Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark has inarguably been the biggest story in basketball in 2024. From her incredible run in the NCAA Tournament with the Iowa Hawkeyes to her sensational debut season in the WNBA, where she won the Rookie of the Year award, her meteoric rise has been unprecedented. There’s no debate that she’s the most popular women’s basketball player. However, Bill Simmons believes her popularity transcends gender.
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On his podcast, the analyst claimed Clark is more popular than any under-30 star in the NBA. He believes that established superstars like LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant are the only players more popular than the 22-year-old guard. He lauded her for putting women’s basketball on the map, saying,
“I literally did not care about women’s basketball ten years ago in any way shape or form. So I think some things have moved toward just the quality of play is more fun to watch but she seems to be some sort of catalyst that is just like before and after, and now we are in the after.”
Is Caitlin Clark a bigger under-30 star than any under-30 star currently in the NBA?@BillSimmons @CKlosterman pic.twitter.com/jBGuX4IHSH
— The Ringer (@ringer) November 27, 2024
The numbers back Simmons’ claim. Clark’s seismic impact was first felt at the 2024 WNBA draft, where she was picked first overall. Viewership peaked at 3.09 million, over five times the previous record of 601,000. In the regular season, 21 of the 24 games that had over 1 million views featured Clark and the Fever, including the top 16.
The rookie unsurprisingly had the best-selling jersey. But the scale even left Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin astonished. He revealed that her jersey broke the single-day record for most jersey sales in the company’s history.
Above all, Clark made analysts like Simmons, who rarely used their platform to talk about the WNBA, pay attention to the league and women’s basketball. And he’s not the only one who jumped on the bandwagon.
Stephen A. Smith labeled Clark box-office
Over the past 15 years, ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith has seemingly been on every show on the network to share his opinion in his patented flamboyant fashion about the biggest stories in every sport. And though he would rarely talk of the WNBA, this year was different and he admitted it’s due to Clark. On an episode of the Stephen A. Smith Show, he said,
“You got a girl here who’s box office in Caitlin Clark. She is box office. We can lament it all we want to but the fact of the matter is, Caitlin Clark is box office and we got to get that out the way.”
Clark’s impact on women’s basketball is well-documented. However, it may be time to recognize her not just as the most popular female basketball player on the planet but as a bonafide basketball superstar. Period.
