{"id":72922,"date":"2025-08-16T01:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T01:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72922\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T01:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T01:10:08","slug":"kelsey-plum-clarifies-crack-about-caitlin-clarks-team-at-wnba-all-star-game-i-made-a-bad-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72922\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelsey Plum clarifies crack about Caitlin Clark’s team at WNBA All-Star Game: ‘I made a bad joke’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WNBA All-Star Game made headlines last month when every player donned a “Pay Us What You Owe Us” T-shirt before the game<\/a> in a show of solidarity as CBA negotiations drag on. Then Kelsey Plum generated a little controversy after the game.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in the wake of a 151-131 win for her Team Collier side<\/a>, Plum mentioned that “Zero members of Team Clark were very present” for the meeting. She treated it as a joke, laughing with teammate Sabrina Ionescu who sardonically added “That really needed to be mentioned.”<\/p>\n

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That comment, however, took on enough of a life of its own that the Los Angeles Sparks star addressed the matter during an appearance on Sue Bird’s “Bird’s Eye View” podcast published Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bird brought up the matter by describing the comment as a “joke” that “just got twisted,” to which Plum agreed. She then conceded it might not have been the best-timed joke given the gravity of the situation, lamenting the backlash’s effect on the conversation:<\/p>\n

“I made a bad joke. I made a really bad joke … And I should have \u2014 like, hindsight’s 20\/20, because of the shirts, because of the fans \u2014 I should have known it was a way more serious moment than a typical All-Star Game, because I went into that press conference very, like, happy-go-lucky we won, you know? Had a great weekend, my family’s here, it was just a great time.<\/p>\n

“The questions came in, and it was like, ‘CBA, this, this, this.’ Honestly. Birdie, it was like, ‘Hey, Team Clark, they didn’t make it to the meeting either.’ Just making a joke that they were hungover, trying to make the room lighter … I was making a joke that they were hungover, even though our team nickname was ‘hungover.’ So I was like, ‘At least we made it.’<\/p>\n

“Obviously, we’re all on the same page. We all wore the shirts. Like, we’re all unified. I think, if anything, I was just more discouraged because I felt like it took away from the moment of what we were trying to do. You don’t even get to respond and if you do, you seem defensive.”<\/p>\n

Plum is among the leaders of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association as its first vice president, with only president Nneka Ogwumike ranking ahead of her on the players’ side.<\/p>\n

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The union and league are only a few months away from the expiration of the current CBA on Oct. 31. If they can’t figure out a new agreement by then, they will be facing a work stoppage that could threaten the 2026 season. Even before breaking out the shirts, the players were openly unhappy with the state of the negotiations<\/a>, especially with the league about to start bringing in $200 million in annual television money with its new deals.<\/p>\n

A two-time WNBA champion with the Las Vegas Aces, Plum is in her first season with the Sparks and currently ranks in the top 5 of the league in points, assists and 3-pointers made per game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA All-Star Game made headlines last month when every player donned a “Pay Us What You Owe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,4233,631,3460,632,4653,4644,82,38379,9399,630,16002],"class_list":["post-72922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cba","tag-kelsey-plum","tag-las-vegas-aces","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-nneka-ogwumike","tag-sabrina-ionescu","tag-sports","tag-sue-bird","tag-team-collier","tag-wnba","tag-yahoo-fantasy-football-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}