Derek Schultz: Clark’s absence couldn’t halt WNBA’s unstoppable momentum

With the eyes of the women’s basketball world on Indianapolis this weekend, the WNBA’s biggest star and face of the sport was unable to take center stage.

Caitlin Clark’s ill-timed groin injury last week didn’t allow the league to showcase its leading All-Star vote-getter on her homecourt, but her absence did not prevent the WNBA from showcasing how far it has come into the mainstream conversation.

While Clark is undoubtedly the main attraction of the W—heck, in all of American sports right now—her vacancy on the court couldn’t put a damper on All-Star Weekend, as the celebratory atmospheres of Friday and Saturday night’s exhibitions at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and the overall vibes of the basketball-centric weekend downtown would firmly attest.

Event organizers plastered Caitlin Clark on the face of the JW Marriott in the weeks leading up to the event, just like they had done a year and a half ago for Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton for the NBA’s version of All-Star Weekend, and rightfully so. Putting Clark’s face on every towering building in the entire Indianapolis skyline could not possibly do her growing impact on the WNBA justice. However, unlike Haliburton, who had not yet become a postseason Superman on the NBA’s biggest stages and still owned a lowkey profile in non-hoops circles, Clark, an already firmly established national entity, thankfully didn’t require the spotlight her male counterpart did at the All-Star event.

Clark has been omnipresent in sports discussions, a universal sports obsession we have not seen perhaps since Tiger Woods burst onto the scene nearly 30 years ago. The arrow for women’s college basketball had already begun to point skyward before she arrived at Iowa, but Clark kicked things into hyperdrive for the lightly watched professional product the second she stepped upon the draft stage. As much as we want to give a nod to the league’s longtime standouts or other young risers, the attendance and television ratings numbers show that she is most responsible for moving the WNBA needle. In fact, as ESPN personality and former All-Star Chiney Ogwumike once said, “Clark is the needle”.

That said, we can argue with each other on the internet over how much credit Clark deserves for the WNBA’s precipitous rise until our phones, laptops and faces melt. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. What can’t be argued is that now that she’s arrived, things are firmly in motion for the league and the sport. And as powerful as Caitlin Clark is, and for all that she can and has done for the league, she can’t undo this.

Nothing can.

“Obviously, it’s unfortunate we don’t have her [playing this weekend], but she means a lot more to the game than just showing up and playing,” said Sabrina Ionescu, New York Liberty guard and four-time WNBA All-Star. “I think you’re able to see that with the excitement in Indy right now regardless of she’s playing or not.”

On Friday night, Ionescu was proven right. When the Liberty sharpshooter, who memorably dueled Steph Curry at the NBA’s All-Star Weekend last winter, dazzled the crowd with 30 points in the final to win the Starry Three-Point Shootout, the reaction felt more like “Whoa!” than “Where’s Caitlin?” Fans also went wild for Lexie Hull, Clark’s Indiana teammate and replacement in the shootout to the point where you swore she was wearing a No. 22 jersey instead.

During Saturday night’s player introductions, the loudest cheers were still reserved for Clark as well as hometown favorites Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell, but the place also rocked for Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese. The two young stars each have built followings in the millions on Instagram and TikTok and have companies like Nike, Reebok, Gatorade and Hershey’s in their portfolios. Whether it makes the bad actors who want to dump on the WNBA mad or not, brands and fans are invested in more that the league has to offer than solely Clark. No one participating in these arguments is searching Reese’s or Bueckers’ basketball-reference or Wikipedia pages; they know exactly who those women are.

What we’ve all been missing in the heated discourse about Clark is the fact that there’s even a discourse about professional women’s basketball at all. People don’t waste their time arguing about things they don’t care about, and from personalities on television to callers on sports talk radio to sports fans on social media, everyone has shown that they care. She’s helped turn the WNBA into a talking point, and while the conversation has obviously centered around Clark, it’s also focused on the league’s officiating, physical play, salaries and the same conversations you’d see in NBA circles. Individually, Reese has been a topic by herself, as has Bueckers, just like it likely will be for USC superstar JuJu Watkins and so on.

And that’s exactly what the WNBA Players Association argued to their league during some contentious and fruitless labor talks over the last few days regarding a new collective bargaining agreement: The league is exploding, and we want a fair revenue-sharing deal that will keep up with the growing flames. The players took advantage of their All-Star stage to display that message in a less subtle way, wearing “pay us what you owe us” T-shirts during warmups.

Demands for better pay likely don’t exist without Clark’s immeasurable impact. Perhaps these other All-Stars don’t have the national profiles and platforms they do without her help, either. But regardless, in the wake of All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis, the fact is the WNBA is thriving and growing.

Any fan at Gainbridge Fieldhouse or watching at home would have told you they would rather have seen Clark participate this weekend than be relegated to the bench, but even without her tossing up a few dozen three-pointers on Friday or running around in a glorified exhibition game on Saturday, the W kept on burning hot.

The fans showed out for the 3-Point Contest and Kia Sklls Challenge on Friday, they screamed for Clark and their other favorites on Saturday and thousands more packed the Convention Center for the WNBA Live fan fest all weekend.

In the home city of the women’s basketball most transcendent player, this weekend showed that the momentum of the WNBA can’t be halted by anything.

Not even by Caitlin Clark’s absence.