The women’s Final Four has descended on Cleveland and Anthony Lima of 92.3 The Fan found himself asking a question to the biggest star of the show, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark. Lima and host Ken Carman talked about a press conference he attended during this morning’s The Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima.
“So, Lima got the chance to go talk to Caitlin Clark yesterday,” Carman starts out.
“Well, she needed to be peppered with some real questions from the media, because Kenny it has been softball after softball for Caitlin Clark, who quite honestly, she can handle it, she can handle the hard-hitting questions,” came the witty response from Lima.
Carman asked Lima to set the scene a little bit before they played some of the audio.
“Some people are starting to screw up their questions because they were a little nervous,” Lima said. “I don’t think some of these people asking questions are used to big NBA Finals-like media contingents. And your voice is blasted on these speakers, and everybody is watching. People are streaming from all over the world.”
Lima said he wanted to let those that regularly covered women’s basketball to get to ask their questions and that he would certainly defer to someone such as Associated Press reporter Tom Withers who the hosts compared to Helen Thomas who famously covered ten U.S. presidents at the White House. “He gets all the big questions,” it was said.
Unfortunately for Lima, Withers’ question was similar to the one he had planned to ask and as he was on the other side of the room, he was on-deck to ask the next question.
“…I’m sitting there with a microphone going ‘oh my god, oh my god, she is going over exactly what I was going to ask,'” he said. “And I’m thinking do I hand the mic back to the proctor who is flanking me to the left?”
They then play the audio for their listeners to hear:
“Anthony Lima, 92.3 the Fan here in Cleveland. Obviously, you don’t need anybody’s validation outside of your locker room for what you ladies have been able to accomplish. But piggybacking off of what Tom [Withers] said about LeBron, you had Luka [Doncic], you’ve had celebrities coming out of the woodwork, kind of parachuting in and watching your games. Does it feel differently when you have so many people talking about your sport that you live every single day? And now everybody, including our talk shows and around the country, physically and verbally, talking about your sport on a daily basis over the last month.”
Clark replied, “I think it’s really special. I think it’s cool. This is exactly what we wanted for women’s basketball but also, I feel like it could have been a thing a long time ago. There’s been so many amazing stars in our game and there’s been so many amazing people to support our game. It’s not surprising that everyone is wanting to talk about it right now, but the product has always been there.”
Immediately as the audio finishes, Carman says, “Question timed at 49 seconds…answer timed at 16 seconds.”
“That was edited,” Lima shot back. “She went much longer.”
“It seemed like you were nervous at the beginning of your question, too,” Lima said. “You went a little quick.”
“I thought I had complete command of the room,” Lima said back.
Carman then asked, “Why did you meander about in that question, why couldn’t you just pull a Larry King and get straight to the point?”
And that question set Lima off a bit. “I wanted to make sure that they didn’t think that I was just looking for male validation for their sport,” he said. “…Because you know that’s what an outsider like me, like that Jessica from Meadowlark Media would say, ‘You don’t understand our sport and you think we need the approval of you men who drop on in and think you’re going to watch our sport and dictate how we are going to talk about that sport.'”
Lima was referencing Jessica Smetana, the former Sports Illustrated writer and current contributor to the Dan Le Batard Show.
“In general, I’m seeing some of the conversations happening on ESPN or Fox or whatever,” she said. “It’s disheartening because you now see the way men’s sports is treated a lot of the time, which is like really ignorant, just stupid hot takes,” Smetana complained. “But now it’s happening to women’s players and I think there’s an element of racism, and definitely sexism, that a lot of these shows do not know how to talk about… great, we’re finally talking about women’s sports, but are we doing it very well?”
Getting back to Lima and the interaction with Clark, as Lima explained more about his question, Carman interrupted and said, “Honestly, I kind of stopped listening to you halfway through the question.”
