Sheryl Swoopes Reacts To Caitlin Clark Winning TIME's Athlete Of The Year

"My question is, like the criteria, is it based off of her performance on the court?" she asked. "Which, yeah, she had a great year, or is it more about the impact that she had on the game this season?"

For the record, Time outlined pretty thoroughly what "criteria" they used to ultimately award Clark the honor.

Writer Sean Gregory highlighted both her record-breaking final year at Iowa and her record-breaking rookie year with the Indiana Fever, combined with the record viewership that her performances generated throughout both her college and professional games. 

Via Time.com:

"Nice to know that after wowing so many around the world throughout her record-breaking year, Clark can still impress herself. In February, she set the new NCAA Division 1 women’s basketball scoring record. A few weeks later, she broke Hall of Famer Pete Maravich’s mark, making her the top scorer overall. Her college championship game between Iowa and South Carolina averaged 18.9 million viewers, becoming the second most watched women’s sporting event, outside the Olympic Games, in the history of U.S. television, with American viewership outdrawing that of each game of the 2024 NBA Finals and World Series. And for the first time ever, more people tuned in for the women’s NCAA championship than the men’s. As a pro, she set a rookie record for most three-pointers made in a season, while also setting new all-time WNBA marks for most assists in a season and most assists in a single game. She signed a reported $28 million endorsement deal with Nike, the largest ever for a women’s basketball player. Clark’s Fever appeared in the most watched WNBA games ever on ABC, CBS, ESPN, and ESPN2. The WNBA attracted an all-time record of more than 54 million unique viewers across all its national broadcasting platforms during the regular season, and the league’s overall attendance jumped 48% year over year to its highest level in more than two decades. The Fever broke the WNBA record for home attendance by a single franchise, and Fever games were moved to NBA and NHL arenas in Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., to accommodate the hordes of fans, many donning Clark’s No. 22 jersey. The Washington Mystics-Fever regular-season finale set a new WNBA single-game attendance record of 20,711."

So if Swoopes earnestly wants to know what criteria was used to prove Clark's candidacy, we've got her covered.