Incident of Caitlin Clark ridiculed by teammate and player who poked her eye | NBA

Caitlin Clark suffered a black eye after being poked in the eye by Connecticut Sun star Dijonai Carrington during the WNBA play-offs last month. And Carrington poked fun at the incident during a live video on social media earlier in the week.

Clark, who has been compared to NBA great Steph Curry, has risen to prominence since starring for the Indiana Fever in the WNBA during her rookie year.

The 22-year-old excelled for her team and was named Rookie of the Year after averaging a league-leading 19.2 points and 8.4 assists per game during the season.

Carrington appeared in an Instagram Live video on Wednesday alongside his girlfriend NaLyssa Smith, who is Clark’s Indiana Fever teammate.

In the video, Carrington staged a dramatic recreation of the eye poke, before Smith attempted to make eye contact with her.

Carrington exclaimed in the video: “You poked me in the eye,” before the pair burst into laughter. And the Connecticut Sun player then asked, “Did you do that on purpose?”

The question appeared to be a reference to USA TODAY columnist Christine Brennan, who was called after asking Carrington if the eye poke was deliberate and if she was laughing about the incident with a teammate.

At the time, Carrington denied intentionally contacting Clark. And the WNBA players union released a statement after the interview that said: “To non-professional members of the media like Christine Brennan: you are not fooling anyone.

“The so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to induce a professional athlete to participate in a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic and misogynistic hatred on social media. You cannot hide behind your mandate.

“Instead of demonstrating the pillars of journalism ethics such as integrity, objectivity and a fundamental commitment to the truth, you chose to be indecent and completely disingenuous.”

Brennan later defended his line of questioning on the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast as he explained: “Do you know what you do as a journalist? You ask the question and give them the chance to accept it and move on. And that was exactly my intention, that’s exactly what I did.

“You just give them a chance… give her a chance to answer the question because it was running wild on the internet. It’s there, so let’s ask the athlete to clear the air. I will never not ask any athlete any question and I am happy to do so.”