The Greatest WNBA Season Of All Time Is Upon Us ... Unless The WNBA Screws It Up

Caitlin Clark alone is already the new face of the WNBA. And she hasn't even played a real game yet, but the 2024 Women's National Basketball Association season is her baby.

A lot of people don't want to admit that, but it's true.

There are many great players in the WNBA and a handful of new great rookies entering the league this week - Stanford's Cameron Brink and Tennessee's Rickea Jackson with the Los Angeles Sparks, South Carolina's Kamilla Cardoso and LSU's Angel Reese with the Chicago Sky, Ohio State's Jacy Sheldon with the Dallas Wings, and Connecticut's Aaliyah Edwards with the Washington Mystics, to name a few.

But Clark IS the WNBA now. 

Clark, a combination point-and-shooting guard like no other woman, drew a record 13,028 fans for a WNBA preseason game last week in Indianapolis. Cardoso and Reese drew 3,132 for their preseason game in Chicago.

Caitlin Clark plays her first professional regular season game Tuesday night for the Indiana Fever at the Connecticut Sun on ESPN2 at 7:30 p.m. (Getty Images)

Clark's first WNBA game for the Indiana Fever, which took her with the first pick of the WNBA Draft from Iowa on April 15, is tonight in Uncasville, Connecticut, of all places - a town of 12,000 that's 130 miles northeast of New York City. Clark, who grew up dreaming of playing for Geno Auriemma at UConn but was passed over, and the Fever will open the season against the Connecticut Sun at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN 2, Disney+ and Sling.

Two-time defending WNBA champion Las Vegas will play Phoenix on ESPN2, Disney+ and Sling after Clark's game with a 10 p.m. tip.

Tickets were going for as high as $707 on Monday morning for Clark's game at the 8,910-seat Mohegan Sun Arena. By Monday afternoon, the game was a sell-out - the first for the Sun since its season opener 21 years ago. Yes, Clark is trending at the ticket booth as she did at Iowa in rock star fashion. The Fever played at the Dallas Wings on May 3 in a preseason game and sold out the 6,251-seat College Park Center in Arlington.

Caitlin Clark Home Opener Tickets Going for $2,933

Floor seats for Indiana's home opener against the New York Liberty on Thursday (7 p.m., Amazon Prime) are going for as high as $2,933. 

"At the end of the day, it's the same game," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last month at the NBA's Board of Governors meetings in New York. The NBA has basically run the WNBA since its first season in 1997. The birth of the WNBA was announced on April 24, 1996, in New York at an NBA Board of Governors meeting.

"To the extent that we come up with ways to better present the game in a way that makes it even that much more enticing to fans," Silver said.

How about logo 3s by Caitlin Clark, Adam?

Former Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark tries to spot up for a patented 3-pointer against South Carolina in the national championship game on April 7 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland. (Getty Images)

That - the long ball - as much as anything, is what enticed new world TV ratings for NCAA women's basketball over the last year, ever since Clark scored 41 with five 3-pointers for Iowa in a monumental upset of 36-0 and No. 1 South Carolina in a 2023 Final Four semifinal in Dallas. 

OPINION: Caitlin Clark's Skin Color Has Little To Do With Her Stardom

The exploding ratings didn't happen because she's white. There is some novelty there as there was when Tiger Woods took over a white man's sport in 1997. But the main thing about Clark and Woods is that they're just much better than anyone else. And Angel Reese is to Clark what Phil Mickelson was to Woods. They were the hot thing, and then Woods and Clark lapped them.

The thing about Clark is how she scores and creates points for teammates like a quarterback with Peyton Manning-like vision, anticipation and precision. That's what has set her apart from every other great women's player in the history of that game. Most of the great women's players have been forwards or centers like Brittney Griner, Maya Moore, Cheryl Miller, Chamique Holdsclaw and Rebecca Lebo.

Six of the top eight picks in the first round of the WNBA draft were forwards or centers - Brink, Cardoso, Jackson, Edwards, Reese and Alissa Pili. Big players usually need someone else to get them the ball. Not Clark. She is the playmaker.

"If you can shoot, you can shoot," Silver said to end his address, quoting what WNBA New York Liberty point guard Sabrina Ionescu said during February's NBA All-Star Weekend when she went against Steph Curry in a 3-point shooting contest. "It doesn't matter if you're a girl or a boy."

Largely due to uncanny long range shooting, that girl Clark beat the boy wonder Pistol Pete Maravich's NCAA all-time scoring record of 3,667 points set from 1967-70 at LSU with 3,951 this season to wrap her four-year career. She also finished with 1,144 career assists and - the most in nearly 30 years - and 990 rebounds. She is the only player in NCAA history - man or woman, boy or girl - with 3,000 or more points, 1,000 or more assists and 900 or more rebounds.  

Caitlin Clark Or Knicks-Pacers? What To Watch?

