j birchem-isley

mom of 2 boys, married to my and doing what I love, interventional cardiology. Find your passion and live it! tweets are mine, not medical advice

[Jonathan Reiner @JReinerMD]

For every person who’s ever been underestimated, this series is for you.

[Sports Patriot @SportsPatriotUS]

Let’s stop pretending the WNBA has an officiating “problem.”

A problem implies the officials are failing.

Last night looked like they were doing exactly what they were sent there to do.

What we witnessed was not a few bad calls. It was a blatant, successful manipulation of game flow... and it worked.

The officials did not take over early. That would have been too obvious.

They waited.

Indiana had control. New York could not shoot. The Liberty finished 2-for-18 from three, while the Fever made more field goals, shot a better percentage, and dominated from deep.

Then, when New York needed saving, the whistle arrived.

New York shot 40 free throws.

Indiana shot 15.

Breanna Stewart alone shot 21, more than the entire Fever team... and somehow the whistle kept putting the ball in the hands of New York’s best high-volume free-throw shooter when the game needed to be tilted.

At the same time, Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston were forced to play through foul trouble, which completely changes how aggressive Indiana can be defensively.

That is how you manipulate a game in real time without making it obvious to the untrained eye.

You do not have to control every possession.

You only have to control the critical ones.

Basketball people knew what was happening.

And the box score does not lie.

This was not normal.

This was not right.

This was not okay.

And anyone who cares about the integrity of the game should be asking hard questions about why the Fever won so many normal basketball categories and still lost because the whistle became New York’s offense.

At some point, it stops looking like incompetence.

It starts looking coordinated.

And last night only added more fuel to the belief that the league is willing to sabotage the Caitlin Clark effect before it ever admits how badly it needs her.

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@Wyd_eshuu 💯

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@focodereality Valence

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Let us #PrayTogether that sports may be an instrument of peace, encounter, and dialogue among cultures and nations, in order to promote the values of respect, solidarity, and personal growth. #PrayerIntention @clicktopray_en https://t.co/S3TtsnBEer

[Sports Patriot @SportsPatriotUS]

I have been told countless times over the last 48 hours that I am a conspiracy theorist.

That I do not know basketball.

That I do not understand the WNBA.

And that my articles are too long.

So I wrote this...

I do not believe there is some organized, calculated operation to take down Caitlin Clark.

That would be too simple.

The truth is deeper... and far more damaging.

Caitlin Clark walked into a league that spent nearly three decades convincing itself that its weaknesses were culture.

For years, the WNBA was not a mainstream sports product.

It was a cause.
A talking point.
A subsidized idea.
A league people were told they should support, even when the product on the floor often failed to earn that support from casual fans.

The empty seats were excused.

The financial struggles were excused.

The rough offensive flow was excused.

The poor spacing was excused.

The inconsistent officiating was excused.

The excessive physicality was excused.

The lack of mainstream interest was excused.

And anytime fans questioned the product, the answer was usually the same:

You just do not understand women’s basketball and you're racist.

That was the lie the league told itself for too long.

Because a lot of fans understood basketball perfectly fine.

They just did not like what they were watching.

Too often, the WNBA confused physicality with quality.

It confused survival with success.

It confused being protected with being excellent.

It confused an insulated culture with a strong one.

And then Caitlin Clark arrived.

She did not come in asking people to support the league out of obligation.

She made people want to watch.

That is the difference.

Caitlin brought range, pace, vision, passing angles, court gravity, creativity, and real basketball electricity.

She made regular-season games feel like events.

She made casual fans stop scrolling.

She made people who had ignored the WNBA for years suddenly care about matchups, rotations, officiating, coaching decisions, and league standards.

And that is where the collision happened.

Caitlin Clark exposed the gap between what the WNBA had convinced itself was good enough and what mainstream sports fans actually expect.

Fans want skill.

They want spacing.

They want pace.

They want shooting.

They want smart coaching.

They want fair officiating.

They want stars protected.

They want basketball that looks modern, intelligent, and entertaining.

They did not show up to watch Caitlin get grabbed, held, shoved, bumped, and treated like every possession needs to become a wrestling match in the name of “physicality.”

They also did not show up to watch the basketball constantly pushed into the background while social messaging, league-approved narratives, and cultural lectures compete for center stage.

That is not evolution.

That is a league clinging to old habits because it does not know how to handle the future standing right in front of it.

And Caitlin Clark is the future.

That does not mean she is perfect.

She is not.

That does not mean veterans have no value.

They do.

That does not mean physicality has no place in basketball.

It does.

But there is a difference between physical basketball and ugly basketball.

