Retired U.S. ladies’s nationwide group 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 Remaining 4 was unbelievable,” Rapinoe stated Tuesday on the Enterprise of Ladies’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 Chook and Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore and the Daybreak Staleys and Lisa Leslies — all people.”
The 2-time FIFA Ladies’s World Cup winner famous one other pivotal second within the historical past of ladies’s basketball — the 2002 NCAA ladies’s championship recreation wherein the College of Connecticut beat Oklahoma. Almost 30,000 individuals attended the ultimate at San Antonio’s Alamodome, whereas greater than 5 million tuned in to observe future WNBA star — and Rapinoe’s fiancée — Sue Chook win the nationwide title. Chook went on to change into probably the most recognizable names within the ladies’s basketball league, which Rapinoe argued laid a powerful basis for ladies’s sports activities.
“The WNBA’s been round for 28 years and actually does not get the credit score [as] the legacy ladies’s sports activities league that every one of us are actually basing all the opposite leagues off of and base a lot of our construction,” she stated.
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 area to the USWNT, which performed their first match in 1985 — a couple of decade earlier than the WNBA started play.
“I believed rather a lot concerning the nationwide group as a result of it is such a strong basis — a multigenerational, multi-decade basis that our group was in a position to stand on and I used to be in a position to stand on, even for our struggle for equal pay,” she famous. “That made it attainable to actually seize a second and have it not simply be a flash within the pan.”
It is in the end 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 group 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 stated. “It does not appear to be she’s slowing down. Unbelievable, undefeated season and the one purpose it wasn’t the one factor talked about is as a result of Caitlin was going completely bonkers.”
Rapinoe additionally credited the WNBA’s latest efforts in carving out its personal identification 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’s extremely a lot black ladies, it’s extremely a lot homosexual ladies, it is a very inclusive and open area,” 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 Remaining 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 instances this season.
“You gotta seize the second additionally, and my God, she has,” Rapinoe stated about Clark. “I am unable to wait. I’ll the sport once they play in Seattle and might be again right here for the one in New York. I am simply as huge a fan as anybody.”
