If I could go back in time a few years and say to myself that I would soon become a fan of the WNBA I would slap future me for suggesting such an absurd statement. However, that is exactly what has ended up happening and now I look forward to WNBA season much more than I do NBA season.
There are a wide variety of reasons why this is the case but mostly it boils down to the existence of the most electrifying woman basketball player in history, Caitlin Clark.
Even if you don't watch the sport you likely know her name and how in her first season of WNBA play, she alone completely changed the landscape as far as viewers of that league is concerned.
Here we are a year later, and we have a new "phenom" that is entering the WNBA and her name is Paige Bueckers, and she comes from UConn.
I haven't watched much of her highlights but I know that she is a similar style player to Caitlin in that she can nail shots from everywhere and is not a greedy player.
Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way. Part of the reason that she is so looked at is because of her skin color. That is just part of it even though people will claim otherwise. She has that tiny white girl appeal and is also very mild mannered just like Caitlin Clark was / is.
She also did very well in her college years, even though she was plagued with a bunch of injuries that hopefully wont come back to haunt her.
These two have only ever met once in their college careers and it was pretty level. The comparison kind of stopped there though because Paige was sidelined with an ACL injury. But now Paige is about to start playing for Dallas in the WNBA, and it is expected that the two of them, who were both rather dominant players in college, are going to have a rivalry of sorts. This bodes well for the Dallas club owners but it also puts a TON of pressure on Bueckers herself.
you see, it is very rare that a rookie in any sport, even the WNBA, to come out and do as well as Caitlin Clark did. In fact, across all sports it has only happened a handful of times. There was some talk about CC getting MVP as well as rookie of the year, but that was never going to be allowed to happen because there are a ton of politics in these awards. Did she deserve it? Well she certainly deserves the MVP as far as getting anyone to actually watch the WNBA, that's for sure.
For Paige though, a lot is expected of her the moment that she hits the floor in Dallas. People already have rather unrealistic expectations that she is going to be able to bring her team to the forefront the same way that Caitlin did. They are going to expect her to draw huge crowds and to be able to adapt to professional basketball the same way that Caitlin did. They are going to expect her to rain down 3's on a regular basis and create scoring opportunities down low the way that Caitlin did. They are going to expect her to bring her team up to the forefront even though Dallas was not a good team prior to drafting her the way that Caitlin did.
The problem is, there has only ever been ONE Caitlin Clark in the history of women's professional basketball so what are the chances of another such phenom coming into the sport The very next year.
She's the number 1 draft pick in 2025 and while her salary is a joke compared to the man version of the sport, she is actually being paid MORE than Caitlin is getting from Indiana Fever.
I hope she can handle the pressure because it would be really awesome to have some other fresh blood in the league to focus on as well and it would be even better if we could start to see all of Dallas' games selling out at home as well as on the road. This would be especially fantastic if both her and Caitlin do well right from the start and a new rivalry can begin because the rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese is boring since Angle isn't really on the same level as Caitlin and their "beef" is already stale.
We don't have long to go before the season starts and a lot of new fans like myself are really looking forward to what could happen!