The WNBA’s longest season to date is entering its final two weeks—and it’s still unclear when the league’s brightest star will make her return.
Caitlin Clark remained out Tuesday in the Indiana Fever’s win over the Seattle Storm, her 16th straight missed game due to a right groin injury. Due to several nagging injuries, she’s played in just 13 games so far this season.
The Fever guard has been slowly participating in more workouts over the past week, but has yet to go full speed in a team practice. Head coach Stephanie White has remained cautious about her star—who last played July 15—and said she would want to see Clark fully participate in practice before she returns.
“I want to see her in practice. Live in practice. I want to see her continue to work to not just build endurance, but to be able to handle contact [for] 94 feet as it’s going to be in-game, and to be able to do that and sustain from an endurance standpoint,” White said Tuesday.
The Fever have seven games remaining in the regular season. Their final game is Sept. 9, while the final WNBA regular-season games are Sept. 11.
The WNBA has continued to see positive viewership and attendance growth despite Clark’s absence, but it’s clear that the 23-year-old remains its biggest draw.
Fortunately for the league, Clark, who unveiled her Nike signature logo earlier this week, has not been ruled out for the season, which means she will likely be available by the WNBA playoffs. Last season, Game 2 of the Fever’s first-round series loss to the Connecticut Sun drew 2.5 million viewers on ESPN—the most-watched WNBA game of the entire 2024 playoffs.
Indiana holds the sixth seed and has a 96.2% chance of making the postseason, according to ESPN. It’ll likely face one of the teams in a logjam near the top of the standings. The Atlanta Dream, Las Vegas Aces, Phoenix Mercury, and New York Liberty are separated by one and a half games in the battle for second.
A Fever vs. Aces or Liberty battle will likely deliver massive ratings as those matchups are some of the most-watched games of this season. But a battle against the Mercury may also be a treat for WNBA fans, considering the brewing rivalry between the two sides.
DeWanna Bonner joined the Mercury in July after playing just nine games for the Fever. Phoenix star Alyssa Thomas was also with the Sun last season, a team coached by White.
“Our teams don’t really like each other, anyway, just because of [Bonner] leaving; some of those players used to be under our coaching staff. … That team’s just drama to me,” Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, a former Mercury player, said earlier this month.
