Credit where credit is due: USA today Sports columnist Christine Brennan tried very much to settle as the first alarmist of Caitlin Clark in the country. Whenever something routine for a professional athlete arrives at the star of Indiana fever, Brennan’s work is to transform it into a question of existential concern for WNBA, a league which has 12 other teams. This week’s news provided another opportunity. Crisis alert: Caitlin Clark A Has tense his quad. Can female basketball as a whole perhaps continue?
The tone of Brennan’s last column Could mislead the reader, thinking that Caitlin Clark died. In reality, the fever custody is only sidelined for at least a few weeks; After Tuesday training, she was with casualness put in place three points. In the reality of Brennan, this is an event at the level of the recession for the WNBA:
Ticket prices for the next four fever games on the secondary market fall as fans as well as the WNBA itself begins to fight against reality that the biggest draw in the history of women’s basketball, and one of the biggest attractions of all sports, men and women, will not be there for a while. This occurs the most spectacular with the tickets for the fever match of June 7 at the United Center of 23,500 seats in Chicago, where Clark is a draw so overwhelming that the prices of the tickets have dropped by more than 300% in less than two days.
Over 300%! The league is so dismayed by the unexpected absence of Clark that the Heaven of Chicago will now pay fans to attend, perhaps as a kind of mass excuses so as not to offer another cultural opportunity involving her and Angel Reese. And if these mathematically incredible figures do not convince you, what would you say about these anecdotal evidence?
I can personally confirm the pronounced change in interest for fever games without Clark. A week ago, I bought four tickets on Stubhub to take my sporting nieces to the mystical fever-Washington match on Wednesday evening in Baltimore. Tickets in the same row are now less than half of what I paid. I can only imagine what they will cost the time of the match. Maybe they will give them. And yes, we are still going to the game.
If you connect to Fever -Mystics tonight – You won’tNow – Keep an ear for the groans of Brennan and its various sports nieces. They are a Greek choir signaling the tragic calculation which will arrive at a league still in the first month of its season.
It is not difficult to accept that fever is less a draw when Caitlin Clark does not play – as would be the case for any professional sports team and his respective star – but it is not clear what Brennan thinks should be done on this subject. Can modern medicine cancel a quad injury in one day? Will fever be mandated to wear a commemorative jersey patch in honor of its tense muscle? Should the WNBA distribute “Caitlin Strong” silicone bracelets and build statues to its likeness for the 13 cities? The league must take a kind of action so that the basketball product, as well as the pre-order sales for Brennan’s future bookdo not suffer accordingly.
“All this illustrates the meaning of Monday news on Clark,” writes Brennan. “It is not only another player injuring himself; he is the best financial driver in the WNBA who is now not available to play, promote and sell the league for a few weeks, at least.” She is right: the season should be suspended until the only healthy WNBA player is healthy. What would be the point of going to a game like Valkyries-Liberty if Caitlin Clark is not on the ground, hundreds of kilometers away?
With nowhere else to turn to and no one else to blame, Brennan concludes his all -time column with a column by asking the League to comment – not once, not twice, but three times:
This is how Clark Caitlin is crucial for the WNBA. You might think that the league could recognize the moment. But so far, no. Asked three times for a comment on Clark’s injury and what it meant for the League, a WNBA spokesperson never answered.
Concerning. Maybe the league offices ended this week to cry the lost television ratings. As a country, we will have to expect each other because we are subject to the devastating view of Caitlin Clark in street clothes for the next fever games. Hopefully everyone – you, me, Christine Brennan and her nieces who play sport – can join you together and survive this dark chapter of history.
