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Indianapolis businesses are already campaigning for Caitlin Clark to declare for the WNBA draft so she can join the Indiana Fever next season.
Clark, the 2023 Player of the Year, is averaging a career high 29.5 points per game this season while also pulling down 6.9 rebounds and dishing out 7.4 assists per game.
The Fever, who won the draft lottery and will get the number one overall pick in the WNBA Draft for the second year in a row, intend to take Caitlin Clark and pair her alongside last year’s number one pick and Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston. (Of note: the last time a WNBA team had back-to-back number one picks was the Las Vegas Aces in 2018 and 2019. It worked out pretty well for them.)
The big question, of course, is whether or not Caitlin Clark will use her fifth year of eligibility to stay with the Iowa Hawkeyes or go pro.
She recently signed a new NIL deal with Gatorade and already has done a commercial for the company, so it’s not like she needs that WNBA money right now.
In signing that deal, Clark became just the fourth college athlete and second women’s college basketball player (Paige Bueckers being the other) to sign with Gatorade.
Last week during Iowa’s game against Iowa State, Clark became the first player in NCAA basketball history to surpass 3,000 points, 750 rebounds and 750 assists.
She’s a little over 500 points away from the all-time scoring record held by Kelsey Plum, so at her current pace she would break that mark well before this season ends. If she came back for a fifth year she could put that mark so far out of reach it might never be broken.
That, however, isn’t going to happen. Not if several of businesses in Indianapolis get their way.
Steve Sanner, President and CEO of Jiffy Lube of Indiana, told Fox 59 News that he reached out Monday to multiple stores in Indianapolis requesting that they put the message ‘Caitlin, please come play for the Fever’ or ‘Caitlin, please join the Fever’ on one side of their businesses signage this week.
Mix in the fact that Caitlin Clark’s boyfriend Connor McCaffery, the son of Iowa’s men’s basketball coach, just took a job with the Pacers in Indy and it looks like the Fever may be getting themselves a generational talent when the next WNBA Draft takes place.