Credit where credit is due: USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan has tried very hard to establish herself as the nation's foremost Caitlin Clark alarmist. Whenever something routine for a pro athlete happens to the Indiana Fever's star, Brennan's job is to turn it into a matter of existential concern for the WNBA, a league that has 12 other teams. This week's news provided another opportunity. Crisis alert: Caitlin Clark has strained her quad. Can women's basketball as a whole possibly soldier on?
The tone of Brennan's latest column might mislead the reader into thinking that Caitlin Clark has died. In reality, the Fever guard is only sidelined for at least a couple of weeks; after Tuesday's practice she was casually putting up three-pointers. In Brennan's reality, this is a recession-level event for the WNBA:
Ticket prices for the next four Fever games on the secondary market are plummeting as fans as well as the WNBA itself begin to grapple with the reality that the biggest draw in the history of women’s basketball, and one of the greatest attractions in all of sports, men’s and women’s, will not be around for awhile. It’s happening most dramatically with tickets for the June 7 Fever-Sky game at the 23,500-seat United Center in Chicago, where Clark is such an overwhelming draw that ticket prices have fallen more than 300 percent in less than two days.
More than 300 percent! The league is so dismayed by Clark's unexpected absence that the Chicago Sky will now be paying fans to attend, perhaps as some sort of mass apology for not providing another culture-war opportunity involving her and Angel Reese. And if those mathematically unbelievable numbers don't convince you, how about this anecdotal evidence?
I can personally confirm the pronounced change in interest in Fever games without Clark. A week ago, I bought four tickets on StubHub to take my sports-playing nieces to the Fever-Washington Mystics game Wednesday night in Baltimore. Tickets in the same row are now going for less than half of what I paid. I can only imagine what they will cost by game time. Perhaps they’ll be giving them away. And yes, we are still going to the game.
If you tune in to Fever-Mystics tonight—you won't, now—keep an ear out for the wailing of Brennan and her various sports-playing nieces. They are a Greek chorus signaling the tragic reckoning that will befall a league still in the first month of its season.
It's not hard to accept that the Fever are less of a draw when Caitlin Clark isn't playing—as would be the case for any pro sports team and its respective star—but it's unclear what Brennan thinks should be done about it. Can modern medicine undo a quad injury in one day? Will the Fever be mandated to wear a memorial jersey patch in honor of her strained muscle? Should the WNBA hand out "Caitlin Strong" silicone bracelets and build statues in her likeness for all 13 cities? The league must take some sort of action so that the basketball product, as well as the preorder sales for Brennan's upcoming book, don't suffer as a result.
"All of this illustrates the significance of Monday’s news about Clark," Brennan writes. "This is not just another player getting injured; this is the WNBA’s top financial driver who is now unavailable to play, promote and sell the league for a couple of weeks, at least." She's right: The season should be suspended until the WNBA's only player is healthy. What would even be the point of going to a game like Valkyries-Liberty if Caitlin Clark isn't on the court, hundreds of miles away?
With nowhere else to turn to and no one else to blame, Brennan concludes her all-timer of a column by asking the league for comment—not once, not twice, but thrice:
That is just how crucial Caitlin Clark is to the WNBA. One would think that the league might acknowledge the moment. But so far, no. Asked three times for a comment on Clark’s injury and what it meant to the league, a WNBA spokesman never replied.
Concerning. Perhaps the league offices have closed this week to mourn the lost TV ratings. We as a country will have to look out for each other as we are subjected to the devastating sight of Caitlin Clark in street clothes for the Fever's next few games. Let's hope that everyone—you, me, Christine Brennan and her sports-playing nieces—can band together and survive this dark chapter in history.
