Caitlin Clark reportedly won’t play in new Unrivaled league after rookie season in WNBA
Caitlin Clark won’t be playing in the new 3-on-3 basketball league after all.
The Indiana Fever star will not be participating in the Unrivaled league this offseason, according to ESPN’s Michael Voepel. Unrivaled officially announced players who will be on its six teams Wednesday, but there were two wild-card spots up for grabs.
Clark and Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson were rumored to be the two players who were going to round out the new league. It’s unclear why Clark has opted not to participate. She has not commented on the decision.
Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 basketball league featuring 36 WNBA players, will tip off in January in Miami. Unrivaled was originally set to include 30 players, but co-founder Napheesa Collier announced in October that due to the league outperforming financial projections they were able to add six more roster spots.
Clark’s Fever teammates, Lexie Hull and Aliyah Boston, as well as her teammate from Iowa, Kate Martin, were among the players who signed on over the past month. Others involved include co-founder Breanna Stewart, Arike Ogunbowale, Jewell Loyd, Brittney Griner, Kelsey Plum and Angel Reese.
The six teams — Laces, Mist, Rose, Lunar Owls, Phantom and Vinyl — will feature six-player rosters and play 14 games each, with the season ending with a single-elimination Final Four. Games will be played on a 70-foot court and feature an 18-second shot clock, three seven-minute periods and a final 15-point runoff in the last period.
There will be an All-Star event Feb. 10, as well as a one-on-one tournament featuring all 30 players. The winner will receive a $250,000 prize. League play will take place between Jan. 17 through March 17 in Miami, with 45 games being broadcast in prime time following a media rights deal with TNT Sports.
The league will also offer big salaries to players, with each player receiving a minimum of $100,000 for the season. The total payout for the league will be around $3 million. The six-figure salaries are likely to be the highest average in U.S. professional women’s team sports.
Clark is fresh off her rookie season with the Fever, which she helped lead to the playoffs for the first time since 2016. She averaged 19.2 points, a league-high 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game while earning Rookie of the Year honors. The former Hawkeyes star, who led the program to back-to-back national championship games, set the NCAA Division I scoring record for both women’s and men’s basketball before she was selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.
Clark has played in a pair of pro-am golf events in recent weeks, including at The Annika on the LPGA Tour last week where she played alongside both Annika Sorenstam and Nelly Korda. She is set to be a guest speaker at a women’s sports awards luncheon in Kansas City in February, too.
While Clark would’ve been a great fit for the new league and would have brought a lot of attention to it, Clark will now get to spend the offseason away from basketball for the first time in more than a year. After jumping directly from the Hawkeyes’ national title game run into her rookie season in the WNBA, that break is well earned.
