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In news that will certainly make the WNBA and Indiana Fever management very happy, Caitlin Clark was voted NBA players’ second favorite non-NBA athlete in a poll that also saw five other women’s basketball players make the list.
The anonymous NBA players poll, conducted by The Athletic and published on Monday, not only saw Caitlin Clark ranked second on the players’ list, but also included women’s basketball players Sabrina Ionescu, Kelsey Plum, Angel Reese, JuJu Watkins, and A’ja Wilson.
Apparently Shaquille O’Neal isn’t the only associated with the NBA who thinks “the boys suck, so I’m not following, but I’ve definitely been following the girls.”
The former Iowa Hawkeyes star received 6.1 percent of the vote (7 of 115), second only to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson who received 13 percent (15 votes).
Ionescu, Plum, Reese, Watkins and Wilson were named on 12.2 percent of the NBA players’ ballots, putting women’s basketball second to just the NFL (39.1 percent) when it comes to players who made the list.
“She’s unreal,” one NBA player who voted for Caitlin Clark said about the first overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft. “I’m excited to see how her journey pans out and what she does for the women’s game.”
JuJu Watkins, one of the most highly recruited women’s high school basketball players in 2022, was the only one of the women who received votes that still has college eligibility remaining.
“Her game is so pretty to watch. She’s so fluid, smooth,” said one NBA player. “I hadn’t watched a full game (of hers) until tournament time. I’d seen little clips and highlights and stuff. But watching her against UConn the other night, she definitely made a big fan out of me.”
It will be interesting to see how this list changes and grows when it comes to women’s sports in the coming years with players like Watkins, Paige Bueckers, Lucy Olson, Cameron Brink, Rickea Jackson, Aaliyah Edwards and others either joining or soon to join established WNBA stars like those who made the list along with Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Nneka Ogwumike, Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi, Aliyah Boston and the many other stars the league can already claim.