Caitlin Clark has achieved a level of fame that hardly any other athlete in the world can achieve. This is good for the rise of women’s sports. But this turns their lunch break into a sting operation.

On Tuesday, Clark was named TIME Magazine’s 2024 Athlete of the Year. In his report on Clark, TIME reporter Sean Gregory summed up the WNBA rookie’s rise to stardom in his description of the route they had to take to have a quiet lunch. Clark reportedly had to go through an alley, through the kitchen and down a flight of stairs to get into a private room “of a restaurant that was being scouted by her security team.”

Gregory compared the trip to a famous scene from “Goodfellas,” in which Ray Liotta’s character sneaks into a nightclub through a side door. Clark said she hadn’t seen the film but appreciated the comparison, telling Gregory: “We’re gangsters.”

Gregory described Clark as a young, ambitious athlete just trying to keep her head down and prove herself as a first-year player in the WNBA.

This is of course difficult. Clark is a lightning rod for sports debate, the subject of countless headlines and the target of controversies she doesn’t fully understand.

“I tell people that I feel like the most controversial person,” Clark told TIME. “But I’m not. It’s just because of all the storylines that surround me. I literally try to treat everyone in the same respectful and kind way. It just confuses me sometimes.”

During her time at Iowa, Clark became a household name. Clark had a historic college career with the Hawkeyes. She was then drafted No. 1 overall by the Indiana Fever of the WNBA. Clark was named the league’s Rookie of the Year and was named to the All-WNBA First Team.