There was nothing particularly spectacular about the Sept. 19 game between the Fever and Mystics in Washington, D.C. It had no real stakes. This was the last game of the WNBA regular season for these two teams: Indiana had locked up its playoff spot and Washington had lost its ability to control its playoff destiny. Most of the starters played limited minutes. There was no tension. But the crowd felt befitting of something far greater. It set the regular-season record for WNBA attendance at 20,711, more than any other game since the league began play in 1997.
It was both incredible and not. On the one hand, you had the aforementioned low stakes for a game between two unexceptional teams, along with the fact that it was a Thursday. It was not exactly a recipe for a record crowd. On the other hand, you had Caitlin Clark, who had proven herself big enough to cancel out all of the above. It should not have been surprising which of those factors won out.
Like anyone who spent the last few years covering women’s basketball, I’d watched Clark draw remarkable crowds across the country, including several in places that were not exactly basketball hotbeds. At the Sweet 16 this spring in Albany, N.Y., I looked into the stands and saw a lady waving a sign that claimed she had flown in for the game from Kuwait. How many people have a presence that can motivate someone to leave Kuwait for a weekend in Albany? (Certainly not any Governor of New York.) And yet this felt completely normal in the context of Clark, where screaming fans, overwhelming demand and high prices had already been established as the norm.
It was not surprising that Clark’s star power translated when she made the jump this spring from college to the WNBA. (I had felt the conversation around women’s basketball shift too much to expect otherwise: A mention of covering the Women’s Final Four had gone from garnering a reaction of “Who played?” a few years ago to “Wow! Caitlin Clark!”) But it was still a bit surprising just how well it translated and how sustained the resulting effect was. It feels reductive to say it was like nothing I had seen in women’s sports: I’m not sure it was like anything that anyone has ever seen. This was a question of talent, of course, but also of timing. It was obvious the player made to dominate the moment was Clark.
The sensation held true for months. Even as the Fever endured a rocky start. Even as they made the necessary adjustments. Even as Clark was drafted into a series of increasingly deranged culture wars through no fault of her own. Even as the novelty of her rookie season began to fade. The interest did not drop off. The league had been growing before she joined. But it felt as if her entrance both recontextualized that growth and reshaped its possibilities. And it carried through to that final game of the season.
That it would be this specific game that set the attendance record was a matter of simple opportunity. The Mystics had moved the game from their usual home gym of Entertainment and Sports Arena in Southeast D.C., one of the smallest facilities in the league, to a much larger downtown location, Capital One Arena. They’d similarly moved a prior game against the Fever as well as others versus the Sky and the Mercury. But they’d expanded slightly for this final one. (The official basketball capacity of Capital One Arena is 20,356.) It allowed that final contest to squeak past the attendance from the previous Fever-Mystics game in June, which had been the first WNBA event to draw more than 20,000 fans in the regular season since 1999, and past the early Mystics’ box-office successes of ‘98 and ‘99, which had set the previous league record. There had been many other sellouts this year in arenas that offered a slightly lower capacity. There were certainly other games that could have broken this record given the physical space to sell a few hundred more tickets. (Every sold-out game of this incredible WNBA Finals comes to mind.) But it was ultimately this one that did it, this otherwise meaningless, low-stakes, end-of-season game.
It stood out. There had been nothing surprising about witnessing the Clark Effect at the Sweet 16 or Final Four. Those were singular moments, the potential end of a historic college career, packed with rivalry and tournament drama besides. There had been nothing surprising about witnessing it during the Fever’s first visit to D.C., still early in her rookie season, and there had been nothing surprising about witnessing it during the All-Star Game. But this was different. These were not teams who could vie for a title. Their playoff fates (or lack thereof) were all but officially decided. It stood to reason that Clark would not see extended minutes: This game was a mere formality. There was no reason for any informed fan to expect much of anything here.
Yet the environment was electric all the same.
It felt like a playoff game. Sidewalk vendors hawked shirts with Clark’s face on them. Politicians from both parties had advertised fundraisers held during or around the game. I saw my first Clark jersey of the day within seconds of stepping on the Metro platform, and there were many, many more to come. There were the requisite starstruck little girls, yes, but also grown men and scores of elderly women, too. (That last category has always been my favorite.) People began lining up outside the arena hours before tip-off.
As expected, Clark played a bit less than 20 minutes. (That was still enough to give the crowd a taste of what they came for: She did sink one 30-footer.) She did not see the floor beyond the opening minutes of the third quarter. But what I will remember most is how the record crowd then cheered for what it got to watch instead. The 20,711 in attendance did not check out when Clark did. They cheered for Sika Koné, who has bounced around the league over the last two years, coming off the bench to score a career-high 20. They cheered for one delightful moment of sisterly rivalry: The Mystics’ Karlie Samuelson and Fever’s Katie Lou Samuelson scrapped for a loose ball in a sequence that saw Katie Lou handed a tech and Karlie shooting the resulting free throw. They cheered both for the Fever mounting a comeback and for the Mystics ultimately shutting it down.
It was no secret why most of this record crowd had turned out. But what stayed with me the most was how it stuck around for something more.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Fans Showed Up for Caitlin Clark—and Stayed for Something More.
