Caitlin Clark’s Injury Saga Highlights Flaw In ESPN-Led Coverage, Per WNBA Analyst

 This one isn’t merely about Caitlin Clark sitting out the rest of 2025. It’s for the people who never wanted Kelsey Mitchell’s brilliance dimmed under someone else’s spotlight. It’s for Sue Bird, who reminded us: “I think people forgot how popular and how engaging Paige is, and how people are drawn to her. She should be followed and covered in a way that is similar to what we saw with Caitlin, because that’s how popular she is.” And it’s for Angel Reese, who looked straight into the camera and said: “The reason why we’re watching women’s basketball is not just because of one person. It’s because of me, too. Like, it’s just not ’cause of one person. A lot of us have done so much for this game.”

Caitlin’s absence isn’t the death of WNBA storylines, but a test. A test of whether the league can finally convince people like Colin Cowherd to put some respect on the product. He sneered, “How many times have you watched WNBA games since Caitlin Clark got hurt? … Caitlin Clark is the league.” Then there’s Stephen A. Smith, tossing down his gauntlet with theatrics: “Let’s find out what the rest of the WNBA is going to do in terms of popularity. You’ve been saying up and down, whether tacitly or directly, that, ‘You know what? She’s getting too much shine… We deserve our shine.’ Well, now is a perfect opportunity for you to prove that.”

And proving it is going to be harder than it looks because the doubters aren’t making it easy. As much as ESPN’s Stephen A. challenges the league, he’s also the first one to step back from supporting it, as per Rachel DeMita, at least. As she put it: “It was craziness last season, right? It was madness. It has been crickets this summer since Caitlin Clark has been out. We’re not seeing clips from Fox and ESPN. People aren’t leading off their shows. Like, when’s the last time Stephen A. Smith talked about anything W-related?” Truly, the last true echo of Stephen A.’s WNBA voice came at All-Star Weekend, when players stood in “Pay Us What You Owe Us” shirts… Since then, as Rachel DeMita framed it, the sound has faded to crickets.

Rachel DeMita captured the hypocrisy. “He’s the same person who has played both sides of the coin. But yet, when Caitlin is out, you don’t hear a peep from the man about the W,” she said, before driving home a harsher truth: “Now, this isn’t everyone. There are certain people who really do. But for the most part, mainstream media has never cared about women’s sports. And they only do when there’s this crazy hype around women’s sports.”

Even Stephen A. Smith, for all his bravado, has essentially admitted as much. Just three weeks ago, he pointed to the numbers in a post on X, acknowledging that Caitlin Clark is the league’s financial engine. He said Clark was “the cash cow” and “box office.” He bluntly noted that when she plays, ratings, revenue, and interest in coverage rise, but when she doesn’t, they fall. Smith even gave a reference to a 36% drop in ratings for the All-Star Weekend, contrasting last year. That’s the reality, unless there’s gold to dig, ESPN and the rest of the mainstream machine aren’t sniffing around the W. Zoom out, and you’d understand that the Fever saw it coming.

Not hard to see why the Indiana Fever played hide and seek

Since the start, the franchise knew what her presence meant: to fans in Indianapolis, and to the league’s visibility at large. Since Caitlin Clark’s arrival, the Fever had sold out their 17,000-seat arena night after night, something almost unheard of in the W. To lose that momentum so early in her second year threatened their ticket sales and even national relevance.

So the updates trickled out slowly, wrapped in vagueness. Head coach Stephanie White offered little more than hopeful refrains – “That’s the hope,” she once said of Clark’s potential return. At practices, Caitlin Clark was spotted taking shots, running 5-on-0 drills, giving fans and analysts just enough to believe a comeback was still in play. All the while, the organization delayed acknowledging the obvious: Clark’s lingering right groin injury had already ended her season.

In the end, Caitlin Clark herself broke the silence on social media by making it clear that rushing back would be reckless, and her focus was on returning fully healthy in 2026. But the damage was done. By then, months of speculation and half-truths had only deepened frustration among supporters and analysts.

The perception now is that the Fever prioritized optics over honesty. They bought time to keep ticket sales flowing while Clark’s status remained a mystery. As one critic put it plainly, “They cared more about marketing than they did about basketball in the offseason.” Now, when the mainstream media has tuned out the moment Clark steps off the floor, it’s not hard to see why Indiana might have felt the need to stretch the illusion as long as they could…