Caitlin Clark talks WNBA All-Star Recreation fan voting, current struggles
Caitlin Clark talks WNBA All-Star voting, elevated fan engagement and life as a second-year professional.
INDIANAPOLIS — The day after Caitlin Clark declared for the 2024 WNBA draft, USA Immediately sports activities columnist Christine Brennan made a cellphone name to a prime official within the league.
“Have you learnt how huge that is?” Brennan requested.
That official mentioned Clark’s arrival was the most important factor to occur to the WNBA since Maya Moore got here into the league.
What? Wait. What? Brennan was shocked.
Moore, a Corridor of Famer, was referred to as the “biggest winner within the historical past of girls’s basketball” by Sports activities Illustrated in 2017. She was a gifted, beloved famous person within the league, and she or he deserved all the eye. However outdoors the league, Moore went just about unnoticed.
Clark? She was going to seize the eye of a complete nation. Brennan had been protecting Clark and the WNBA for years, and she or he might see it coming. This official clearly had no concept.
“That interplay tells you every little thing in regards to the utter lack of preparation, and even understanding, by the league of what was coming,” mentioned Brennan, whose e book “On Her Recreation: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Girls’s Sports activities,” comes out July 8. “And that is unlucky. However that is what occurred.”
Clark’s entrance to professional girls’s basketball can be nothing like Moore’s. Clark can be greater, extra monumental, extra earth shattering and sport altering than something that had occurred in modern-day girls’s sports activities.
The so-called Clark Impact can be monstrous, potent, and it will be actual.
“How did the WNBA not see this coming?” mentioned Brennan. “One of many causes for having so badly mismanaged Caitlin Clark’s arrival within the WNBA is as a result of, did they really not imagine this might occur to the WNBA? Had been they so relegated to second class citizenship by the male-dominated mainstream sports activities media that they only by no means believed this could be doable?”
The league would rapidly see that this Clark phenomenon was very doable.
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‘The league failed the gamers’
It was Might 9, 2024, in downtown Indianapolis, the primary preseason sport for the Indiana Fever with Clark debuting as a rookie within the league.
As followers descended on Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Clark had visitors backed up on Alabama Avenue for greater than three blocks heading south into the parking storage throughout from the fieldhouse. It was 6 p.m. on a Thursday and a crew of employees directing vehicles had their jobs minimize out for them.
Tony Dunkin was used to crowds jamming up the lane he works on Degree 1 of the storage for the Pacers and different occasions, however he had by no means seen something like this for a Fever sport and undoubtedly not for a preseason WNBA sport.
The vehicles have been packed in, maneuvering round orange cones, clamoring to get their automobiles right into a parking spot so they might get themselves right into a seat.
“That is what a Pacers sport normally does,” Dunkin mentioned, “not the Fever. I name it the Caitlin impact.”
Safety employees working at a Delaware Avenue entrance into the fieldhouse for Clark’s first preseason sport with the Fever have been shocked. There have been followers ready outdoors two hours earlier than the doorways opened to pour into the sector. Ready for a preseason WNBA sport. In 2023, the yr earlier than, the Fever averaged 4,067 followers a sport.
“14,000 of them tonight,” mentioned Beverly Franklin. “Now, if they’ll simply have a crowd like this for each sport, that will be superior.”
Clark mentioned the identical factor only a few hours later, after she stuffed the stat sheet because the Fever beat the Atlanta Dream 83-80 within the group’s solely preseason house sport. She mentioned the identical factor to the group of 14,000, who had roared with each point out of her identify throughout the sport and rose to their toes with each shot she took.
“You all have been wonderful. Thanks for popping out for a preseason sport,” Clark mentioned as she was interviewed on court docket after racking up 12 factors, eight rebounds and 6 assists. “I hope you may maintain coming again.”
Coming again. They did.
The Clark Impact would reverberate all through the league, an impact {that a} season and a half later has turned, to place it mildly, difficult.
Brennan says it did not should be difficult, if solely the league had taken some initiative to arrange different gamers within the WNBA for what was coming with Clark.
