Date: July 3, 2024
Interest in the WNBA is reaching new heights as the Indiana Fever celebrates a major milestone. On July 3, 2024, it was announced that three players from the Fever have been selected for the WNBA All-Star Game. This exciting news has energized fans and brought renewed attention to women’s basketball.
With 95,860 votes, Las Vegas’ A’ja Wilson ranks highest among WNBA All-Stars in 2023. Indiana’s Caitlin Clark topped overall on Tuesday with 700,735 votes, a margin of more than 600,000 votes.
For background, the top five vote-getters just one season ago had 391,639 votes total. With 1.3 million votes combined, Clark and Aliyah Boston were top two in fan voting this season.
After finishing fourth in 2023, Boston is in second straight year finishing top-five in fan polling. Apart from Clark and Boston, Kelsey Mitchell made her second All-Star appearance on Team WNBA after being chosen by the head coaches of the league. Later this month, the three of All-Stars from the Fever will line up against the Paris Olympics lineup of Team USA in Phoenix.
Coach Christie Sides said, “It’s fantastic.” “I mean, I’m quite happy for three All-Stars for the Indiana Fever this year; they represent our team rather well. These men deserve it. They have been working hard and continuing improving; it just indicates the Indiana Fever’s future and what it looks like.”
After a Tuesday loss to Las Vegas, Indiana’s roller-coaster season left them with an 8-13 record; the young Fever are not allowing the unparalleled spotlight of a historic season escape.
Twice, once in Washington and once more on Tuesday in Las Vegas, they have performed in front of audiences totaling more than 20,000 twice. With an average north of 16,000 people per game, Indiana boasts the highest attendance in the league both home and away. With an average of 10,340 faces at their games, second-place Liberty sees, that number is about 6,000 less than that.
WNBA All-Star voting upward was driven by the surge in viewership and fan enthusiasm, which helped Clark, Boston, and Mitchell most especially.
“I find Indiana’s All-Star choices to be unique,” Boston stated. “It simply serves to highlight the ability there in our team. Although playing together as an All-Star is quite incredible, I also find this to be rather thrilling for Caitlin. Coming in, being a rookie, and simply seeing how she does.
Since 1999, the league’s biggest attendance for a regular season game is represented by the 20,366 people present for the Fever’s game against the current champion Aces. It also ranked fifth in WNBA history among regularly scheduled games attended.
“The more fans the merrier, whoever you’re coming to see,” Aces coach Becky Hammon remarked.
Thanks in great part for Clark, the game is expanding. In all but two of their games during Clark’s senior season at Iowa, the Hawkeyes set or broke attendance records including her well-known encounters with Angel Reese and her LSU squad. Now, Reese also received her first All-Star choice as a rookie, hence the two will compete on the same side for the first time.
Of playing with Reese, Clark said, “I know people are going to be really excited about it, but I hope it doesn’t take away from everybody else.” “For everyone on Team USA as well as Team WNBA, this is quite a feat. Every one of them merits the same compliments.Clearly this is something quite difficult to do, hence the best we could honor would be all of them.
You never know whether you will ever be able to come back there, thus it will be exciting for all of us, for sure. I am just going to naturally absorb the experience.”
Indiana will send three players to an All-Star game just the second time in franchise history based on Boston, Clark, and Mitchell’s selections. The first was in 2007 when Tammy Sutton-Brown, Anna DeForge, and Tamika Catchings were named All- Stars.
“And I think any great player, great competitor, has an All-Star somewhere down on their list. It’s a really, really big thing for our franchise but I think more importantly it kind of shows where we are as players and where we aspire to be individually.” Mitchell said. We work very hard here.
For Boston, Clark, and Mitchell, who are freshly minted All-Stars heading into the last run of games before the Olympic break, that effort has paid off.