Joe’s Notes: Why Caitlin Clark Became a Phenomenon When Kelsey Plum Didn’t

Depending how you feel about Lynette Woodard’s performance in college sports’ AIAW days, Caitlin Clark either broke the college women’s basketball scoring record last night or is about to break it in the next two or three games. It’s a meaningless distinction. Regardless of a record and regardless of its timing, Clark is the best scorer women’s college basketball has ever seen.

The person Clark passed last night, Kelsey Plum, is an interesting comparison. Because while Plum—who played at Washington from the fall of 2013 through the spring of 2017—existed in a similar era and accomplished similar things, Plum was never the cultural phenomenon Clark is. When Kelsey Plum broke her own predecessor’s record, I didn’t know she’d done it.

There’s an easy explanation for this which holds that women’s college basketball is simply more popular than it was seven years ago. There’s truth to this, but it’s only part of the story. For one thing: Why did women’s basketball become more popular? A large part ties back to Clark herself. Last year’s national championship ratings growth outpaced recent seasons’ growth by years. Was all of that Clark? Not necessarily. LSU, Iowa’s opponent in that game, is a great draw in just about any college sport. But LSU was not the national story of last year’s national championship, not even when they won it. Clark was.

Still, college women’s basketball ratings were on the rise even before Clark broke into the national narrative, and they didn’t rise because of LSU. Women’s basketball was getting more popular before any of us heard of Caitlin Clark.

Why?

Here’s a theory, and it’s not that ESPN has been pushing women’s hoops for ideological reasons:

The quality of women’s basketball has rapidly improved over the last fifteen years, and it continues to improve.

When I was a freshman in high school, Iowa State’s women’s basketball team beat Michigan State in the Sweet Sixteen through a dramatic fourth quarter comeback. It was an electric finish. Lots of shots were made. It was not, though, particularly smooth watching. Here are the highlights. See how long it takes shooters to release three-point shots? See how much forward motion they’re generating with their arms? Compare that, now, to this Caitlin Clark highlight reel. Heather Ezell was a blast to watch, but Clark’s release is faster. Her forward motion comes more from her legs, making her shot more natural in appearance and more consistent in its result.

We wrote a few weeks ago about the generational shift surrounding the three-point shot, and how we’ve only in the last ten or twenty years become used to NBA players who grew up shooting threes. This is true as well of women’s basketball, but more recently, and more broadly than just the three-point shot. It isn’t just ESPN taking a chance on a product, or “pushing women’s basketball on us,” as the annoying lament. Caitlin Clark is the greatest product so far of a wave of cultural investment in women’s sports. Training has improved in all sports in the last twenty years, but women’s sports was further back on the growth curve, making its incremental gains faster than those of men’s. Women’s basketball, in particular, has become a new level of normal within the last two generations. The WNBA may not be a rousing success story, but it exists, and that wasn’t the case prior to 1997.

Going back to the three, though:

Kelsey Plum made 3.3 threes per game her senior year. Caitlin Clark is making 5.4. The leading men’s three-point shooter right now in the college game is only making 3.7 threes per game, hardly better than Plum’s mark. Clark is making roughly 50% more threes per game than not only her predecessor, but her closest equivalent right now in men’s college basketball.

Part of this is that Clark is scoring so freaking much.

In sum, then, our best guess on why Caitlin Clark is not only historic, but getting all this attention for being historic:

• She is a prolific three-point shooter to a degree not seen anywhere else in college basketball, men’s or women’s.
• She shoots more naturally than prominent women’s college basketball players used to shoot. It’s not Steph Curry’s form, but it’s easier for someone used to watching the NBA to watch than college shooters were 15 years ago.
• This second piece—Clark’s shooting form—is part of a broader trend in which increased cultural investment in women’s sports, especially in women’s basketball, has led to more strength and better fundamentals on the part of the athletes involved.
• This third piece—the broader trend towards more watchable basketball—has led to increased awareness of women’s college hoops. Under the larger spotlight, Clark has shone, which has in turn led the spotlight to become even larger, which has in turn led Clark to shine brighter, which has in turn further grown the spotlight, and so on in circular fashion.

Women’s basketball, from youth levels onwards, showed up for Caitlin Clark. But Caitlin Clark has shown up for women’s basketball as well. When Clark broke Plum’s record, we all knew.

What About a Signing Deadline?

Rob Manfred spoke at length yesterday about a number of topics, but one that’s particularly relevant right now is his offhand (and not serious—we’d imagine the CBA would need to be renegotiated) proposal of a signing deadline on MLB free agents. What’s prompted this, as we’ve spoken about before, is the continued free agency of the Boras Four, a collection of the four best free agents remaining on the market, each of whom is a perennial All-Star Game candidate, each of whom is represented by super agent Scott Boras. Spring training has begun. None have signed.

The immediate response to Manfred’s suggestion, from fans and Boras alike, is that this would make it harder for players to capture their full value.

Would it?

