Caitlin Clark, arguably one of the best women basketball players ever, has now been drafted as the overall first pick to the Indiana Fevers. Prior to this Clark was playing for Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa made it to the NCAA tournament championship where they lost to South Carolina with a final score of 75-87. During her time with Iowa, Clark achieved a plethora of awards, records and nominations.
Clark is the only player to lead her conference in assists and scoring for four straight seasons in National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) DI men’s or women’s basketball history, making her the all-time top scorer in the NCAA. In her career, Clark is the first player in Division I history to record more than 3,700 points, 1,000 assists and 850 rebounds. She is also the all-time leader in Big Ten assists and points, the sixth player to reach 1,000 assists in their career and the first athlete in Division I to score 1,000 points in two consecutive seasons. In the last 25 seasons of collegiate basketball for both men’s and women’s teams, Clark leads the record with 56 games of 30 points.
With this being said, Clark has made an extraordinary impact on women’s basketball and has brought more attention to it. As a collegiate player she was making more money than she would in the NBA. Which caused fans to suggest that she play another year in college before she transfering to the NBA with a low salary. Clark will earn approximately $338,000 during the course of her four-year contract with the Fever, with a starting salary of $76,535.
In January of 2017, Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz founded their own basketball league called BIG3. This league consists of retired NBA players, All-Stars and Hall of Famers across 12 teams. On March 27, co-founder Ice Cube revealed that Iowa women’s basketball player Clark had received an offer of $5 million to play in the BIG3 league. “We intended the offer to remain private while Caitlin Clark plays for the championship,” Ice Cube said in a post on X. “But I won’t dispute the information that is currently public: Caitlin Clark received a historic offer from BIG3. As to why not? In the BIG3, Caitlin, an athlete for the next generation, has enormous potential for success.”
BIG3 historically has made decisions that aren’t typically common in the pro leagues. For example, former WNBA sensation Nancy Lieberman, nicknamed “Lady Magic,” was made the first woman to coach a pro men’s team. Fans questioned this and didn’t think it was ethical. Liberman and her team, Power, won the championship in her first year. The following year Lisa Leslie, another former WNBA player, won the 2019 championship with her team Triplets.
Clark has made no statements or comments about the offer and since she is now drafted it’s safe to say that Clark will not be joining the BIG3.
