Bill Simmons Asserts Caitlin Clark's Star Power Exceeds NBA Counterparts
It's impossible to deny that Caitlin Clark is the biggest star in women's basketball to this point.
Look at any metric, such as ticket prices, viewership, merchandise sales, or anything that can quantify attention or interest, and the 22-year-old former Iowa Hawkeyes product outshines any other women's basketball player, past or present, by a wide margin.
It even seems more apt to instead compare her to some of the NBA's biggest superstars, because she's closer to their stratosphere than other female hoopers are to her.
And that's exactly what sports media juggernaut Bill Simmons did during a recent episode of "The Bill Simmons Podcast" on The Ringer.
"Is Caitlin Clark a bigger under-30 star than any under-30 star in the NBA?" Simmons asked Chuck Klosterman on the show.
"Yes," Klosterman responded.
"I think she is too," said Simmons. "I don't even think that's a debate.
"I literally did not care about women's college basketball 10 years ago, in any way, shape, or form," he continued. "So I think some things have just moved toward the quality of play is more fun to watch, but she seems to be some sort of catalyst that is just, it's like before and after, and now we're in the after."
Simmons later added, "You have this history with these women's players in college for three years, you kind of have a sense of their game. So when they come to the WNBA, you know what they can do."
Is Caitlin Clark a bigger under-30 star than any under-30 star currently in the NBA?@BillSimmons @CKlosterman pic.twitter.com/jBGuX4IHSH
— The Ringer (@ringer) November 27, 2024
Perhaps the most compelling part about Clark's superstardom is that it still has so much room to grow as her career continues to progress.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.