Carolyn Peck was looking so good for a while.
If you don’t know Peck — and trust me, you probably shouldn’t unless you’re a serious basketball junkie — she’s a former WNBA coach who now works as a basketball analyst for ESPN and went viral for a statement that the Indiana Fever were better without Caitlin Clark.
“I think that Indiana is even more dangerous when Caitlin Clark doesn’t play, because she’s a ball-dominant guard,” Peck said.
“The ball’s in her hands a lot, so you know what you need to try to take away. But when you look at Indiana now, they’ve got so many weapons.”
Caroline Peck saying the @IndianaFever are more dangerous WITHOUT Caitlin Clark. (I’m keeping receipts now) pic.twitter.com/Tv7ZZgXRYa
— Ken Swift (@kenswift) July 4, 2025
In spite of the viral infamy Peck received after she made the statement, the Fever had won two straight without Clark in the lineup and looking for number three against the lowly Los Angeles Sparks. How did that go?
another chance at home on Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/Ab99Hw8OYB
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) July 6, 2025
Oh, hmm. Maybe not.
From Athlon Sports:
With superstar Caitlin Clark missing her fourth straight game due to an injury, the combination of Aari McDonald and Sophie Cunningham were once again called upon to fill the void. But today they simply couldn’t as they combined for just eight points and a brutal 0-8 on three-point attempts.
The starting trio of Natasha Howard, Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston did the majority of the heavy lifting with all three accounting for at least 19 points. Boston enjoyed a double-double with 23 points and 12 rebounds. It just wasn’t enough though and the end result was an 89-87 loss to the Sparks.
Given the fact that Clark is pretty good from three-point range, you may begin to see why that’s an issue. What’s more, Indiana head coach Stephanie White indicated she might be out for a while.
“We went through semi-live shooting drills,” she said “[She] still hasn’t gone full speed in a practice or a live defensive group. But she’s been getting some 3-on-3 work on her own.
“I think the biggest thing is she’s stated she’s not a fan of minutes restrictions. If there’s going to be a minutes restriction, maybe we’ll hold her another game,” White added.
The latest on Clark’s health status from Stephanie White: https://t.co/edmT483kzI pic.twitter.com/1cuVhmWKUO
— Tony East (@TonyREast) July 4, 2025
But therein lies the bigger problem: Given the limited sample size, we can’t really say that the Fever are better or worse with Clark not in the lineup, although I’d lean heavily toward worse. Clark has continued to play superbly while healthy, with 18.2 points per game and 8.9 assists and 5.0 rebounds. In WNBA terms, that’s a lot to replace.
But the one thing that’s clear is that the league misses her in one major way — ratings.
When Clark was injured in May into June, ratings for the Fever “clearly dipped in her absence,” Front Office Sports reported.
“The two NBA TV games without Clark averaged 343,500 viewers, down about 40% from the Fever vs. Dream game on NBA TV on May 20 (581,000 viewers). Sunday’s game against the Sky was down about 30% from the May 17 game against the Sky on ABC (though that was the season opener),” the outlet reported.
“The other Fever game on CBS this season was against the defending-champion Liberty, and it drew 2.22 million viewers on May 24, the last game Clark played before her injury. It was also the second-most-watched WNBA game since Clark was drafted that didn’t have Indiana against Chicago.”
This is kind of the wider context behind why Peck’s statement went viral in a bad way. The WNBA was, in the era before Clark joined the league, an entity enjoyed not for its intrinsic qualities but for the social capital it carried. It was the one sport that people who casually drop phrases like “smash the heteronormative patriarchy” into conversation could like unironically. Oh, the Liberty won? Great. We root for them, right?
Clark let the rabblement in; people who don’t have the ability to afford student loan payments on a useless luxury-major degree from Pomona College were suddenly watching Fever-Sky games. But ah — it was an opportunity to educate the mouth-breathers! Let them know there were other players whose political identities were progressive-coded, unlike Clark! They were queer, androgynous, BIPOC, unapologetically #MeToo/BLM/Hands-up-don’t-shoot/whatever scratches the back of the left these days. It’s just as good without the league’s most promising young player — really!
As it turns out, the filthy horde of plebes just wanted to watch a good game with a great player. But what’s the fun in that?
For all I know, this wasn’t consciously or subconsciously what Peck tried to convey with these remarks. However, beyond the fact that her claim hasn’t necessarily been proved accurate (even with the two straight wins, the Fever are more or less the same without Clark record-wise, at best), it gets added to the balance of evidence that, far from being happy that people are suddenly paying attention to the sport, analysts seem a bit miffed that we all came in to follow an athlete who doesn’t fit their preconceived notions of why the WNBA should be popular.
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