Sad news: Indiana Fever-Chicago Sky rivalry couldn’t have worked out better.
No one has accused the WNBA of having orchestrated a conspiracy to make sure Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese ended up playing on rival teams that meet multiple times a season. But given how well it’s worked out, you almost wouldn’t blame them.
But no, this isn’t Patrick Ewing ending up on the New York Knicks by any stretch. There was no need to cook the books on the 2024 WNBA Draft. If that were the case, Clark would be playing for the New York Liberty or Los Angeles Sparks right now.
Instead, she’s in Indiana and it just so happened that Reese was still available when the Sky selected her with the No. 7 pick (after taking Kamilla Cardoso with the No. 3 selection).
Somehow it worked out. Not only are Clark and Reese conference rivals but there are few geographic rivalries in the league with closer proximity than Indiana and Chicago. Only the Liberty and Connecticut Sun can drive to one another faster.
The two Midwestern franchises also found themselves in similar situations as the two phenoms arrived. The Fever has been mired at the bottom of the standings for some time now. While the Sky won the WNBA title in 2021, their precipitous fall brought them down to Indiana’s level within two seasons.
And just like that, the arrival of Reese and Clark has transformed these two teams into the hottest ticket in the league. All due respect to Sun’s and Liberty’s dominance as well as the Aces’ back-to-back titles, there’s nothing that gets people talking and puts butts in seats, for now at least, quite like Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever vs. Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky.
There are tons of narratives, storylines, and unhelpful diatribes to unpack around this topic and women’s basketball in general, but the numbers do not lie.
The June 1 game, featuring the infamous Chennedy Carter foul, averaged 1.53 million viewers on ESPN, the league’s fourth-largest audience of the last 22 years.
June 16’s matchup, a 91-83 Fever victory, was the WNBA’s most-watched game in 23 years (2.25 million viewers), breaking CBS’s previous record for a WNBA broadcast.
Sunday, the Fever and Sky clashed again. This time, Reese powered Chicago to a thrilling second-half comeback and 88-87 victory. Afterward, Reese brought her usual swagger to the post-game discussion and social media lit up with discussion around her, Clark, and the rivalr
We’ll see what the ratings come in at for this one. Given that it was broadcast on ESPN, it’s probably not going to be very far off from the previous number on the channel.
It’s also worth noting that they have one more showdown scheduled for this season on Friday, August 30. There’s a non-zero chance that one if not both teams will be fighting for one of the eight playoff spots at that point, only upping the dramatic opportunities. To that point, if the playoffs started today, the Sky would be the last team in and the Fever would be the last team out. Imagine if that’s still the case in August.
Pundits are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to parse out how much value Reese brings to the WNBA separate from Clark, and vice versa. Those conversations are misguided at best and disingenuous at worst. It’s like trying to figure out whether Magic Johnson or Larry Bird had more “value” in 1980. Looking back at that era from 2024, does something like that even matter? They were both incredibly valuable for who they were as well as what they meant to one another. And every time they got together on the court, it made for must-see TV.
The same goes for Clark and Reese. And the fact that they’ll be doing this dance as conference and regional rivals for the foreseeable future has worked out for everyone involved. Well, except maybe people who dislike Angel Reese, but that’s another topic altogether.
