Having etched her name across the record book during the 2024 WNBA season, Caitlin Clark has been named the league’s Rookie of the Year, receiving 66 of 67 total votes, the WNBA announced Thursday. Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese received one vote from the national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters.

Clark and Reese were also named to the 2024 All-Rookie Team on Thursday, along with Los Angeles Sparks forward Rickea Jackson, Chicago Sky center Kamilla Cardoso and New York Liberty forward Leonie Fiebich.

Your 2024 WNBA All-Rookie Team

Caitlin Clark (IND)
Rickea Jackson (LAS)
Angel Reese (CHI)
Kamilla Cardoso (CHI)
Leonie Fiebich (NYL)#WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/TgU5hoEztP

— WNBA (@WNBA) October 3, 2024

That Clark won the Rookie of the Year award came as little surprise considering how prolific her debut season was.

Clark broke both the WNBA’s single-season and single-game assist records. She scored the most points by a rookie ever, and the most points by a point guard ever. She became the first rookie to record two triple-doubles and the first Fever player ever to record a triple-double.

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Caitlin Clark grades her rookie season as ‘solid’ after playoff exit

Those are just some of her many accomplishments among averaging 19.2 points and 8.4 assists per game —…

As the WNBA has reached wildly successful highs this season in viewership and attendance, players say the boom long coveted throughout women’s basketball has come with unfortunate consequences. During these playoffs, athletes who would normally be focused on winning have instead shared a swell of complaints of being targeted with racist, misogynistic, homophobic and threatening attacks.

The rise in harassment, players say, has taken a mental toll. Some question how the league has considered their well-being as it has managed an influx of attention that followed the college stardom of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese into the pros.

A few players have made more drastic moves, deactivating some of their social media accounts or heavily limiting their engagement, despite the clear and often critical income potential that comes from marketing directly to fans.

Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner said fans have voiced racist taunts at her and others. Reese said AI-generated nude images of her have circulated online.

Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington shared on Instagram a graphic email sent to her with threats of violence and a racist slur, following a moment during the first game of the playoffs in which Carrington inadvertently poked one of Clark’s eyes. Carrington’s…

Having etched her name across the record book during the 2024 WNBA season, Caitlin Clark has been named the league’s Rookie of the Year, league sources told The Athletic on Friday.

That Clark won the award came as little surprise considering how prolific her debut season was.

Clark broke both the WNBA’s single-season and single-game assist records. She scored the most points by a rookie ever, and the most points by a point guard ever. She became the first rookie to record two triple-doubles and the first Fever player ever to record a triple-double.

GO DEEPER

Caitlin Clark grades her rookie season as ‘solid’ after playoff exit

Those are just some of her many accomplishments among averaging 19.2 points and 8.4 assists per game — numbers that were even better in the second half of the season — and led the Fever to their first postseason appearance since 2016. Indiana also improved its win total by seven in 2024.

Clark, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, entered the league as the most-anticipated rookie in league history. She flourished at Iowa for four seasons, leading the Hawkeyes to two Final Fours and setting the women’s NCAA Division I and major college women’s basketball scoring records.

The spectacle around Clark followed her to the professional ranks. While Clark…

INDIANAPOLIS – At Friday’s news conference following the conclusion of the Indiana Fever’s season, rookie Caitlin Clark and head coach Christie Sides condemned the racist rhetoric many WNBA players said they’ve experienced this season.

“Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism, hurtful, disrespectful (or) hateful comments and threats,” Clark said. “Those aren’t fans. Those are trolls, and it’s a real disservice to the people in our league, the organization, the WNBA.”

The online targeting of WNBA players appears to have reached a tipping point during the postseason. After the Connecticut Sun eliminated the Fever in the first round of the playoffs Wednesday, Sun veteran Alyssa Thomas pointed to the “Indiana Fever fan base” as directing hateful comments at her and her teammates. Sun guard DiJonai Carrington shared online before Game 2 against the Fever an email she received from an anonymous source that included threatening and racist language.

The Athletic’s @RomeovilleKid asked Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark about the racism and other negativity players have endured this season.

“Those aren’t fans. Those are trolls.”pic.twitter.com/Im0IeDjGkv

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) September 27, 2024

“I think in my 11-year career,…

Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark didn’t like what she heard from a fan late in the first quarter of Wednesday’s playoff loss at Connecticut and motioned for officials to remove the man from his second-row seat. In the relative blink of an eye, security tapped the person on the shoulder and escorted him to a less visible area, where a discussion took place.

Ultimately, the person was allowed to return to his seat. And although the incident lasted only a few minutes, the optics figure to linger within the WNBA community because they raised the question of whether the league has a double standard when dealing with harassment complaints. More starkly, the swift resolution of a complaint from a White athlete stood out against the months of silence Black players received from the league office as they were targets of race-fueled hate on social media and in arenas.

Security had a conversation with a fan after Caitlin Clark pointed them out to the ref. pic.twitter.com/N6RCnAv1qz

— ESPN (@espn) September 26, 2024

 

The influx of attention to the WNBA that followed Clark and fellow rookie Angel Reese into the league has threatened the reputation it has worked hard to cultivate, for inclusivity, empathy and tolerance. It also has called into question the leadership of commissioner…

Even with all of her on-court accolades, Caitlin Clark’s biggest impact on the WNBA was felt on the league’s viewership numbers — and she ended the season in record style.