There is a difference between toughness and fouling.

There is a difference between defensive pressure and mugging someone off the ball.

There is a difference between culture and bad habits that went unchallenged because not enough people were watching.

Caitlin did not create the league’s problems.

She exposed them.

She exposed the officiating.

She exposed the coaching gap.

She exposed the outdated style.

She exposed the resentment toward new fans.

She exposed the discomfort some people have with a player becoming bigger than the system that was supposed to contain her.

And more than anything, she exposed a league that is still trying to force a generational player into an old version of basketball that she has already outgrown.

That is why this does not feel like a conspiracy.

It feels like resistance to change.

The WNBA finally got the player who could push the league into a new era, and too many people inside the ecosystem seem determined to make her prove she belongs in the old one.

That is backwards.

You do not take the most skilled, market-changing player your league has ever seen and ask her to shrink into the culture that failed to attract mainstream fans in the first place.

You build around her.

You modernize around her.

You protect what she represents.

Because she is not just another player.

She is the mirror.

She is showing the league what it has been, what it is, and what it could become if it would stop defending its flaws as tradition.

And the frustrating part is that the next generation is already here.

You can see it with Caitlin.

You can see it with Paige Bueckers.

You can see it with Sonia Citron.

You can see it with Aliyah Boston.

You can see it with JuJu Watkins.

The skill is changing.

The training is better.
The footwork is better.
The shooting is better.
The spacing is better.
The basketball IQ is better.

But too much of the league around them is still operating like nothing has changed.

Same coaching habits.

Same officiating problems.
Same marketing instincts.
Same defensive excuses.
Same resentment toward criticism.
Same belief that the old WNBA culture must be protected, even if it means slowing down the very players who could make the league bigger than it has ever been.

That is the real story.

Caitlin Clark is not being taken down by some secret plan.

She is being resisted by a league that still does not fully understand what she represents.

She represents a better product.

A bigger audience.

A more skilled game.

A more modern game.

A version of women’s basketball that does not need to be sold as charity, activism, obligation, or guilt.

It can be sold as basketball.

Great basketball.

But that requires the league to stop pretending its weaknesses are sacred.

It requires officials to clean up the game.

It requires coaches to modernize.

It requires veterans to adapt.

It requires media voices to stop protecting the old product from honest criticism.

And it requires the WNBA to stop resenting the very fans it spent decades trying to attract.

So no, I do not think there is a coordinated takedown of Caitlin Clark.

I think it is bigger than that.

I think Caitlin walked into a league that spent years convincing itself its flaws were culture.

And now that a generational player has arrived to expose the difference, too many people are trying to humble her instead of learning from her.

That is not Caitlin Clark’s failure.

That is the league refusing to recognize the future.

[Dr. Martha Gulati ♥️🫀❤️‍🩹🇨🇦 @DrMarthaGulati]

This is my favorite study of the year.

What a waste of money. But keep telling physicians to see more patients every hour. Because that is working so well….

[Dr. Martha Gulati ♥️🫀❤️‍🩹🇨🇦 @DrMarthaGulati]

How are we incentivized to medicate patients? I am truly asking because I must have missed this. It is not how anyone gets paid.
No one gets bonuses based on vaccinations. Stop spreading lies Joe Rogan.
We advise meds & vaccines when they are needed to save lives.

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@HeartOTXHeartMD Not surprising! C suite chooses what they want to hear and who they hear it from.

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@hjluks Should you continue doing cardio while working on progressive load?

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@rorynotsorry Yes, co-pays driven up by insurance companies and clinics made to become HODs by administration. Have at least one patient cancel weekly bc of co-pay cost.

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@HeartOTXHeartMD We started a CCL one this year as well🫶🏼🫀

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@RadRadDoc @Papa_Heme @UHC It should be. Do the peer to peer recorded in front of a patient

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@DrPlantel 💯 dying, eat what they want and can eat

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@BarackObama @NASAArtemis So incredibly cool and brave!

[St. Louis Cardinals @Cardinals]

"We've got a hero in town!"

That's what Jack Buck told Cardinal Nation on this day 25 years ago, when a rookie named Albert Pujols hit his first home run in St. Louis!

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@BaseballIrish Let's go Irish☘️

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@DrPlantel Why role in even? Often, they will be treated and then stop the treatment which could harm them even more. Ie stopping DAPT

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime.

The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood.

The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old.

The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose.

And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled.

The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around.

Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."

[j birchem-isley @PCImom]

@rorynotsorry What do you think about people who do not respond or do not until very high doses? Don't think there is another mechanism involved?