Caitlin Clark’s professional basketball career took off Monday night when the University of Iowa star was selected by the Indiana Fever with the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft.
The all-time leader in major college basketball history, whose fast-paced, crowd-pleasing style has drawn millions of new fans to the sport in recent months, formally joined the paying ranks when her name was first called by WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert before a sold-out audience of approximately 1,000 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The selection itself was a formality. The 22-year-old Iowa sensation was hotly tipped for Indiana, which had secured the rights to the top pick by winning the WNBA draft lottery in December, ever since Clark announced plans to forgo her final season as a college student in February.
Her impending arrival with the Fever has boosted ticket sales across the circuit — two WNBA teams have already moved their games against Indiana to larger arenas to meet demand — and prompted the league to announce last week that on all but four of the Fever’s regular-season games will be nationally televised.
The draft continued Monday night, with Stanford’s Cameron Brink, Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson and South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso all set to go with the next few selections. The Los Angeles Sparks would come in second, followed by the Chicago Sky at No. 3 and the Sparks again at No. 4.
Dallas would pick fifth and Washington sixth, followed by Minnesota, Chicago, Dallas, Connecticut, New York and Atlanta to close out the first round.
It’s been a whirlwind week for Clark since her Hawkeyes fell short to South Carolina in an NCAA women’s basketball tournament final that drew more U.S. television viewers than the men’s final for the first time in history.
She flew to Los Angeles to receive the John R Wooden Award as the top national women’s basketball player for the second year in a row, then to Iowa City for a team celebration at the Hawkeyes’ home arena, then to New York, where she designed, has created unprecedented buzz in the run-up to the agreement.
Since her arrival, Clark has had a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live and headlined a group of WNBA draft prospects Monday morning to light up the Empire State Building.
The 6-foot-1 combo guard, who joins a promising young core in Indianapolis that includes Aliyah Boston (last year’s No. 1 overall pick), NaLyssa Smith and Kelsey Mitchell, will be a welcome addition to a Fever organization which last had the WNBA’s second-lowest attendance. year and who hasn’t reached the playoffs since Tamika Catchings’ last season in 2016.
The WNBA didn’t even wait for Monday’s draft to capitalize on Clark’s rising profile. The league announced last Wednesday that 36 of Indiana’s 40 games will be on national television through their broadcast or streaming partners, a dramatic jump for a team that had just one nationally televised game in 2023. Eight of those games will be broadcast on ABC, ESPN. , or ESPN2, while others can be seen on ION, NBA TV, Prime Video and the CBS Sports/Television Network.
Clark was one of 15 players to attend Monday’s draft, a group that included Brink (Stanford), Cardoso (South Carolina), Marquesha Davis (Mississippi), Aaliyah Edwards (Connecticut), Dyaisha Fair (Syracuse), Jackson ( Tennessee), Elizabeth Kitley (Virginia Tech), Nika Mühl (Connecticut), Charisma Osborne (UCLA), Alissa Pili (Utah), Nyadiew Puoch (Australia), Angel Reese (LSU), Jacy Sheldon (Ohio State) and Celeste Taylor ( state of Ohio).
More to follow.