Retired U.S. ladies’s nationwide crew star Megan Rapinoe mirrored on the rise in visibility the WNBA is poised to capitalize on as Caitlin Clark begins her rookie season, crediting her rise with the inspiration laid by the ladies’s basketball stars who got here earlier than her.
“Being on the Ultimate 4 was unbelievable,” Rapinoe mentioned Tuesday on the Enterprise of Girls’s Sports activities Summit in New York. “It felt prefer it was what the sport deserved and what I feel followers of ladies’s sports activities actually deserved and I feel in an enormous half, it is as a result of Caitlin is standing on the shoulders of Sue Hen and Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore and the Daybreak Staleys and Lisa Leslies — everyone.”
The 2-time FIFA Girls’s World Cup winner famous one other pivotal second within the historical past of ladies’s basketball — the 2002 NCAA ladies’s championship recreation during which the College of Connecticut beat Oklahoma. Practically 30,000 individuals attended the ultimate at San Antonio’s Alamodome, whereas greater than 5 million tuned in to look at future WNBA star — and Rapinoe’s fiancée — Sue Hen win the nationwide title. Hen went on to turn into one of the crucial recognizable names within the ladies’s basketball league, which Rapinoe argued laid a robust basis for girls’s sports activities.
“The WNBA’s been round for 28 years and actually would not get the credit score [as] the legacy ladies’s sports activities league that each one of us are actually basing all the opposite leagues off of and base a lot of our construction,” she mentioned.
Catch Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever and extra WNBA motion this season on CBS, CBS Sports activities Community and Paramount+.
Rapinoe in contrast the WNBA’s longevity within the ladies’s sports activities house to the USWNT, which performed their first match in 1985 — a few decade earlier than the WNBA started play.
“I assumed so much concerning the nationwide crew as a result of it is such a stable basis — a multigenerational, multi-decade basis that our crew was capable of stand on and I used to be capable of stand on, even for our combat for equal pay,” she famous. “That made it doable to essentially seize a second and have it not simply be a flash within the pan.”
It is finally why Rapinoe believes that the story of the rising impact Clark is having on the WNBA is larger than simply the star herself. The soccer star pointed to a different main determine in ladies’s basketball who has carved out some highlight for herself –Staley. The South Carolina coach received her third nationwide championship by defeating Clark’s Iowa crew in a recreation watched by almost 19 million individuals.
“It is a lot greater than Caitlin, although. [There’s] an enormous storyline round Daybreak Staley and her recreation,” she mentioned. “It would not seem like she’s slowing down. Unimaginable, undefeated season and the one cause it wasn’t the one factor talked about is as a result of Caitlin was going completely bonkers.”
Rapinoe additionally credited the WNBA’s current efforts in carving out its personal id as an element within the league’s regular rise.
“I feel notably within the final 5 – 6 years, actually for the reason that bubble season, the work that the W did in solidifying who ladies’s basketball is — it is very a lot black ladies, it is very a lot homosexual ladies, it is a very inclusive and open house,” Rapinoe acknowledged.
Rapinoe additionally admitted that she, like many, is trying ahead to watching Clark throughout her rookie season. She described herself as “only a actual fangirl” post-retirement, including that she “love[s] ladies’s sports activities a lot” after having been to the Ultimate 4 and the house opener for the NWSL’s Seattle Reign, the place she performed for 10 years — and plans to catch Clark in motion a number of occasions this season.
“You gotta seize the second additionally, and my God, she has,” Rapinoe mentioned about Clark. “I am unable to wait. I will the sport after they play in Seattle and will probably be again right here for the one in New York. I am simply as massive a fan as anybody.”