And at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, America will have a decision to make. The women or the men? For at 8 p.m. on TNT, the Indiana Pacers will play at the New York Knicks in Madison Square Garden in an NBA Playoffs Eastern Conference semifinal series that is tied, 2-2. The Knicks are two wins away from reaching the third round of the playoffs for the first time since 2000. 

But Clark has already beaten the men when it comes to television decisions. When Iowa lost to South Carolina in the NCAA women's Final Four national championship game last month in Cleveland, the women drew 18.9 million viewers on average to a Sunday afternoon game on ABC and ESPN. Viewership peaked at 24.1 million. The men's national title won by Connecticut over Purdue the next night in prime time on TBS and TNT drew just a 14.82-million average. No women's national championship game had ever outdrawn the men's counterpart.

MUST-SEE TV: Caitlin Has Outdrawn Men Before

The TV audience for that game was 289% larger than the total that watched South Carolina beat UConn for the 2022 title on ESPN. Clark and Iowa finished the 2023-24 season with the three largest average viewing audiences in NCAA women's basketball history - the 18.9 million for the national title loss to South Carolina, 14.2 million for Iowa's win over UConn in the national semifinal on April 5, and 12.3 million for Iowa's Elite Eight win over LSU on April 1 to reach the Final Four. 

A WNBA opener is not likely to outdraw an NBA Eastern Conference semifinal, but do not be surprised if Clark and her new company put up some impressive numbers until maybe the second half of the Pacers-Knicks game.

"This year, it was appointment television," former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson told the Associated Press after the women's national title game.

Will America keep its appointment with Caitlin tonight and stay through until the end, or opt for the new Knicks and the NBA?

Caitlin Clark shows off her new Indiana Fever jersey with WNBA commissioner Catherine Engelbert at the WNBA Draft on April 15 in Brooklyn, New York, when Clark was the first player selected. (Getty Images)

Sure, it's a playoff game, but there are dozens of those left in the NBA Playoffs after dozens that have already been played. And it's not like the Knicks and Pacers are playing a seventh game Tuesday. They could play twice more after Tuesday. There will be only one first game for Caitlin.

"We have never seen anything like the phenomenon that is Iowa's Caitlin Clark," ESPN's Jay Bilas said recently. "She is not the Pete Maravich or Steph Curry of women's basketball. She is a singular star in American culture, having cut her own trailblazing path."

The only question is, can the WNBA handle the Caitlin Effect and the bevy of other star rookies entering the league? The new WNBA may be too big for the old one that so far is struggling to keep up in transition.

The WNBA already messed up Kamilla Cardoso's and Angel Reese's preseason debut on May 3. The league announced going into that weekend that the Chicago Sky-Minnesota Lynx game and all other preseason games could be viewed via streaming on WNBA League Pass that night. But only the Indiana-Dallas game was available.

Meanwhile, some fan at the game streamed it, and gathered 173,381 viewers during the action and a total of more than 400,000 through replay later on. 

"Are you kidding me?," Michael Wilbon said on Pardon The Interruption.

No. A fan who happened to be at the game beat the WNBA and NBA executives at their own game. How embarrassing on the verge of a new frontier for the WNBA! The league apologized, but the damage was done.

And on Monday, there were some WNBA listings that had Clark's debut tonight at 7 p.m. eastern. Others at 7:30 p.m. eastern. As of Tuesday morning, ESPN2 has the game listed as tipping off at 7:30 p.m. eastern. Let's get it right.

WNBA Better Not Try ‘Business As Usual’ This Season

"The growth is happening so fast, it's so accelerated, that business as usual (by the WNBA) isn't going to work anymore," Lynx president and head coach Cheryl Reeve so correctly said about her own league after the streaming mistake fiasco. "You're going to get left behind, and this is an example."

The WNBA has pretty much been irrelevant for more than a quarter of a century. Now it has an unprecedented opportunity – thanks to Clark – to greatly expand its audience. It’s not going to attract new fans by limiting access to the press, like it did when OutKick.com asked for credentials to cover tonight’s game in Connecticut.

"Thank you for your interest in covering the Connecticut Sun. Unfortunately, your request for a media credential for the Connecticut Sun vs. Indiana Fever on May 14 is denied," the team said in response to our request. "Due to very limited space, priority is given to those that have covered the Sun on a regular basis in the past."

Few have covered the Sun or the WNBA overall "on a regular basis in the past." That includes OutKick and countless other national and regional media outlets who have been credentialed tonight.

It's more likely the team and league are worried what OutKick.com might ask if we attended. Recall, we got grief when our Dan Zaksheske asked South Carolina coach Dawn Staley the trans question at the Women's Final Four.

THE TRANSGENDER QUESTION: OutKick Does Its Job Among Those Who Didn't

If a fledgling league wants the big time, it has to escape its small time past, which is what Reeve was saying.

"There's general excitement about the WNBA in ways that we haven't seen before, and so we have to capitalize," she said. And answer basic, newsworthy questions - you know, like the men do.

Caitlin Clark is leading the new WNBA fast break right now. Can the WNBA handle the transition?

It's going to need a bigger boat.