The WNBA is wildly unpopular, this much is known. I have never seen a complete game other than the one time that a relative of mine forced me to watch it with the objective being to get me involved because she knew that I really enjoy NBA games as well as college hoops. This person herself was not even a fan of the WNBA and this was evident when during the game I would ask very basic questions about either team that was on and she had no idea. I don't know what she was trying to accomplish. Needless to say, I was not entertained and I have never even so much as looked at the score recaps of WNBA games. I only know that Kansas City won a championship at some point in the past because of the mockery that was made of the extremely lackluster attendance for the championship parade.
Now let's fast-forward to this year's "March Madness" tournament. The women's side of things was really exciting and for many people, including almost me, the women's tournament was just as exciting as the men's. This was largely because of a person that I think most people have never heard of before now, Caitlin Clark.
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I tuned in to watch her games in the tournament and wow, is she a phenom. It's too early to say whether or not this will be the case in the pros but at a college level, she is truly in a league of her own. She shattered records in her time at Iowa and in the games I watched anyway, she seemed to be a person that if you just give her the rock, she is going to make her shot. She was raining down threes from well beyond the arc with a level of accuracy that I've never seen from anyone in basketball ever, men or women.
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While this is not from the tournament, she was hitting 3s from positions like this all game, every game. In the above picture she is nearly in the half-court logo and drains it. Normally defenders don't bother to put pressure on a player until they are about a meter from the 3 point line, especially if they are as fast as Clark is. How do you defend against someone that apparently can make a shot from almost anywhere in an entire half of a court?
Her abilities are not just in her range but also in her amazing court awareness, she is an assist machine. She has head and body movements that are very slight to us watching on TV but these are done specifically to force a particular type of movement on whoever is guarding her and therefore opening up a lane to the basket which will draw another defender on to her and then Caitlin makes an easy pass to a wide open teammate for an easy 2. She is not a greedy player either, she has the vision to know which move is going to be the easiest method of scoring and she takes it.
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She has tremendous ball control and uses behind the back and between the legs dribbling to force defenders to shift their weight and she blazes past them. Seriously, this woman is something else.
The hype surrounding this potential GOAT was what got me to watch the games at all. For women's basketball the NCAA tournament is really the only games I will watch in that sport but because of Clark, there were millions more people tuning in than normally would be, the ratings were immense and it was primarily because of her.
With all the talk about "equal pay" and what not one would think that everyone who is an activist of sorts would be seriously cheering her on but I found it quite disturbing that many people in the media tried to make it a racial thing stating stupid platitudes such as "if she was black, people wouldn't be watching." There were other people who were doing their best to try to push her down stating that she cannot be taken seriously until she wins a championship, and when Iowa lost the final game, these same people seemed to be almost celebrating that this happened.
There was no denying that the only reason why millions of sports fans were watching was because they wanted to see Clark play. That's the only reason why I was watching. So when it came time for the WNBA draft it should be zero surprise that we all just wanted to know who was going to get Clark and then we tuned out.
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She got drafted by Indiana and her new jersey immediately became the number 1 selling WNBA kit that has ever been sold. She also was being courted by every sports-merchandise manufacturer you can imagine and since these are exclusive signings (you can't be with both Adidas and Nike) she ended up with an amazing deal that is worth more than $20 million. Obviously, this made a lot of the other WNBA players who have been doing it a while upset because they don't have anything like that.
They are being kind of nice, but mostly the jealousy in the WNBA is showing its head already. Caitlin Clark has the novel opportunity to actually get people to watch women's basketball in the WNBA so they really should be embracing her. Since more viewers means good things for the entire WNBA, people should be hoping that she can actually make a mark but instead, the other players for the most part have this arrogant attitude of her not deserving all of this and that it should be them instead. The entitlement of these brats is part of the reason why almost none of them make good money.
Hell, even Kaitlin's contract is not lucrative. She is only going to be making around $75,000 a year so if you have a mid-level office job congratulations! There is a very good chance that your salary is higher than the most well-known women's basketball player in the world. The bad news is that Nike, Under Armor, Puma etc. probably don't give a damn what kind of shoes you wear and certainly aren't going to pay you millions of dollars to wear theirs.
There is already bizarre speculation that Caitlin could completely revolutionize the WNBA and finally turn the league profitable and perhaps even famous. I wouldn't hold your breath on that notion though. Clark is one player on one team so the games that feature her and Indiana are very likely to get a lot of viewers, this isn't going to boost the ratings of the other teams that are not Indiana unless they happen to be playing Indiana. Most of the games are not even nationally televised because nobody gives a shit.
Indiana's attendance will certainly go up, but other teams will likely remain like they always are. Hell, Brittney Griner became a national headline for being in prison in Russia and when she came back the networks banked on it being a huge homecoming with tons of viewers. They couldn't even sell out the first game she was back for.
Can Caitlin Clark "save" the WNBA? I'll give you a resounding "no" on that. In order to get people the watch the WNBA there will have to be several dozen players as skilled or as fun to watch as she is and there just isn't ever going to be that. She will turn Indiana profitable but the rest of the teams will continue to hemorrhage money just like they always have.
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I look forward to her starting next season and honestly hope she can make a difference. But this speculation that everyone is going to start watching rather boring WNBA games is a pipe dream. I live in a city that has a WNBA team and if someone were to offer me tickets to a game for free, I probably would still say no. Clark might be able to change that for a bit, but she has a lot on her shoulders right now because if she fails to do anything other than absolute excellence every game, her own industry is going to turn on her. That's a lot of pressure but at least she will have 20 million in the bank and this is before we even start talking about the myriad of other sponsors that will likely be vying for her as well.