For many years, women’s basketball has been the subject of many jokes and plenty of ridicule. It has been seen as greatly inferior to the men’s side of the sport, and the WNBA has struggled to gain a footing in the pro sports landscape of America.
But these days, that reality seems to be changing. Caitlin Clark, the transcendent Iowa State University star, is the talk of the sport, and she, along with several other stars, has drawn in the type of viewership women’s basketball hasn’t really enjoyed.
LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers gave some love to Clark and the other icons, as he put it, of the college game right now. He pointed out how the WNBA’s requirement that players must be 22 years of age to be eligible for its draft has greatly helped the college game.
LeBron James believes the popularity of the women’s NCAA tournament this year compared to the men’s is the “icons” involved in the women’s game. But he pointed out the Catch-22 of those players growing their profile because they’re prevented from being one-and-done. pic.twitter.com/h1VZXhIwd7
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) April 4, 2024
For decades, male basketball players who end up turning pro have generally stuck around the college level for just a year or two, or three years at the absolute most, and it has arguably hurt the college game. But women’s college basketball is exploding right now.
Clark became the NCAA’s all-time leading career scorer — among both men and women — this season when she surpassed Hall of Famer Pete Maravich. She has led Iowa State to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament, where it will face the University of Connecticut on Friday.
Iowa State’s Elite Eight victory over Louisiana State University averaged 12.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched women’s college basketball game ever. That’s more viewers than four of the NBA Finals’ five games last season, and it even drew in a larger audience than Game 5 of the 2023 World Series when the Texas Rangers clinched the world championship over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
