The Caitlin Clark Effect
Why women's basketball is having a moment, and how it feels to watch
If you’re joining us for the first time, hello! We are the Sky Townies, three hoopers who love to analyze the Chicago Sky and therapize ourselves through the lens of basketball.
We mostly write about the Sky, but this year we will also write about broader women’s basketball topics, such as the historic college season we just witnessed.
If you want to get to know the Townies better, follow us on Instagram and Twitter (@sky_townies)!
The Caitlin Clark Effect
Sometimes the Townies like to go around in a circle and say what class we would teach if we were professors.
Lately, the Voice of Gen Z has been yearning to teach “The Caitlin Clark Effect,” a class that would study Caitlin Clark’s popularity and her impact on the game.
Like: why do games featuring Caitlin Clark sell out everywhere she plays?
Why did nearly 20 million people tune in to watch the women’s basketball NCAA championship game (more viewers than the men, for the first time ever)?
There have been other great players, coaches, and stories throughout the history of women’s basketball—why is Caitlin Clark different?
Here is our Lead Basketball Analyst’s first crack at a hypothesis:
Caitlin Clark attracts attention to herself by scoring in ways that other people have never done. Nobody consistently takes the logo threes and fade away threes that she takes and makes. **Indeed: for most men, women, and children, taking a contested step-back three is a very bad idea, like your ass will be on the bench by the next dead ball. So it’s really exciting and dramatic that this is CC’s signature shot.**
It’s a lovable story. “Superstar stays in home state with big dreams of getting to the Final Four.” People love when stars stay home or come home. I’m thinking of LeBron James and Candace Parker at the professional level.
Her stats. Her scoring and assist stats speak for themselves. People talk about stats. When they get high enough and posted about enough, people cannot ignore them. Caitlin Clark is the all-time scoring leader for women’s and men’s college basketball, she broke Steph Curry’s record for most three-pointers in a season, and she is sixth all-time in assists.
Caitlin Clark’s college career was so good that it raised the question that I think basketball fans are most eager to debate: who is the greatest player of all time?
GOAT debates are a chance to, if you’re a woman, express your unique perspective on the game, and if you’re a man, claim your unique perspective as the objective truth.
I’m totally kidding—both men and women do both of those things.
But in all seriousness: watching the rise of a young GOAT contender may be the peak experience of basketball fandom (which is why I am jealous of everyone who was an adult in the ‘90s to watch MJ.)
So is Caitlin Clark the GOAT or Nah?
Obviously we need to see how Clark does in the WNBA first, but regardless of whether she does end up becoming the GOAT, I think the amazing thing about CC is that she believes she can. It’s not every day you come across someone who truly thinks they can be the best ever at whatever they’re doing.
In the meantime, here is an analysis of how we think Clark would fare in a game of 1v1 against our favorite WNBA players.
1v1 vs Candace Parker
Lead Basketball Analyst Opinion: Tough one, but I think Caitlin would get the win. Candace could get some easy buckets in the post, but ultimately, I think Caitlin’s motor and ability to get threes off would inch her ahead.
1v1 vs. Diana Taurasi
Voice of Gen Z Opinion: I think lots of people could beat Diana to a game of 21, she doesn’t move too fast these days.
1v1 vs. Kahleah Copper
My Opinion: I strongly recommend against this game taking place. They’re both too competitive and someone would get hurt. But if they did play, Kahleah would obviously win.
Now the Voice of Gen Z will offer up some social factors that are probably boosting Clark’s stardom and the game of women’s basketball1:
Social media. If I could have followed Diana Taurasi on Instagram as a child.... game over. When Diana kissed Seimone Augustus MID GAME when I was in middle school I EMAILED a recording of the clip to ALL of my friends like "Wow guys look at this crazy thing that happened...like really crazy right??” Social media brings professional athletes to the fingertips of fans, even young fans. Everyone feels like they know the stars personally. They get inundated with a constant, bottomless pit of content and are then incapable of ever forgetting that women's basketball exists. It's always in the back of their subconscious just like Holly Rowe is always somewhere, deep in their Instagram feeds.
NIL (duh). Athletes have tons of followers so brands think they'll make more money if people see Paige Bueckers drinking their carbonated water replacement drinks on Instagram and then we all see their faces everywhere—a cyclical effect.
NCAA on TV. NCAA Tournament games are way easier to watch than WNBA games. The games were already on in bars I walked into and the men in the bar didn't collectively groan if I did have to ask to put a game on. Some men even walked up and hit me with a "how's she (Caitlin Clark, the now universal "she" of women’s basketball) doing today?"
Other players have done the leg work. Arike Ogunbowale’s buzzer-beaters in the tourney caught everyone's attention a few years ago (and in that moment Kobe was doing a lot to try and hype the game). Sue Bird’s retirement tour was unprecedented, and she's marrying one of the most public female athlete figures who stars in Netflix movies about fighting for women to get the same pay as men. (S/o Emma Stone for fighting for women's pay equality in tennis years ago to pave the way).
People think men's basketball is boring now (it's me I'm people) and people like the ~spice~ of the women's game and how close it feels like you can get to the world of women's sports.
So clearly, Caitlin Clark is not the whole story. She’s an important part of something bigger.
