With No. 1 WNBA Draft pick, Indiana Fever can change future with Caitlin Clark

The lure of first-year drafts across professional sports is the appeal of what could be. The fascination with a player’s potential and the constant pondering of what if everything goes to plan. But perhaps no pick has come loaded with as many thoughts of joyous wonder as the one the Indiana Fever earned Sunday evening. Iowa star Caitlin Clark could find herself in an Indiana uniform in less than six months. Every aspect of the franchise could, emphasis on could, bloom like it hasn’t before.

Clark represents the biggest draw in the upcoming WNBA Draft, the presumptive No. 1 pick if she does end up declaring. The senior Hawkeyes guard, who scored her 3,000th point this past week, has repeatedly accomplished what no woman has done in college. She was the first player in women’s basketball history with more than 1,000 points and 300 assists in the same season, and she was the first to have a 40-point triple-double in the NCAA Tournament. She is closing in on Kelsey Plum’s all-time scoring record, with every 30-foot 3-pointer getting her closer to one of the few offensive milestones she can’t yet lay claim to.

Clark introduced herself to so many sports fans during last year’s NCAA Tournament, with the Hawkeyes being part of record-breaking gates and TV telecasts. This year Iowa’s entire season ticket allotment at 15,056-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena sold out in mid-August. An exhibition game this October attracted 55,646 fans. On Sunday, in Iowa’s Big Ten opener on the road at Wisconsin, fans started lining up before 9 a.m. with the Kohl Center selling out for a women’s basketball game for the first time in two decades. The Hawkeyes won by 22 and Clark, having scored 28 points, surpassed Maya Moore and Elena Delle Donne to become the NCAA’s 10th all-time leading scorer. The ability to draw new fans in with each deep 3 or no-look pass is only part of Clark’s appeal.

Clark began her senior season saying she was going to “treat this year like this is my last year.” She would make a decision about whether to stay in Iowa City for a fifth year or turn pro based off her “gut.” “At the end of the day, that’s the biggest thing that I think I should trust,” she said in October. “I’m going to know when I need to know if I want to stay or if I want to go.”

Holding an additional year of eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she vowed not to let the choice to stay or go weigh on her; to be focused on Iowa’s quest for its first-ever championship. How the Hawkeyes perform in the coming months might be her priority, but Sunday is a day for asking broad questions and conjuring up aspirational hypotheticals.

Fever general manager Lin Dunn acknowledged the fact that numerous potential draftees returning to school “leaves a little bit of a question of who we might be able to get.” Lucky for Indiana, it was in an almost identical situation a year ago. The Fever won the 2023 WNBA Draft Lottery, a selection that ended up being their first No. 1 pick. Aliyah Boston was last year’s no-brainer. But as Dunn reiterated to The Athletic earlier this week, there were no guarantees until after South Carolina’s loss to Iowa in the Final Four that Boston was going to turn pro. The Fever prepared for all scenarios.

Dunn said that like last winter, she will urge all players who can enter the WNBA to enter the W. “I’m ready for them to come out, come on into the pros, move on with their lives, let somebody else play,” she said earlier this week. “I’m encouraging all of them to come on out.” Yet surely No. 22 on Iowa’s roster is the player she will most want to convince.

Dunn might as well get in a car or jump on a flight first thing morning Monday and begin Indiana’s recruiting efforts. It didn’t take long for Fever guard Erica Wheeler to do her part. “What’s up!? @CatilinClark,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “What you tryna do? The word is out now”

In recent years, the No. 1 pick has come in multiples. The New York Liberty won the 2020 and 2021 lotteries, though they traded the latter selection to the Seattle Storm, who in turn flipped it to Dallas Wings. The Las Vegas Aces won three consecutive lotteries from 2017 to 2019, and formed the foundation of their recent back-to-back championships via the draft, selecting Plum, A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young with top picks. The Storm also won consecutive lotteries ahead of the 2015 and 2016 WNBA drafts, choices they used on stars Jewell Loyd and Breanna Stewart, two pillars of their recent success.

Years before that Storm pair came together, Dunn was the head coach with Seattle when it selected Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird No. 1 in consecutive drafts. She thinks of Jackson and Bird as one of the best pick-and-roll duos in WNBA history, maybe even in basketball history, and the beginning of the Storm’s dynasty. “I know what an impact it can have on a franchise,” Dunn said Sunday of having consecutive top selections. “The rest is history.” Clark and Boston are a pretty good core to have if Dunn wants history to strike twice.

Boston was Indiana’s in-person representative at the Draft Lottery, sent by Dunn as a “good luck charm.” Boston was the unanimous Rookie of the Year and helped Indiana win eight more games than it did in 2022. “I felt like that was about as lucky a charm as I could send,” Dunn said. A little magic rubbed off.

Boston’s in-studio reaction to the news might have been more muted than one might expect, considering Clark and Boston could almost immediately become one of the WNBA’s top duos. But at a team-organized draft party, Dunn’s hands shot up to the ceiling. She banged on the table she was seated at in delight.

“It makes me feel like that we can do what we said we were going to do when I took this job over 20 months ago,” said Dunn, who rejoined the franchise in February 2022 and is hoping to break Indiana’s seven-year postseason drought this season. “We’re going to get the Fever back on track to being who we’re supposed to be.”

There are other impact players in this year’s draft if Clark elects to stay. However, the Fever almost certainly will spend the next few months in the wilderness (or really in Iowa City), wondering, wishing, praying, that she does turn pro. Clark already has NIL deals with Nike, State Farm and Topps trading card, and staying relatively close to home — her hometown of Des Moines is a seven-hour drive to Indianapolis — could lead to jumps in attendance, ratings, merchandise, “everything,” Dunn said.

Dunn admitted to being a little nervous Sunday because one of the lucky charms that brought her past good fortune had worn out. Instead, Dunn found something that she wore the day Indiana won the 2012 WNBA championship, believing it would be a good substitute. It proved to be a worthwhile swap. Now, all Dunn needs is for Clark to make the leap. Clark’s momentous choice will keep the Fever waiting. Nevertheless, Dunn said, “I’m extremely optimistic about where we are.”

(Photo: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)