Besides DiJonai Carrington getting ejected for a flagrant foul on Sophie Cunningham, a technical foul call on Caitlin Clark sparked serious debate when the Indiana Fever beat the Chicago Sky 90-86 on Saturday. While the eighth technical foul for Clark that would’ve suspended her for one game got rescinded after the game, independent WNBA analyst and podcast host Ben Daniel has called out the same official for showing bias after new footage from the broadcast showed Nathash Cloud pushing her without consequence.
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“The referee that gave Caitlin Clark a technical foul: Exposed. Now, that technical foul did get rescinded… but Caitlin Clark got T-ed up during yesterday’s game for accidentally bumping into an official after getting pushed out of bounds while her momentum is carrying her in the referee’s direction,” Ben Daniel said on his YouTube channel.
“However, footage has come out of Natasha Cloud physically, purposefully grabbing said referee and trying to push her out of the way so Natasha Cloud can argue with a player… Absolutely no technical foul. If that’s not a double standard, I don’t know what is. If that’s not failing to apply rules evenly across the board, I’m not sure what is.”
The footage Ben Daniel was talking about has been making rounds on social media. One such instance of the footage from the broadcast came from Coach Anderson on X, which shows Cloud making contact with Perrymond, who held back the Chicago Sky player after she got heated after Fever forward Myisha Hines-Allen made hard contact, sending Cloud to the floor as she attempted to make a lay-up.
“The same ref who gave Caitlin Clark a technical foul when CC was pushed into her and accidentally bumped into her, ignored Natasha Cloud purposely pushing her,” Anderson wrote in the caption while posting the footage.
Caitlin Clark originally picked up the foul when Natasha Cloud bumped her out of bounds, and the Fever guard collided with official Genesis Perrymond. The official took a step back to recover from the collision and issued a technical to the Fever guard.
While Clark was in disbelief, even the commentators were stunned, with one of them saying, “Oh! She didn’t even say anything,” on the live broadcast when Perrymond called the technical.
As the broadcasters themselves doubted whether the technical foul would stand, Fever GM Amber Cox was already working on sending an appeal to the WNBA to review the call. In fact, she sent the official appeal to the WNBA even before the players made it off the court.
“It’s already appealed… I just hope the league makes the right decision, and hopefully I can play on Tuesday,” Caitlin Clark told the media during the post-game press conference. Meanwhile, the WNBA had already made its decision to rescind the technical.
A WNBA spokesperson told Indy Star that the league rescinded the technical foul on Caitlin Clark even before the Indiana Fever got the detailed report of why Perrymond made the call in the first place.
Thankfully for the Indiana Fever, Caitlin Clark won’t miss their upcoming clash against the New York Liberty in Indianapolis on Tuesday.