Famous or popular quotes about haters include:

“Haters gonna hate, but I keep slaying.”

“I use my haters as my motivators.”

“I’m too busy rising to the top to even acknowledge the hate.”

“Haters are fans in denial.”

“When you have haters, you’re doing something right.”

Drake has lines in his songs such as “I was born to make mistakes, not fake perfection,” “Send the haters all my love. X and O,” “I can’t hear the critics talking over the applause,” and “I can’t relate to these haters, my enemies never made it.”

TLC, Jill Scott, Taylor Swift, Jennette McCurdy, Beyonce, Miranda Brooke, Luke Bryan, Mariah Carey, Mark Willis, B.o.B., Kelly Clarkson, Puddle of Mudd, Rihanna, and Ice Cube all have songs about haters as well as many, many, many other artists.

LeBron James said, “I like criticism, it makes you stronger.”

The late Kobe Bryant said, “Haters are a good prob- lem to have. Nobody hates the good ones. They hate the great ones.”

The one I personally use is, “If you don’t have haters, you’re not doing anything.”

Caitlin Clark probably has a hater playlist made on her Spotify account. If she didn’t before, while she was playing basketball in high school or at the University of Iowa, she definitely does now after breaking numerous college basketball records (both women’s and men’s hoops), being drafted No. 1 in the 2024 WNBA Draft by the Indiana Fever, being interviewed by every interviewer possible, and having her name in hundreds of millions (can’t be an over estimate) of conversations being held every day whether on national media, local media, in any gymnasium, by any water cooler, in any classroom, or in all reality, absolutely anywhere people can talk.

Even in libraries at a low whisper.

Clark has dominated not only sports news, but all news, and our society’s, our culture’s, attention.

And it’s well deserved. She’s a great player and has a personality easy for fans to attach themselves to. However, with that, the haterism was going to happen as she has helped transcend women’s basketball to a national scale instead of where it was before, popular with only women’s basketball players.

With every accolade, every broken record, every little kid calling Clark an idol, the hater meter was rising in many individuals.

Especially other WNBA players who are being overlooked, not talked about, or not viewed as a great player because they’re on the same court or in the same league as Clark. She wasn’t surprised or hasn’t seemed surprised in pre-game or post-game interviews, but ESPN radio and people I’ve talked to in the Illinois Valley, seem shocked Clark has been defended phys- ically and opponents have taken cheap shots.

Through the last two years, Angel Reese (LSU player who beat Clark and Iowa in the NCAA championship in 2023 and was drafted to the Chicago Sky with the seventh pick, six picks after Clark, in 2024) has used the Clark spotlight to bolster her image and her national media gravitational pole.

Every Batman needs a Joker, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a Shredder, and X-Men a Magnetto (my favorite superheroes and villains).

When former WNBA players are asked about Clark or the state of the game, they give her a few words of praise and immediately start throwing out names of other former great players or start stating their accomplish- ments and how they helped the sport and the league in order to say, hey, there are other players besides Caitlin.

To her credit, Clark isn’t complaining, whining, or even addressing it.

Instead, she is playing her game. She drained seven 3-pointers in a game against the Washington Mystics on June 7. In her 12 games played (as of 6:37 p.m. June 9), she is averaging 33.5 minutes, 16.8 points, 6.3 assists, 5.3 rebounds, 1.5 steals, and 0.9 blocks per game.

For a rookie, this is easily a Rookie of the Year resume.

In all honesty, I like Clark as a person and appreciate her as a basketball player now more than ever. She is proving she can play with the best players in the world. She is proving she is ready for the challenge of being the nation’s (maybe the world’s) media darling and face of the WNBA. Face of the sport of women’s basketball.

Clark is composed.

The hooper is focused.

She isn’t getting distracted.

Caitlin Clark isn’t listening to the haters and proving them wrong each time she steps on the court.