“The league failed the gamers,” Dr. Harry Edwards, an American sociologist and civil rights activist, says within the e book. “The WNBA not solely missed a chance to arrange gamers for this second, they set the traps alongside the trail that the league was going to journey.”
Edwards informed Brennan the WNBA wanted to know and put together for the “disappointment and anger” some Black gamers, specifically, can be experiencing resulting from Clark’s ballyhooed arrival.
“This was predictable,” he mentioned. “It is human nature for folks to not be glad for you once you’re new and profitable, particularly if it is in an enviornment the place they’ve toiled all their lives and never come near the type of reward or applause that (Clark) is receiving.”
Gamers have been ‘woefully unprepared’ for Clark’s arrival
By means of the years, earlier than Clark ever laid a hand on a ball on a professional basketball court docket, the WNBA has stood for equality, typically being described, based on Brennan, as “a Black, homosexual league.”
The newest statistics reveal that 63.8% of WNBA gamers are Black, whereas 19.1% are white, based on a 2023 report on the WNBA by The Institute for Range and Ethics in Sport on the College of Central Florida. Whereas that examine did not embrace sexual identification, “a considerable portion of the league identifies as LGBTQ+,” writes Brennan.
The league “typically has been below assault as a result of a 3rd of the gamers within the WNBA are recognized as being a part of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood,” commentator and author Jemele Hill mentioned on the 2024 Affiliation for Girls in Sports activities Media convention.
“And into this world landed Caitlin Clark, a white, straight, 22-year-old lady who had not performed a second within the WNBA,” Brennan writes, “however already was a nationwide phenomenon and about to change into the face of the league.”
Clark is a participant who is usually a little bit of a hothead. She has racked up her own share of technical fouls and isn’t a participant to again down, clapping within the faces of opponents and generally having to be calmed down on the bench.
She can be a participant who has endured an countless surge of tough play and technicals dedicated towards her.
As that has performed out within the WNBA since Clark arrived, there have been racial undertones that cannot be denied on the subject of the protection and the remedy Clark has acquired, Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sports activities media within the Park College of Communications at Ithaca Faculty in New York, informed IndyStar in September
“Analysis has proven that A’ja Wilson, among the finest WNBA gamers in historical past and she or he’s getting half the protection of Sabrina Ionescu,” mentioned Staurowsky. “There isn’t any doubt and there is not any query that there’s a racial dynamic in all of this. And that can’t be discounted.”
There’s a very concrete approach the league might have ready gamers for what was to return, mentioned Edwards, who has recommended gamers and leagues for many years. The WNBA ought to have established “a sequence of seminars” within the preseason for each group within the league, he says within the e book.
“There are folks on the market who might have gone in and given these talks to every franchise,” says Edwards, “specialists and specialists from a sports activities sociological perspective with the understanding and grasp of the scenario.”
They may have informed every group, Edwards says, “Hey, we have now Caitlin Clark coming in and the media has grabbed ahold of this, the general public has grabbed ahold of this, however let me let you know one thing, you sitting proper right here on this room, you set the stage for this.”
Brianna Scurry, the primary Black famous person in girls’s soccer and the goalkeeper for the 1999 U.S. girls’s soccer group, readily endorses Edwards’ concept for having programming to arrange the gamers for this unprecedented time.
“That might’ve been completely sensible to have one thing like that even when the gamers did not themselves wish to see issues holistically, they’d have not less than been capable of see somebody speaking about it and saying, ‘OK, I could also be indignant about all this and feeling like we have been right here this entire time, nevertheless I can discover this silver lining in right here,” Scurry says within the e book.
“However as a result of the WNBA, sadly, did not do this the gamers did not even perceive how huge that tsunami was that was coming for them in a great way, and so they have been simply woefully unprepared for it.”
Clark’s presence is ‘watershed second for the league’
Brennan needs to clarify that when she says the gamers wanted to be ready for the second “it isn’t as a result of these gamers, Black and white, the veteran gamers, Black and white, it isn’t as a result of they’re damsels in misery. No, after all not,” she says.
