Caitlin Clark left Indiana’s loss to the Mercury early after a violent sequence that included a knee to her left groin moments before a fist to her throat. Critics say the WNBA’s punishment for Alyssa Thomas—one game and a $1,000 fine—has been too light, while
A hand found Caitlin Clark’s throat early, and Indiana never recovered—Clark exited the loss to the Mercury after the incident, and the Fever couldn’t pull ahead.
The play has already taken on the grim shorthand of WNBA lore: Clark being punched by Alyssa Thomas, a player whose earnings, fame and day-to-day life have, the article says, been greatly enhanced over the past couple of years by the visibility created around her.
The league response has been far less dramatic. For Thomas, the WNBA issued a one-game suspension and a $1,000 fine. The article notes Thomas’s base salary is $1.2 million a year. and argues that the scale of the penalty—one game and no meaningful mention of punishment for the officials overseeing the incident—barely addresses the broader problem.
Clark’s injury didn’t come out of nowhere, according to the account. The piece says Thomas also kneed Clark in her left groin moments before the fist landed on Clark’s neck. That left groin was injured last season.
The criticism goes beyond a single night. The article ties the latest hit to a longer record of dangerous contact, including Thomas’s history of dirty play. It specifically cites a severe ankle injury to Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier last year.
It also lists other incidents involving Clark over the years, painting a picture of repeated physical targeting with little consequence:
– A brutal hip check from Chennedy Carter in Clark’s rookie year.
– An eye poke from Jacy Sheldon.
– A shove described as a freight-train from Marina Mabrey last year.
In each of those examples, the article says no one was suspended and that other fouls were not called.
Clark, for her part, argues with referees when contact happens, the piece says, and throws up her hands—a habit traced back to high school and AAU ball, though it also suggests she can overdo it at times, “although rarely is she wrong” in her complaint.
The piece then turns to the league’s leadership and what it calls a pattern of disappearance at the moments the sport’s biggest star needs protection the most. It refers to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, describing her as having received the “greatest gift” in Clark. Yet it says Engelbert has avoided engagement when she should “rise. ” citing how the commissioner has been described in interviews as pairing Clark’s name with others—“and Angels” or “and Paiges”—when the article argues the truth is simply that it’s Caitlin Clark.
The argument doesn’t rely only on punishment. It emphasizes the financial future of the league and the human cost of failing to keep the sport’s marquee attraction healthy.
The article claims the WNBA is squandering possibilities by refusing to fully embrace Clark’s superstardom—an appeal the piece says has fueled attendance, TV viewership, bigger revenue, bigger contracts, bigger arenas, and bigger opportunities.
It traces how quickly Clark’s impact became visible once Iowa games spread and social media clips took hold. The piece says fans lined up for hours across the Big Ten during the winter for Iowa games after State Farm commercials launched. and that tens of thousands turned out to watch a woman play basketball.
It also points to the shift in mainstream attention over time. describing how. decades earlier. it would get laughed at on sports radio talk shows while covering women’s hoops. Now, the article says, those same critics—or their sons or grandsons—wear Clark’s No. 22 to WNBA games and even to everyday errands.
The piece anticipates the pushback it says the WNBA and its media give when Clark is framed as more than “just another very good player.” It says that for three seasons. some have minimized her impact by comparing her to A’ja Wilson and Paige Bueckers. It concedes Wilson is certainly better and that Bueckers “might be” as well. while insisting Clark’s case is about reach and revenue.
To support that claim, the article offers specific viewership numbers tied to television windows and immediate audience swings:
– A prime-time Las Vegas–Dallas game on USA Network featuring Wilson and Bueckers drew 457,000 viewers.
– The next day, Clark and the Indiana Fever played the expansion Toronto Tempo in prime time on USA Network, and the article says one million people watched.
It also cites Nielsen data from last season, saying that when Clark was first injured and disappeared for two weeks, more than half the TV audience for the league disappeared too. Playoff numbers without her reportedly dropped similarly.
The article describes another sports television benchmark as “most stunning,” saying Clark drew 18.9 million viewers to her last college game—the NCAA women’s final—4 million more than watched the men’s national championship game the next night.
It then connects Clark’s fame not just to viewers, but to operational change. A month later. the article says Clark’s fame and accompanying security risks forced the WNBA to initiate charter flights immediately upon her arrival after decades of making players endure commercial flights. middle seats and missed connections. It says Thomas was among dozens of veteran players who benefitted from that shift.
The financial weight is also described through attendance figures:
– In Clark’s rookie WNBA season, Clark and the Fever drew an average of 17,036 at home games. – That average is described as more than the average home attendance of five NBA teams that year. – In Clark’s rookie season last year, Bueckers couldn’t consistently sell out a 6,251-seat arena. – In 20 home games held there, seven sold out.
Those numbers, the article says, make some longtime WNBA players, reporters and fans—especially those from UConn—mad, even sad.
It includes an explanation that some wish a player like Maya Moore, Clark’s favorite growing up, had reached the level of fame where everyone—sports fans or not—knew her name. It adds a blunt question: do they want the small thing to stay small forever?
The piece says race and sexual orientation play a massive role in the conversation. It describes the WNBA as a league that is 74% Black or mixed-race. with a sizable gay population. citing a book titled “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports.” It states Clark is white and straight. and argues the league failed to anticipate Clark’s appeal and facilitate conversations about those issues before she arrived. as the article says any workplace should when an enormous cultural shift is about to occur.
Instead, it says the WNBA allowed a void to be filled with anger and aggression—and that three seasons in, the problem is still there, night after night, game after game. The conclusion is stark: the article argues the one-game suspension hardly begins to solve it.
Where the situation stands now is clear in the immediate result—Clark was hurt and Indiana couldn’t overcome it—but the deeper dispute is about what comes next: whether the league will respond with the kind of protection and seriousness the sport’s biggest draw can’t survive without.
Caitlin Clark Indiana Fever Alyssa Thomas WNBA Mercury Cathy Engelbert league discipline sports injuries TV viewership Nielsen charter flights