keep track of who was on the cover, but never imagined she would be on one day.

“It’s pretty cool and pretty surreal. As a kid growing up, you’re always watching to see who’s gonna be on the next cover of 2K,” Clark said in an exclusive Bleacher Report interview.

“I think it’s cool to see where the women’s game is at this point in time, too. People are getting excited about what the women’s game can bring. Hopefully that’s the same energy and excitement that’s brought to me being on the cover. Hopefully young kids love it, and hopefully it can show a lot of young girls, too, about what they can achieve one day.”

NBA 2K26 launches on September 4 and pre-orders are already open across the NBA 2K website and primary digital storefronts. However, gamers who purchase the Deluxe Edition featuring Caitlin Clark and the Ultra Edition featuring Derrick Rose will be able to access the game seven days before the global release

The Standard Edition featuring Victor Wembanyama, meanwhile, will become available worldwide on September 4.