“They’re robust athletes, most of them have school levels. They’re fantastic, completed younger girls. However nothing like this has ever occurred earlier than within the WNBA,” Brennan mentioned. “And albeit, you may make a robust case, nothing fairly like this has ever occurred, not solely in girls’s group sports activities, however in all of group sports activities, women and men, the place one league is lifted as much as this extent by one particular person.”
In December, IndyStar reached out to Dr. Ryan Brewer, a famend valuation guru within the subject of finance, asking him to put a price tag on Caitlin Clark — what she meant financially to the WNBA, her metropolis and the nation in her rookie season with the Fever.
The numbers have been so surprising that Brewer was certain he will need to have made some mistake. He ran the numbers once more. Then once more. And each single time, he acquired the identical consequence.
“The numbers are so staggering,” mentioned Brewer, affiliate professor of finance at Indiana College Columbus. “They do not even appear actual.”
By Brewer’s calculation, Clark was accountable for 26.5% of the WNBA’s leaguewide exercise for the 2024 season, together with attendance, merchandise gross sales and tv. Considered one of each six tickets bought at a WNBA enviornment might be attributed to Clark.
Whole TV viewership resulting from Clark was up 300% and 45% of complete broadcast worth got here from Fever video games. The league’s merchandise gross sales catapulted 500%, with Clark rating No. 1 adopted by the Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese, one other rookie.
The Fever’s regular-season sport attendance averaged greater than 17,000 followers, the primary time a WNBA group has drawn greater than 300,000 followers in a season. Clark’s regular-season video games have been watched by 1.2 million viewers on common, which was 199% greater than non-Clark WNBA video games.
However, maybe, probably the most astonishing variety of all is Clark’s financial influence on the town of Indianapolis, which Brewer says is upwards of $36 million.
“Now, let’s take a breath for a minute and take into consideration this,” Brewer informed IndyStar in December. “That is for one yr. We’re speaking about one participant.”
What all these numbers imply, he mentioned, is that your complete league is benefitting from the arrival of Clark.
“Caitlin Clark’s presence, whereas polarizing for some folks, can be a watershed second for the league, and I simply hope that every one these wonderful Black gamers are taking full benefit of the truth that the highlight is on what they’re doing now,” Scurry says within the e book. “I perceive there’s lots of frustration and there is some anger as a result of the league has been round for 27 years earlier than she got here.
“However my goodness, it is having this second proper now. And please, please, please as gamers within the league, don’t let this chance move you by to get yours.”
‘By no means thought I might see this in my lifetime’
Sadly, the disconnect between Clark and different gamers within the league was highlighted this week when Clark was voted as the ninth-best guard in the WNBA by fellow gamers, mentioned Brennan.
“Right here we’re once more. As a result of Caitlin was ranked first in fan voting general,” Brennan mentioned. “That is a disconnect that’s going to be problematic for the WNBA and its economics and its monetary future shifting ahead. That is only a truth. It is such a disconnect between what the followers assume and what the gamers assume, that may be a downside for the WNBA that must be addressed.”
With the league’s collective bargaining settlement open, “Clark is an important particular person to them. That is the conundrum, proper?” Brennan says. “As a result of they want her desperately so as to get more cash as a result of she is the financial rocket ship that is going to get them more cash. I’ve by no means seen something fairly like this, and it is simply completely fascinating.”
Brennan, who coated Title IX, has had a entrance row seat to the controversy, the fights for equality and the upward rise of girls sports activities, together with the explosion of the WNBA with Clark on the middle.
“And I by no means thought I might see this in my lifetime,” Brennan says. “So to have the ability to chronicle it (on this e book) I hope folks benefit from the magic of Caitlin Clark and in addition benefit from the reporting on so many points which might be so essential surrounding Caitlin Clark.
“I hope as a journalist, I’ve captured this second, this time, this athlete. This can be a exceptional second in girls’s sports activities, in sports activities general, and in our tradition. Caitlin Clark is not simply one of many nation’s hottest athletes, she’s one of many nation’s hottest folks. She is that huge. And it is an honor to write down this.”
Observe IndyStar sports activities reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Attain her by way of e mail: dbenbow@indystar.com.
