The temperature had crept past 80 degrees, but on Friday afternoon, on a basketball court in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, Ava Shampo, 5, was feeling good.
“I made it!” she said, smiling, after heaving an orange-and-white basketball toward a hoop that towered over her.
The line of nets on Monument Circle, the traffic roundabout at the city’s center, was one of more than a dozen public events held in connection with the W.N.B.A. All-Star Game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Saturday night. The game was expected to feature fan favorites like Aliyah Boston of the Indiana Fever and A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces — even if the biggest name, the Fever’s Caitlin Clark, was sidelined by a right groin injury she sustained earlier in the week.
The turnout for All-Star Weekend — a fervent crowd seemingly undiminished by Ms. Clark’s injury — reflected both the explosion of interest in the W.N.B.A. and the excitement around the sport in Indianapolis.
Indiana has long been known as a basketball hotbed — “In 49 states, it’s just basketball, but this is Indiana,” the saying goes — but since the arrival of Ms. Clark, the 23-year-old dynamo from Des Moines whom the Fever selected with the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s W.N.B.A. draft, the entire city has bought in.
This weekend featured athletic events like the 3-point contest and the All-Star Game, and a calendar crammed with cultural programming that included an art market, a salsa dance party, a sneaker customization station, a fan fest at the Indiana Convention Center and a concert headlined by the rapper and singer the Kid Laroi.
A Caitlin Clark advertisement adorned a whole side of the 34-story JW Marriott hotel a few blocks from the Fieldhouse. Street signs were temporarily renamed after W.N.B.A. teams like the Washington Mystics. Murals by local female artists stretched throughout the city. Bars, restaurants and the city’s abundance of steakhouses were full of fans in Clark T-shirts and Fever jerseys.
The citywide celebration was an opportunity to show off the W.N.B.A.’s impact on fashion, music and culture, and the league’s draw for new and dedicated fans.
“We are in the middle of a pivotal, transformational moment in the history of the W.N.B.A. and women’s basketball, and we are thrilled Indiana will be the center of it all,” Mel Raines, the chief executive of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, said in a statement last year, when Indianapolis was selected to host the game for the first time in the city’s history. The city had hosted the NBA All-Star Game that February.
The anticipation had been even higher here because the hometown star, Ms. Clark, is one of two captains for Saturday night’s game, and was the top overall finisher in fan voting.
But the Fever announced on Thursday that Ms. Clark’s injury would also keep her sidelined for Saturday’s game. (She has also missed games earlier this year because of injuries.)
“It’s a bummer,” Ava’s mother, Robyn Shampo, 39, said, as she watched her daughter and her son, Jack, 4, catching rebounds with a volunteer in a black-and-white referee shirt.
“But they’re having fun,” she added. “That’s what matters.”
The weekend comes as the players are in the thick of negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement, after they opted out of the current deal, which is set to expire in October. They are expected to ask for higher salaries, as well as increased benefits and revenue sharing.
The excitement around the All-Star festivities left no doubt that the W.N.B.A.’s popularity has expanded markedly since the league was formed in 1996. On Friday, visitors from far-flung locales like San Antonio and Seattle mingled with locals who popped by on their lunch breaks.
Auriel Banister, 34, a juice bar owner from Chicago, was visiting the city for the weekend with her friend Sheila Rashid, 36, a designer who was participating in a fashion show at the convention center on Saturday night.
“I love seeing how much they’re pouring into the W.N.B.A.,” said Ms. Banister, as she and Ms. Rashid took a break from the sun on bleachers in front of the South Bend Chocolate Cafe. “It’s showing me that we’re having a shift in terms of our respect for sportsmanship and where we are as a society.”
D’Andre Williams, a 23-year-old student and graphic designer at Texas Southern University in Houston, was visiting the city for the first time with his mother, Gigi Williams, 58.
“The Fever have just taken over the city,” he said, as they sipped drinks in front of a postcard station. “It’s just all Fever, all Caitlin, all W.N.B.A. It’s shocking to see, honestly, but it’s awesome.”
The economic impact of Ms. Clark on her adopted city has been tremendous. Since her debut last May, Ms. Clark and the Fever have set W.N.B.A. viewership records, consistently sold out Gainbridge Fieldhouse and prompted some opponents to move their games to larger N.B.A. arenas.
Dr. Ryan Brewer, an economist at Indiana University Columbus, recently pegged Ms. Clark’s economic value to the W.N.B.A., the city and the country in her rookie season at more than $36 million. The well-documented increase in the popularity of women’s basketball thanks to Ms. Clark’s presence even has a name: the Caitlin Clark effect.
Sean Lothridge, an owner of the Slippery Noodle Inn, a Meridian Street bar near the Fieldhouse known for its vibrant jazz scene and spooky history, has seen Ms. Clark’s impact on the city firsthand. On Fever game nights, he said, sales can be as much as 20 percent higher than on a regular day.
“The energy around her and the team is amazing,” he said of Ms. Clark. “Outside of the recent Pacer playoff run, we actually get more lift from Fever games.”
On Friday, as day turned to night, 20- and 30-something partygoers in jean shorts, Caitlin Clark hats and orange “Everyone Watches the W.N.B.A.” T-shirts gathered at the Hangar, another bar near the Fieldhouse with an indoor golf simulator and a fleet of pedal pubs available to rent. They were there for a bash thrown by Hoop Vision, an organization that aims to connect women’s basketball players and fans.
About a hundred people, mostly young women, sipped “Fever Dream” and “Indy Fashioned” cocktails and danced to “Crank” by Playboi Carti.
Mikayla Rowan, a 28-year-old social media manager from Indianapolis, came from the evening’s 3-point contest, which the New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu had just won for the second time. Ms. Rowan was a big Fever fan, she said, and had been a season-ticket holder for the past two years.
“It’s been so fun to watch women’s basketball completely blow up in the last three or four years,” said Ms. Rowan, a former college basketball player for the University of Southern Indiana. “The women are just as good as the men, and they’re finally getting their flowers. I love it.”