OAN Staff James Meyers
1:08 PM – Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark has been named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year for 2024 after the way she came on to the scene making a massive impact on the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in just her first season.
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Clark has won many awards including two-time college national player of the year for the University of Iowa and is the current WNBA Rookie of the Year. Before she was drafted first overall by the Indiana Fever, she set scoring records in college.
In her final college basketball game, which was the national championship between Iowa and South Carolina, she broke U.S. TV viewing records for a women’s sporting event.
Additionally, televised games featuring the Fever shattered WNBA viewing records as well, while attendance was up across the league by 48% compared to 2023. Of the top 35 WNBA games that saw the most attendance in the stands, Clark and the Fever were featured in 31 of them.
“I’ve been able to captivate so many people that have never watched women’s sports, let alone women’s basketball, and turn them into fans,” Clark told TIME.
“People are invested in the game, they love the game, and that’s what makes it so fun for me,” she continued. “These people aren’t supporting women’s sports to check a box. It’s going to be the new normal.”
Clark’s unbelievable year also helped the WNBA rank as the fastest growing brand of 2024, with that she secured a record $28-million shoe deal with Nike.
The basketball phenom also addressed her relationship with Chicago Sky star Angel Reese, and how Reese’s ring-taunting during the 2023 national championship game when LSU faced Iowa was more drama than necessary after the game.
“I don’t get that at all,” Clark said. “We’re not best friends, by any means, but we’re very respectful of one another. Yes, we have had tremendous battles. But when have I ever guarded her? And when has she guarded me?”
Clark added, “The only thing people cared about was this controversy that was really fabricated and made up, and then that has continued to be the case ever since.”
The all-time leading scorer in college basketball was left off the U.S. women’s basketball national team roster for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games after a first half of the season that saw her Fever team go 3-9. Missing the Games, in which the U.S. barely won gold over hosts France in the gold-medal final, “will definitely motivate me my entire career,” Clark said.
Clark’s friends and teammates talked about her charisma and sense of humor that spreads throughout the group.
The star is comfortable in the spotlight, her former Fever teammate Temi Fagbenle said, as was evidenced when she was required to sing “Happy Birthday” to teammates this year due to her being a rookie.
“She wouldn’t just sing a regular happy birthday,” Fagbenle said. “It would be a grandiose performance. She loves her moments.”
Meanwhile, Clark is determined to make the Olympic team for the Los Angeles games in 2028.
Making the Olympic team “is a huge, huge goal” of Clark’s and it will be even better on home soil.
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