Inside Caitlin Clark’s coronation: WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick has Indiana basketball fans in fever as the league looks to capitalize on its storied NCAA run… and shed its ‘little sister’ tag

Maybe it was her white Prada jacket, her matching miniskirt or her diamond cufflinks, but Caitlin Clark was almost unrecognizable at Monday’s WNBA Draft in Brooklyn, a considerable accomplishment for one of America’s most famous athletes.

Before becoming the Indiana Fever’s obvious first choice, Clark spent the last month leading Iowa to its second straight NCAA championship while garnering the largest television ratings in tournament history. In recent days she’s been on Saturday Night Live and NBC’s Today Show, not to mention countless publications, websites, as well as the lips and ears of sports fans across the country.

Interest in this year’s WNBA Draft was so high that the league opened it to fans for the first time since 2016 thanks to Clark, the NCAA’s all-time scoring leader. And back in Indianapolis, the Fever reported more than 17,000 attendees at their WNBA Draft viewing party. Clark won’t make her WNBA regular-season debut until May 14, but ticket prices on the secondary market have already skyrocketed to more than $500. Meanwhile, the defending champion Las Vegas Aces have made plans to open 7,000 more seats when the Fever come to town on May 25.

Clark is used to turning heads on the basketball court, where her confidence is on par with that of Michael Jordan or LeBron James. But it’s the other side of the business that she’s still learning to tolerate. When she finished her post-draft press conference, after weeks of grueling interviews, Clark quietly turned to a publicist and asked, “How many things do I have to do?”

Just weeks away from graduating from Iowa, the clearly fatigued 22-year-old was only talking about potential media obligations for the rest of the night. But thanks to his extraordinary shooting ability and his deft passing touch that she considers “overlooked,” Clark is now a must-see TV figure. Simply put, the media’s demands on Caitlin Clark are just beginning.

“I think obviously the course of the last few weeks has been pretty crazy in my life,” he said Monday, trying to remember all the cities and places he passed through on his way to a second NCAA championship appearance.

“The last two months I played basketball as much as I could in my college career, and then I went home for a couple of days,” he continued. ‘I got off the plane when we landed in Iowa City, drove straight home, asked my mom to make me a meal, and then drove back to Iowa City the next day.

“Then I flew to Los Angeles, I flew to New York and now I’m sitting here at this stage.”

Clark was likely talking about the literal scenario she was sitting in the draft press room or offering a figurative reference to the professional ranks she is now joining.

But in a broader sense, “this stage” is quickly becoming something Clark must define at a very opportune time.

The WNBA has enjoyed a surge in attendance and television ratings for several years, but the league has never rivaled its big sister, the NBA.

Women’s college basketball is a different story.

Iowa’s loss in the title game to second overall pick Kamilla Cardoso and the South Carolina Gamecocks drew an average of 18.7 million viewers, about four million more than the men’s championship. It is true that the men’s game was broadcast on cable and not on national television, like the women’s game. But Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese and a growing number of female players actually became more recognizable than NCAA men’s players in 2023-24.

And if there was any doubt about his popularity, Monday night in Brooklyn put an end to it.

The scene was reminiscent of the 2023 NBA Draft 10 months earlier, when the San Antonio Spurs selected 7-foot-4 super prospect Victor Wembanyama amid a sea of ​​wild fanfare.

Like Clark, Wembanyama was an obvious choice to make first, giving the draft the feel of a written coronation. And what’s more, there were countless young fans looking to get the autograph of the presumed first pick, as had happened in June 2023, when the young Frenchman was welcomed into the league.

“Everyone was pushing and shoving, and she just handled it like a champ and made sure everyone had their moment with her,” Reese Gittleman, a 17-year-old from Philadelphia, told DailyMail.com after getting the signature Clark.

“She was very, very sweet,” added Gittleman’s friend, 16-year-old Melina Day.

The difference between Clark and Wembanyama’s respective draft nights was the setting.

Both were drafted in Brooklyn, a basketball-savvy borough filled with enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans. But while the NBA Draft took place at Barclays Center, a full-size NBA arena, Monday’s WNBA Draft took place around the corner at the cramped Brooklyn Academy of Music, with capacity for 3,000 people.

This venue, a large music hall that first opened its doors in 1861, was packed on Monday.

Fans scrambled to see Clark and the rest of their favorite players. Old elevators took reporters to a packed press room in the building’s attic, where players held their first news conferences as professionals beneath a movie poster from a recent Robert Redford film festival.

There was a similar vibe at the Elite 8 in Albany weeks earlier, when Clark and Iowa beat Reese’s LSU in a rematch of the 2023 NCAA Final. The game drew a whopping 12.3 million viewers and sold out easily get tickets to the MVP Arena in Albany.

Both that event and Monday’s draft seemed bigger than their respective venues, and that’s what makes Clark a game-changer. He’s not just bringing fans to women’s basketball: he’s changing the math of women’s basketball, and the WNBA is well aware of the opportunity at its doorstep.

The league already plans to add a new team in 2025, but with Clark’s arrival, there are more expansion talks in the works, not to mention a new media deal that could overshadow the current contract.

“This is an important year for us in terms of viewership, attendance and all the qualitative and quantitative factors that go into valuing media rights,” Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said Monday.

“The one thing I know about sports is that you need big names, rivalries and big games,” she continued, referring to the NCAA women’s tournament. “Those are the three things we’ve had in the last two weeks.”

And with Clark on board, those are the kind of possibilities for the WNBA’s future.

“This is not something that everyone can do,” Clark said Monday. “It’s once in a lifetime.”