ESPN’s coverage of the Connecticut Sun’s Game 2 win over the Indiana Fever delivered an astonishing 2.5 million viewers.

That’s the most-watched WNBA postseason game ever across ESPN platforms. Per Sports Media Watch: It is the most-watched postseason game outside of the WNBA Finals since Game 2 of the Los Angeles Sparks-Houston Comets 1999 Western Conference Final (2.62M). The viewership follows Sunday’s Sun-Fever Game 1 on ABC which drew 1.84 million viewers against the NFL. That game, per Sports Media Watch, was the most-watched WNBA playoff game since 2003.

In another remarkable viewership number, the Minnesota Lynx’s series-clinching win over the Phoenix Mercury on Wednesday night drew 1.22 million viewers on ESPN.

You always want a viewership story to sell if you are a professional sports league, and the WNBA has a great metrics story to sell in 2024. ESPN announced last week that its WNBA regular season was its most-watched ever for games across ESPN Networks airwaves (including ABC).

Games averaged 1.2 million viewers, a massive jump over last year’s games (440,000 viewers). There were…

UNCASVILLE, Conn. — The Indiana Fever started their season coming up short against the Connecticut Sun. In the aftermath of that May opening-night defeat, they acknowledged their young roster — even if led by a phenom at point guard and the reigning Rookie of the Year in the post — had some learning to do when it came to winning in the WNBA.

After four years of playing a specific style at Iowa, Caitlin Clark had to figure out how to run a new offensive system. Everyone else had to learn how to play off of her: Aliyah Boston would have to make decisions out of the short roll, Kelsey Mitchell would have the ball in her hands less. All of the Fever players would have to run. A lot.

After a 2-9 start, Indiana made quick progress on those fronts. The Fever won seven more games than last season, breaking a seven-year playoff drought. They finished in the top half of league standings and were a trendy pick to upset Connecticut in the first round, or at least take a game from the Sun.

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From shaky start to playoff bound, how Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever revived their season

Instead, Indiana once again exited Connecticut acutely aware of the gap between itself and the league’s top tier after being swept in two games. Four months after her welcome-to-the-WNBA moment,…

Caitlin Clark is a tough grader.

In her 2024 rookie season with the Indiana Fever, the Iowa-legend-turned-WNBA-superstar drew more eyes to women’s professional basketball in the U.S. than the league had ever seen. Yet all she would call her first professional year was “solid.”

On Wednesday, the 22-year-old was far more focused on what lay ahead.

“I know there’s a lot of room for me to continue to improve,” Clark said after the Fever were knocked out of the playoffs by the Connecticut Sun.

“I feel like I had a solid year, but for me, the fun part is I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.”

The surface was one of the greatest seasons in WNBA history.

Clark’s rookie year ended on a high note as she thrived in the second half of the season, particularly after the WNBA returned from its Olympic break. After averaging 16.2 points, 6.9 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game in the first 20 contests, she averaged 22.3 points, 10.0 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game in the second half of the regular season.

Caitlin Clark is the first rookie in WNBA history to have 25/5/5 in a playoff game. pic.twitter.com/84LX2vjsdG

— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 26, 2024

That stretch featured historic moments, including the first rookie triple-double in WNBA history and a…

Nearly 20 years ago, Conrad Piccirillo attended his first Indiana Fever game. The WNBA franchise was just five years into its existence and on the brink of its best year to date, but he admittedly was not there for the basketball. His daughters, 10-year-old Caitlyn and 11-year-old Claire, were members of the Fever Inferno’s youth dance team, and he was there to cheer them on during their performances.

Eventually, his daughters aged out of the dance troupe, but by that point, Piccirillo was hooked. He bought six season tickets and invited friends, reveling in the Fever’s 2012 WNBA championship. Yet, when the Fever hit hard times with consistent losing records for nearly a decade, Piccirillo found it harder to convince friends to join him at Fever games in his free courtside seats.

Flash forward to 2024 and he hasn’t had that problem again thanks to Caitlin Clark. His cohort is part of the legion of fans who have made Fever games the hottest ticket in the WNBA. He attended all but one game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse this season, soaking in the energy and environment as he watched waves of fans fall in love with the Fever and the WNBA the same way he did.

“I think she’s the perfect fuel on a fire that had been really growing,” Piccirillo said about Clark.

Clark’s rookie…

If you are a sports media nerd, Sunday was an interesting day. The dominant sports programming was, of course, the NFL, with the signature game of the day coming at 4:25 p.m. (ET) on Fox featuring the Baltimore Ravens in a must-win situation against the Dallas Cowboys, who are forever the league’s viewership jewel. It made what was airing on ABC in the afternoon particularly notable — a 3 p.m. tipoff of the Connecticut Sun against Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever. The game was Clark’s first postseason appearance — her league’s viewership unicorn.

ESPN and the WNBA have never had an opening-round postseason game with this kind of interest so I was curious how the network would approach it. If you want credit for growing the league, as ESPN management always does, then these are the games where viewers need you to back up the talk. To ESPN’s credit, it did that for the most part Sunday.

The network sent its top WNBA broadcasting crew to Connecticut — Ryan Ruocco, Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe — to call the game, and prior to the tip, ABC aired a 30-minute edition of “WNBA Countdown.” That pregame show provides value for viewers, including what is already a significant storyline in this short series: The Fever entered the postseason with a combined 19 playoff…