Through each stop of Caitlin Clark’s year, both while at Iowa and during her rookie season with the Fever, her fans have followed.
In January, Rutgers had its first women’s basketball sellout since 2006.
Both of Indiana’s games at Barclays Center against the Liberty featured plenty of fans weaving as close to Clark as they could go, waiting for the WNBA star to finish warmups and sign autographs.
The Fever have even experienced a 265 percent surge in attendance, The Athletic reported last month.
And that fan presence, to former women’s basketball player and coach Nancy Lieberman, makes the Caitlin Clark effect similar to the Taylor Swift effect.
“It doesn’t matter who people fancy at the moment,” Lieberman said Friday during an appearance on SiriusXM. “It’s Caitlin Clark. She’s the Taylor Swift of women’s basketball right now. Her fans are like ‘Swifties.’ They’re extraordinarily loyal. And in every arena you go into, half the people there are her fans wearing her jerseys. She’s a media superstar, but damn, she’s backed it up every step of the way.”
Swift, the 14-time Grammy winner, has filled venue after venue throughout her Eras Tour, and that same fascination from fans has carried over into her relationship with Chiefs star Travis Kelce — who she supported during their win Thursday night and then spent Friday night eating dinner with at Lucali in New York City.
Lieberman, who recently revealed on “The Stephen A. Smith Show” that she broke off her friendship with former WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes over a Clark-related argument about her college scoring record, referenced Clark’s numbers — from the two triple-doubles and WNBA-leading 8.4 assists per game — as ways she has met the hype that followed her from college to the professional level when the Fever drafted her No. 1 overall.
There were growing pains at first.
Clark struggled with turnovers, and the Fever struggled to win games for the first month-plus of the campaign.
But recently, they’ve won seven of nine games since the Olympic break to climb the standings and clinch a postseason spot, with Clark averaging 19.0 points per game and competing with the Sky’s Angel Reese for the WNBA Rookie of the Year award.
“When your teammates like you and love you, you know you’re doing something right,” said Lieberman, a basketball Hall of Famer. “They adored her in Iowa. They really, really like her here in Indiana.
“So why pick on her? Why do that? Just appreciate the greatness that she’s bringing to the game.”