I’m tempted to say that women’s college basketball is reaching a new level of play. Sometimes I watch the games and say: yes, these teams are much better than they were even three years ago. But how am I measuring that?
Maybe the game is just being blessed by an incredible wave of star power.
From the players about to be drafted (Clark, Reese, Brink, Cardoso) to the fantastic freshmen (Watkins, Fulwiley, Hidalgo, Booker), this season felt more star-studded and more clip-able than usual.
It seemed like everyone saw clips of MiLaysia Fulwiley’s behind-the-back move at the beginning of the season, or of Juju Watkins or Paige Bueckers hitting from deep, or of Flau’Jae Johnson’s brother leaping out of the stands in the SEC championship game.
Maybe because it was more viral, or maybe because of the sense that history was being made, this season stirred up a lot of debate.
Is Caitlin Clark a specimen like women's sports has never seen before, or is she actually not even better than Paige Bueckers?
Did Aaliyah Edwards have her feet set on that screen?
Did Kim Mulkey really think that a short, sick person was going to able to guard the most prolific scorer in college basketball history?
This season also intensified existing debates about racism and sexism in sports/media. Why do the white superstars in women’s sports seem to attract the most marketing dollars? Why did it take so long for the NCAA to put the Women’s Championship game on broadcast TV?
With so many people tuned in this year, it felt like we weren’t just watching women’s basketball anymore: we were watching ourselves watch women’s basketball. All of us were writing our own hypotheses for the Caitlin Clark Effect.
How Does it Feel for Women’s Basketball to Be Having a Moment?
The Townies attended the Women’s Final Four in Cleveland and spent much of it overcome with emotion.
It was intense to be streaming into the stadium, one of twenty thousand people, taking photos in the Instagram-oriented corner, freaking out at the famous people walking by, knowing we were in the place to be in the city that night.
That feeling normally only happens at men’s sporting events.
Sometimes I felt hushed by the spectacle, sometimes I was screaming at the top of my lungs. Often times the Townies and I turned toward each other with that “How did she do that?” look in our eyes, shaking each other’s shoulders, imagining what it feels like to be Caitlin, to be able to launch the ball from 30 feet with perfect precision.
Maybe now that this post is almost over, I’ll mention that Caitlin Clark played on a team—the Iowa Hawkeyes—that was actually quite special and fun to watch.2
Iowa was the highest scoring team in the nation, they made more threes per game than any team in the Men’s Final Four, and they had five players OTHER THAN Clark shooting better than 35% from behind the arc. They also had the most assists per game, which is a proxy for good ball movement and teamwork.3
Their success was pretty cool in light of the fact that the basketball experts thought they didn’t have enough star power to make it back to the Final Four.4
Watching Iowa play gave me hope, in the way that quirky, unexpectedly great teams often do (the 2021-2022 era Chicago Sky are another prime example). Hope that I can do something great or transcendent in my own life, hope that there is more to life than I can grasp in any one moment, hope that I will experience things I never thought were possible.
Of course, women’s basketball has always inspired me in that way. But for most of my life, if I shared an experience I had at a women’s basketball game, most people would have no idea what I was talking about. Now there is actual recognition, sometimes even envy in people’s eyes when I say I was at the Women’s Final Four in Cleveland.
Something special is happening in women’s basketball right now. Something that I cannot fully explain and did not really see coming. I feel lucky to be alive to bear witness.
What We’ve Been Reading
Caitlin Clark and Iowa find peace in the process: Long, colorful profile of CC including details of team bonding on Croatian yachts.
The check in: It could have always been this way: Nice critique of the NCAA for letting the broadcast TV rights to the Women’s Tournament lapse.
How Nikola Jokic Became the World’s Best Basketball Player: Some really beautiful basketball writing in this one. One-third of the Townies do watch and appreciate men’s basketball.
These five bullets represent roughly 1/6 of the total answer sent to me via iPhone note by the Voice of Gen Z. There may be a manifesto forthcoming.
While it’s probably a stretch to say that Iowa’s offense resembled modern NBA basketball (heavy on three-pointers and high pick-and-roll action), Coach Lisa Bluder clearly drew from the basketball-math insights that revolutionized the men’s pro game. In the 2015-2016 season, only six NBA teams shot more than one-third of their attempts from behind the arc—now almost all of them do. Some experts trace the seeds of this revolution to the Sky Townies’ alma mater, Grinnell College (also in Iowa!), where the men’s basketball team runs an offense almost entirely based on shooting three-pointers.
The last time a Women’s Final Four team averaged more than 10 made threes per game and more than 19 assists per game? The 2019 Oregon Ducks featuring future WNBA players Sabrina Ionescu, Satou Sabally, and Ruthy Hebard (yay Ruthy!).
The second and third best players on the Hawkeyes probably would not have started on South Carolina.
Go, Townies! I enjoy your fandom. (And I'm one of those adults who had season tickets to the second three-peat of Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the '90s.) Many of us Sky fans are busy following our new rookies on Instagram and look forward to an entertaining season. I would be happy with a .500 season if it sets us up for a breakout next year.
Excellent read! As someone who just started watched more women’s basketball largely due to college player hype like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, this definitely resonated, educated, and got me excited for more!