If Caitlin Clark does end up joining Unrivaled, she’ll have at least one good friend in Miami this winter.
The upstart women’s basketball league announced Monday that it had agreed to a deal with Kate Martin, the Las Vegas Aces rookie and Clark’s college teammate at Iowa.
While Martin’s rookie year in the WNBA exceeded expectations, Unrivaled has only 30 slots available. The 3-on-3 league has boasted of its plans to recruit the world’s best women’s basketball players for its eight-week season that tips off in Miami on Jan. 17. Martin appeared in 34 games this year as a 24-year-old rookie, averaging two points in 11 minutes per game for the Las Vegas Aces.
But Martin brings something that very few others can: She’s tight with Caitlin Clark, the women’s basketball supernova Unrivaled is plotting to recruit.
Martin is the 27th player to commit to the 30-woman league, which includes cofounders Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, who recently faced off in the WNBA Finals. Beyond Clark, the most notable name missing from its list of commitments is reigning WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson, who reportedly may only consider joining the league if they can sign Clark.
The league is armed with cash after securing a TV deal with TNT Sports, and its players are reportedly set to all make six-figure salaries along with equity in the league.
Salary alone may not be enough to lure Clark, currently a singular force in women’s basketball. Unrivaled is working on a “Lionel Messi–like” offer for Clark, Front Office Sports reported last week. (When Major League Soccer was recruiting Messi, the league did not have the cash to contend with Gulf and European offers, but they worked around that by giving him perks that included a cut of all Apple TV subscriptions generated by MLS.) That offer could include a salary north of $1 million, FOS reported. That may sound middling in the world of enormous sports salaries, but Clark made just over $75,000 in the WNBA this year, and Unrivaled is an eight-week league.
Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell—the husband of Unrivaled cofounder and WNBA star Collier—confirmed the league’s designs on Clark in an interview with Sports Business Journal last week.
“We are going to make that offer. It’s going to be a historic offer, but we’re giving her time to mentally escape basketball before we sit down and have that conversation,” Bazzell said. “But one way or another, I think this league’s built for the stars, and I think we can move the needle forward in a different way for those stars and give them upside long term, too.”
Martin and Clark are closer than just any pair of college teammates. When both were drafted in Brooklyn this spring, Martin was there—but not because she thought she was going to get drafted. “I was here to support Caitlin,” she said after the Aces surprised the league by nabbing her with the 18th pick.
By the standards of WNBA second-round picks, who are often cut in training camp, Martin had an outstanding rookie year. She was a key contributor to an Aces team that ultimately fell to the New York Liberty in the WNBA semifinals. Her college teammate, Clark, finished fourth in MVP voting and won Rookie of the Year after a post-Olympic eruption for the Indiana Fever.
The pair, who played four full seasons together at Iowa, visited Hawkeyes practice together in Iowa City as recently as Friday.
