Best rivalry meets web's worst

WNBA commissioner fails by ignoring racism around Clark-Reese debate

- BRUCE ARTHUR

The WNBA will always look back on this as the year of Caitlin Clark, when everything changed. Ratings on ESPN have soared to an average of 1.2 million per game, tripling last season’s then-record number. Regular-season NBA games on ESPN, by comparison, drew an average of 1.7 million in 2024. The WNBA finally entered the mainstream sports talk bloodstream, for good and for bad. Twenty-eight years after it was founded, the WNBA truly arrived in America.

And it’s due to Clark, above all. Yes, Angel Reese also soared in her rookie season in Chicago before a wrist fracture last week, and she will be linked to Clark for the entirety of their careers. Yes, A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces is an all-timer: The gap between her 27.3 points per game and second place is bigger than the gap between 10th in scoring and 29th, and Wilson broke the league's single-season record for points Wednesday night.

But Clark’s Indiana Fever lead the league in home attendance and road attendance by huge margins. Clark was involved in the 14 highest-rated games this season, and of the 21 WNBA broadcasts that went over a million average viewers, Indiana has played in 18 of them. (Reese and Chicago were involved in five, including the top two, and one without Clark and Indiana). Before this year, no WNBA broadcast had hit a million since 2008.