The WNBA All-Star Game came to Chicago this week, and the players held a practice on the basketball court at the Obama Presidential Center. The building's namesake came down to say hello. Sigalit writes beautifully elsewhere in this edition about the Center itself, so we will stay with the smaller story: what happened when Barack Obama walked out onto that floor.
He worked the whole room, well the basketball court. This was not a visit staged around one player. He greeted the roster, and it became clear quickly that these were not introductions so much as reunions in most cases, not unusual for a former President of the United States who is so passionate about basketball. He knew many of the players already. Some he had met before, some had crossed paths with Michelle, and one or two had spent time with his daughters. For a man who has met more or less everyone, he seemed genuinely glad to see all of them.
The exchange that was most impressive is the one with Caitlin Clark, and almost none of it was about basketball.
“Oh, hey, Caitlin,” he said, with a familiar tone, as though picking up a conversation rather than starting one. “How are you? Really nice to meet you. You're... you're great. You're fantastic.” Clark looked visibly caught off guard. “Thank you!” was all she managed.
He kept going, and this is where the reassurance came in. “Don't let all this nonsense get you down.” Then he explained why he was qualified to say it. “One of the things that was luckiest for me was I didn't get famous till I was like 45, so I was an old ass man. I mean, you're my daughter's age, and not to have that much, you know, burdening nonsense.”
And then the line: “So don't lose that joy.”
For a young athlete carrying an entire league's expansion on her shoulders, that may be the most useful thing anyone has said to her in two years. It came from a man who has been photographed more than almost anyone alive and who understands exactly what the noise costs. What Obama said landed differently coming from someone whose own daughters are roughly her age.
The basketball talk, when it arrived, was brief and gentle. “The game's like the game, and you're a hooper,” Obama said. Clark deflected. “I try sometimes.” He would not allow it. “No, you're always hooping. And you're on a nice little run right now.” “Yeah, we are, we are,” Clark agreed, before turning practical. “You mind if I get a picture?”
Then came a most Obama moment, which was to turn a photo of two people into a photo of everybody. “Yeah, come on. Ready? Come on. So cute. Wait, guys, get in with me, too. Come on. Nice to meet you. Come on, one, two, three.”, with Caitlin’s Indiana Fever team mates, Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell joining in the photograph.
And then came the part that gave Caitlin a sense that he’s really connected with her career, if it wasn’t already obvious. “Our production company is doing some work with Tommy's the man, and he loves you, you know? So, and it turns out his aunt is actually a longtime supporter from Chicago, so I actually... there's like a kind of a family connection anyway.”
A city of nearly three million people, a former president, the most watched player in women's basketball, and the connection through somebody's aunt. Anyone who has lived here long enough knows the pattern. Chicago is a very large city that behaves like a small town, and its people keep discovering they have been in one another's orbit for years without knowing it.
That was the real texture of the afternoon. The best players in the league in town for their showcase game, gathered in a new building on the South Side, and a host moving through the room the way anyone does at a gathering of old acquaintances.
“Nice to meet you.”
“It's an honor.”
“You keep it up, all right?”
In a post event media interview, Caitlin remarked about how the interaction affected her. She ended her remarks with these words: “It was cool to hear that from him, and I think, and honestly it’s a reminder for all of us of, you know, treating people with respect, treating people with grace, and definitely a moment I will remember for the rest of my life.”
