Caitlin Clark's representation announced on Wednesday that Clark would decline an invitation to NBA All-Star Weekend to participate in the 3-Point Contest with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Sabrina Ionescu.
Clark's representation said that she was saving her three-point debut for the WNBA All-Star festivities in Indianapolis this upcoming season, which is a huge win for women's basketball.
Fox's Colin Cowherd, host of The Herd, pointed out that this is not just a win for the WNBA-- it is a massive problem for its male counterpart.
"The NBA is literally going to the WNBA and saying, 'Can we borrow your top domestic player?' She's way more popular than our domestic stars."@ColinCowherd reacts to Caitlin Clark passing on 3-Point contest: pic.twitter.com/VSrvI3STzw
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) January 30, 2025
"If I were to say to you a couple years ago [that] the NBA, to save their All-Star Weekend... they're going to ask a WNBA player to join the 3-Point shooting contest," said Cowherd. "NBA, to their credit, they've figured it out. [They've] got a problem."
NBA ratings this season were down 28% through the first month of the 2024-25 season, a huge blow to a league that had grown exponentially since the 1990s. Many point to the long season, as 82 games a year with travel days in between takes roughly eight months to complete. Some point to load management, as many star players will take days off to stay healthy for the whole season.
This leads to fans missing out on opportunities to watch their favorite players play-- and ticket prices can be expensive, meaning that young fans may not get another chance that season to attend a game.
Cowherd points to something else, though-- the fact that women's basketball players are more inclined to stay in college for four years than the men.
"Women now stay in college for four years. That's [also] what they do in college football," said Cowherd. "That's why college football is surging, and the NFL is surging, and the WNBA is surging... and the NBA is not. We don't know the players."
Clark, of course, spent all four of her college years at Iowa and broke the all-time college basketball scoring record set by Pete Maravich in 1970. Her success at the college level made her one of the best known, and most marketable, athletes in the world.
Now Clark is saving all of that marketability for her league, not the NBA.
"The NBA is literally going to the WNBA [and asking], 'Can we borrow your top domestic player? She's way more popular than our domestic stars,'" said Cowherd. "And that's because of women's college basketball."