Women's Fastbreak On SI

Sue Bird Ignites Caitlin Clark and Breanna Stewart Debate With National Championship Take

Sue Bird and Jemele Hill delivered their stances on Breanna Stewart saying Caitlin Clark can't get called the College GOAT because of her lack of national championships.

Grant Young

Jul 20, 2024; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Team WNBA guard Caitlin Clark (22) moves the ball against USA Women's National Team forward Breanna Stewart (10) during the 2024 WNBA All Star Game at Footprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jul 20, 2024; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Team WNBA guard Caitlin Clark (22) moves the ball against USA Women's National Team forward Breanna Stewart (10) during the 2024 WNBA All Star Game at Footprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Earlier this year, New York Liberty superstar Breanna Stewart sparked intense debate when she made a bold claim about whether Caitlin Clark can be the college basketball GOAT.

"Does Caitlin Clark need a championship to be considered one of the greats in women's college basketball history?" Asked NBC Sports reporter Nicole Auerbach, per the @SXMCollege X account.

"Yeah," Stewart responded. "She does. I think so. Because then, you're going to look 10 years back and you're gonna see all the records she's broken... but anybody knows that your goal when you play college basketball is to win a national championship. So you need one."

Stewart won four consecutive national championships at UConn, and Clark went to two consecutive national championship games but never won a title.

Stewart's take sparked a lot of debate back in April but quieted down after that. However, the debate was reignited again once WNBA legend Sue Bird and The Athletic journalist Jemele Hill discussed their respective opinions on Stewart's sentiment on an October 16 episode of the "A Touch More" podcast.

"Breanna Stewart won four national titles. So yes, she’s allowed to have the opinion that... you need to win in order to be in my group, okay?” Hill said. "That's not a controversial opinion, that's not a disrespect to Caitlin Clark. That is simply her opinion. And once again... ring talk is the most dominant conversation in men's sports. But suddenly, when it's in the field of women, it's about pettiness and jealousy.”

Bird then added, "And the issue is we don't have enough of the smart people — meaning the people that are tapped in, clued in, have researched, have been covering the WNBA — to offset that."

Bird then returned to this topic a bit later, adding, "I just want to go back to the Breanna Stewart thing... in the world of women's basketball, four national championships is the standard. That's not the case for... any other sport. So that is the bar.

"In another world, if you get to the national championship game twice, it's an amazing [feat]. By the way, it is an amazing feat. That's not to take away from what Caitlin did. But it's not four national championships in a row," Bird continued.

While Bird and Hill clearly have a ton of respect for Clark and her accomplishments, it sounds like they agree with Stewart's take about her not being able to get deemed the GOAT.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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