The WNBA has put the brakes on its regular season to accommodate the 2026 FIBA World Cup. And while much of the attention has shifted toward Team USA and its pursuit of a fifth straight gold medal, that has done very little to quiet the ongoing MVP debate. A’ja Wilson remains the frontrunner for the award, with Caitlin Clark among the biggest names challenging her at the top of the race. But as the debate continues to divide fans, one former college basketball player appears to have taken his Clark advocacy a little too far.
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WNBA reporter and In Case You Missed It host Khristina Williams publicly called out former basketball player John O’Maley after he repeatedly flooded her personal inbox with emails arguing that Clark should be named MVP.
Williams initially shared a screenshot of an email from O’Maley to reveal what he had been doing over the past month and captioned it with, “Pleeeease stop sending me emails, John!!!” She later deleted that post before taking to X again to make it clear that the issue had not been a one-time occurrence.
“I deleted the tweet. But seriously, stop! I received five emails in a two-hour span today, and multiple emails last month,” Williams wrote.
O’Maley, however, is not just another fan caught up in the MVP debate. The President, CEO and Founder of John O’Maley and Associates is a West Point graduate who played four years of varsity basketball for legendary coach Bob Knight at the United States Military Academy. He later spent five years in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Captain, before moving into the business world. Yet his basketball background appears to have kept him closely connected to the sport, and these days, he has made it clear that he is firmly in Caitlin Clark’s corner.
Clark is currently averaging 22.5 points and a league-best 8.4 assists per game, while also adding 3.9 rebounds. Then there is her 60.8% true shooting percentage, which is a significant mark given the efficiency struggles that followed her early WNBA career, especially while carrying a 31.8% usage rate, the second-highest among players with at least 30 games played, according to StatMuse.
Her impact has also helped the Fever sit fifth in the standings, where Indiana leads the WNBA in scoring at 96.6 points per game. So she certainly has a strong case to be in the MVP conversation, but there are still areas that work against her candidacy.
Critics argue that turnovers remain the biggest concern, with the Fever guard averaging a league-high 4.6 per game. There have also been moments late in games when costly mistakes have hurt Indiana’s chances.
With rookie Olivia Miles also making her case and four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson once again leading the charts, Clark’s path to the award is far from one-sided. O’Maley, though, believes the flaws do little to diminish what she has brought to the league.
“I built an independent, source-linked comparison that argues Caitlin Clark merits serious first-place consideration while acknowledging A’ja Wilson’s greatness and two-way edge, and Clark’s turnover and defensive issues. I have watched every WNBA Caitlin Clark game, I believe Caitlin is one of the most transformative players basketball has ever seen,” O’Maley wrote in the email Williams shared in her now-deleted post.
There is little to no doubt that Caitlin Clark has put together the kind of season that makes her one of the strongest MVP candidates in the league. But for Williams, the issue does not appear to be whether Clark deserves to be part of that conversation. It is how relentlessly O’Maley has tried to make the case to her.
Williams has been part of the media panel that holds a ballot for WNBA major postseason awards. In 2024, when the Rookie of the Year vote wasn’t unanimous, she was one of the reporters who publicly shared her ballot to clear her name, posting proof that she’d voted Caitlin Clark for ROTY.
For the 2025 MVP award, she shared her ballot on X, writing, “My MVP ballot: 1. A’ja Wilson 2. Alyssa Thomas 3. Napheesa Collier 4. Allisha Gray 5. Kelsey Mitchell.”
With Williams now asking him to stop, O’Maley’s MVP campaign has become a story of its own, adding another wrinkle to an award race that was already generating plenty of debate.