The Indiana Fever and the WNBA at large got some pretty terrible news yesterday as far as their industry is concerned: Caitlin Clark is out of action for at least 2 weeks due to a left quadriceps strain.
While this is really terrible for Indiana's offense since even when she isn't doing double or triple doubles, she is a playmaker and is the biggest part behind why the Fever put up points. Even when she doesn't score the basket herself and is cold on 3's, she is normally involved in most of any set piece plays that Indiana turns into points.
Not having her on the hardwood is definitely a very big deal and I don't know who they will sub in for her but I do know one thing, I am not going to be watching the games that she is injured for and I believe that millions of other people, quite possibly most of the new fanbase, is going to tune out as well.
The WNBA and a lot of the pundits and other players, have been extremely bitter towards Clark when the ratings started going up specifically because of her involvement. The jealousy was on full display as person after person in the association attempted to downplay her impact on the game and the league and it went so far as to have some ghetto tactics of being physical with Caitlin on the court with eye-gouges and outright flagrant fouls.
There was race-bating comments by some has-been named Cheryl Swoopes and Swoopes made untrue statements about Caitlin's performance in college and continually downplayed all of her achievements. When Caitlin was breaking records in college, Swoopes made the untrue claim that it was "only because she got to play an extra year because of Covid" but when faced with the fact that this is not true and Caitlin actually played several FEWER games because of Covid, Swoopes didn't apologize but doubled-down.
Other names in the WNBA did everything they could to deflect from the fact that the only reason anyone was watching WNBA was because of Caitlin Clark. Some of the people that had been there for a long time but we had never heard of them, all of a sudden pushed themselves into the limelight by trying to suggest that Caitlin isn't very good and that she wasn't the reason why people are watching. Their arrogant statements that show how delusional these women are truly shined at that time. They were trying to say that the population just coincidentally started to watch WNBA when Caitlin got involved. Are you stupid?
Let's look at some statistics for fun, shall we? These are the amount of people that have watched the WNBA draft over the past 16 years. Notice that one that is just a teensy bit taller than the others? That was the year Caitlin Clark was drafted. There was a bit more interest this year but that is exclusively because of Caitlin as well. Nobody would have cared about the draft or probably even known it was happening if Caitlin hadn't gotten people interested.
The jerks in the industry to this day try to avoid talking directly about CC's impact on ratings when they disingenuously try to present the massive uptick in viewership to all around changes to the sport, when we all know the reason why 2024's TV viewership was up nearly 800% from a decade ago and 200% from the prior year, was because of Caitlin Clark- not anyone else, not because the sport got better, not because of some sort of bullshit promotional drive, it was because of Clark and no other reason.
Well in the next few weeks get ready for a media blackout once again. We are going to get a taste of what a Clark-less WNBA looks like.
I expect that there are going to be a lot of very disappointed fans at the next two weeks' games because these two games are largely already sold out when the go to Washington DC, where the game has been moved to a larger arena than they normally play in and when they play Connecticut at home as well. The following week will likely be the same although when Caitlin comes back to play (hopefully) on in Chicago towards the end of next week, we are going to see the viewership absolutely skyrocket.
Without Caitlin Clark, there isn't much mass appeal as far as the WNBA is concerned and we are going to see exactly that happen in her absence.
Last season the industry was attempting to state that the "real reason" people were watching was because of Angel Reese but they have abandoned this line of speaking because it has come to our attention that Reese sucks, so bad in fact that they made a new term for the sport called "mebounds" where a player rebounds their own missed shots - something Angel does nearly 10 times a game and this is only because she is big and tall. The girl can't shoot. This year the media is attempting to point the spotlight at newcomer Paige Bueckers, who I have nothing against but she is not the pull of the WNBA and likely can't be.
I just don't understand why the league and the players don't embrace this attention that Caitlin Clark has brought upon them. They seem to be actively fighting against it when it is the only reason why anyone is even paying attention to the league at all. The WNBA used to be an annoying tab on my sport page that just got in the way of me looking at sports I actually care about and I would shout out "urgh!" if I accidentally clicked on it. These days, it is one of the first tabs I click on and it is primarily because of one person.
In the next few weeks I am going to be closely watching the level of enthusiasm that Fever games get without Caitlin playing. Mark my words: There will be at least a 50% drop in TV viewership and the highlights of the games will likely be Caitlin Clark signing autographs in the crowd even though she is not playing.