The argument goes that because teams could continue playing without specific free agents, but free agents would be unemployed if they didn’t sign, this is a lopsided alteration to the labor market. There is some truth to that argument. But the problem is not, right now, that there is only one team in the market for each player’s services and that this team is playing hardball. All 30 teams, in vastly varying intensities, are in the market for each of these four players, and for the other dozen or two dozen notable free agents who likewise remain unsigned. The A’s might only be willing to pay Matt Chapman the league minimum, but that’s still a price. Everyone is in the market.

What a signing deadline would do, then, much like a trade deadline, is put a conclusion on the bidding war. What’s happening right now is that Scott Boras is naming prices no team wants to meet, and all interested teams are waiting on Scott Boras to lower his price. If this were a perfectly efficient process, it would happen as a sort of reverse auction. Boras would lower the price incrementally, in front of all 30 teams. He’d lower it again. He’d lower it more. He’d lower it and lower it until suddenly, one team would jump to its feet and meet that asking price. This would continue for all four players. This is sort of happening right now, but it’s happening too slowly. The negotiation isn’t working. And when a negotiation doesn’t work, there’s something to be said for redefining the rules under which that negotiation takes place.

A signing deadline would doubtlessly make free agency a less efficient market. But it wouldn’t necessarily make it less efficient in a way that only harms players. Much like the trade deadline, bad deals would be made under duress, but they would presumably be made by both sides. The Rockies paid a number of dollars for Kris Bryant it’s doubtful any team was ready to meet. They perceived competition that likely wasn’t there. This would happen more often in a deadlined situation.

As it stands, there is still a deadline. At some point, Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery and Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman will be at risk of missing regular season games if they don’t sign. At that point, their value will start to diminish, proportionally to the value missed by their eventual team. Whichever team signs them will lose wins. They themselves will lose money. Only Scott Boras—he who makes his money by pointing to the hardball he plays and using that to recruit more clients—clearly stands to benefit from the current arrangement.

Commissioners in American professional sports are proxies for the owners. In this case, though, I’m not sure Manfred’s suggestion would have to hurt the players. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn’t. Unless there’s real collusion, in which case I would think antitrust law would come into play, it should not disproportionally harm players rather than teams.

It would simply produce more chaos in exchange for better entertainment, not unlike alcohol or the NCAA Tournament.

The Rest

College basketball:

• UCLA is not yet back into our NIT Bracketology (updated yesterday to great outrage from ACC fans), but I’d personally bet on them to make up the ground. They looked great last night against a Colorado team that’s a lot better than its current seed line projections. Mick Cronin is a genius.
• Minnesota almost pulled off a very real upset of Purdue (which is to say—a gigantic one) but couldn’t hold on long enough. I’m pretty sure Zach Edey took fewer shots in the second half than the first, even accounting for fouls. That is by no means a prescription for Purdue, but I was ready for, “Ok, just give the ball to Edey,” and that’s not what they did. Wonder what that does for confidence if they’re trailing in March.
• There’s so much great action this weekend (including New Mexico at San Diego State, which is happening right now), but Marquette taking a crack at UConn in Hartford is the headliner. UConn and Purdue have been the two pulling away from the pack, but Marquette hasn’t lost in over a month, something that’s partly a schedule advantage but still noteworthy. Iowa State hosts Texas Tech while Houston hosts Texas atop the Big 12. Early tip for both those games.

The NBA:

• Klay Thompson had a big night off the bench for the Warriors, not starting for the first time since 2012. The Bucks lost to the terrible, undermanned Grizzlies in Memphis, and while we’d maintain that it’s ok for the Bucks to experiment and figure out their playoff approach (because of how meaningless the NBA regular season has accidentally become), I don’t think that’s what’s happening, which therefore makes the losing a problem.

NASCAR:

• The Duels were great last night. Johnson vs. Yeley was nervewracking, McLeod’s near miss of qualification was fun, and while the Blaney wreck was ugly, that’s part of the deal with superspeedways, and frankly it’s the thing that brings a lot of people into NASCAR (so long as you can keep it safe).
• The Truck race is going on as I write this, and it’s a Truck race. Chaos. Perfect chaos. “What if we gave twenty rich kids access to trucks that go 180 mph?”
• It’s looking like a very ugly weekend weather-wise, so we won’t do much previewing of the Daytona 500 itself today. We’re planning for a Monday race, but if things mercifully change, we’ll have some sort of preview in Monday’s notes, either mine or Stu’s.

Chicago:

• Connor Bedard did return last night, but Sidney Crosby scored twice in a Penguins win to spoil the festivities. That’s eight straight losses for the Hawks, a streak that will reach a month in length if they don’t beat the Senators tomorrow.
• The Bears released Cody Whitehair and Eddie Jackson, saving themselves some cap space by saying goodbye to a few pricey veterans.
• Apologies for misreading the Bulls’ schedule this week. That Celtics game we talked about (twice?) is next week. It did not happen last night. No Chicago Bulls in the All-Star Weekend festivities, but Adama Sanogo is playing in the Rising Stars game tonight. I believe he’s filling in for Ron Holland, who is injured.