Caitlin Clark's WNBA arrival puts women's basketball on cusp of Matildas moment

Just under two years ago, something magical took place in Australia's sporting landscape.

With Australia hosting the FIFA Women's World Cup for the first time in the tournament's history, the Matildas got within two wins of improbably bringing the trophy home.

The mazy run to the World Cup semifinal captured the hearts of a nation and put the Matildas at the forefront of the Australian sporting landscape like never before.

Since that tournament, the Matildas have become Australia's most beloved national team. The public is well and truly invested in the stories of each individual player as well as the team itself.

A magical World Cup campaign in 2023 launched the Matildas, and women's football in Australia, into a different stratosphere. (Getty Images: Daniela Porcelli)

The Matildas' rise has already had a phenomenal impact on women's football in Australia, and it begs the question: Which sport is ready to have its Matildas moment next?

If numbers in both Australia and abroad are to be believed, women's basketball is next in line to take a quantum leap.

While the Boomers, Australia's men's national basketball team, have taken centre stage in recent years, their success is dwarfed by that of the Opals, Australia's women's team.

The Opals took home a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics last year, their sixth medal in 10 Olympic appearances. It was the first Olympic medal for Australia's women's team since it won a bronze at the London Games in 2012.

Lauren Jackson was the mainstay of an excellent Opals program that yielded multiple Olympic medals between 1996 and 2012. (Paulo Whitaker)

Australia's women's team medalled at five consecutive Olympic Games — Atlanta 1996 to London 2012 — and sandwiched a 2006 World Cup win into that period as well.

Central to that golden era of women's basketball was Lauren Jackson, arguably the greatest basketball player Australia has ever produced.

Jackson's decorated career landed her in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. She is one of just three Australians to receive the honour, joining legendary coach Lindsay Gaze and Michele Timms, the first Australian to play in the WNBA.

Since the 2022 FIBA World Cup, where the Opals won a bronze medal, the participation rate in women's basketball in Australia has skyrocketed.

According to the AusPlay 2025 report, more than 450,000 women and girls are now playing the sport, up 25 per cent since 2022. Nearly one in every five girls participates in basketball in the age group of 5-14, ranking it as one of the top three most played organised sports in that age bracket.

Ezi Magbegor is one of the faces of the Opals team and will be a main part of the team heading into the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. (Getty Images: Gregory Shamus)

"The numbers are fantastic and they do show a trend that basketball is the sport to play for kids and for young girls, which for me is why we do it," Jackson told ABC Sport.

"The camps that we run, and in things that we do out in the community, there are more girls wearing WNBA jerseys than ever. There's a lot of girls out there wearing WNBL jerseys too, more so than the NBL or the NBA, which is a shift that has only happened recently."

Jackson said she had seen the rise in the popularity of women's basketball in her own house as well.

"My kids run around wearing women's jerseys," she said.

"My son Harry, he loves wearing Natasha Cloud's jersey. He's been watching the New York Liberty play. She's just been picked up by New York this season, and he's watched a few of her games and he's obsessed with her. He loves her.

" To see the boys just so interested in the women's game and supporting it and having that respect, we're raising a generation of boys that respect women and the women's game, which to me is so important. "

The Opals are in a strong position to build heading into the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Ezi Magbegor, Alanna Smith and Steph Talbot are all starters on their respective WNBA teams, with Magbegor one of the best defensive players in the league.

Jade Melbourne, who is still just 22, figures to be a big part of the 2028 squad, as is Georgia Amoore, who was taken sixth overall in the most recent WNBA draft, and 20-year-old Isobel Borlase.

As women's basketball continues to rise in popularity, all these names will become household names, just as the likes of Sam Kerr, Mary Fowler, Steph Catley and others have become over the past few years.

Tying the entire Opals program together is veteran head coach Sandy Brondello, who is also the coach of the reigning WNBA champion New York Liberty.

Brondello's title with the Liberty was the second of her coaching career after she led the Phoenix Mercury to the 2014 title. Only Van Chancellor, Cheryl Reeve and Bill Laimbeer have won more WNBA titles as a head coach.

Caitlin Clark's arrival takes WNBA interest to unprecedented levels

Brondello's second title coincided with the rookie season of Caitlin Clark, whose arrival has shot the WNBA into an entirely different stratosphere.

Clark isn't the first great player to grace the league by any means. Diana Taurasi is its all-time leading scorer and is considered to be one of the greatest women's basketball players ever. Other names to grace the league include icons such as Sue Bird, Candace Parker, Lisa Leslie and Jackson, who was named the WNBA MVP on three separate occasions.

A'ja Wilson, the league's reigning MVP, has also won the award three separate times and is stacking together one hell of a resume. At 28, she already has two titles to her name and has made six All-Star appearances and is also a two-time Defensive Player of the Year.

However, none of these stars were able to vault the WNBA into the mainstream quite like Clark.

The 2023 NCAA championship game between Angel Reese's LSU and Caitlin Clark's Iowa shattered viewership records at the time. (Getty Images: Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos)

Clark's impact on women's basketball began in her final two college seasons at the University of Iowa.

The 2023 national championship game in the NCAA tournament pitted Clark's Iowa team against Angel Reese's LSU — a match that set the women's basketball viewership record of 9.9 million viewers.

Clark's 3,951 points across 139 games for Iowa is the record for an NCAA Division I player, men's or women's. She also broke a record set by Stephen Curry and Darius McGhee for the most three-pointers made in a single season by any Division I player during her college career.

Clark's arrival in the WNBA has seen attendance skyrocket. Her Indiana Fever averaged 4,066 spectators per home game in 2023, the year prior to her arrival, and rose to a league-leading 17,035 in her rookie season.

The Fever also easily average the highest road attendance in the WNBA. In the first month of Clark's rookie season, the Fever set attendance records playing road games against the Los Angeles Sparks, the Liberty and the Seattle Storm. The Sparks, Las Vegas Aces, Washington Mystics and Atlanta Dream all moved home games against the Fever to larger arenas to accommodate the increased fanfare.

Clark's game at its best is magnetic to watch unless you're the one guarding her.

Much like Curry, Clark's range is virtually anywhere past the halfcourt line. She can pull up at a moment's notice well beyond the three-point line, and is also a live threat off the ball, where she only needs a sliver of daylight from a defender stuck behind a screen to get a shot off. There is no shooter in the league who is as big a threat off a live dribble as Clark.

While the WNBA has seen great shooters before like Taurasi, none have quite done it as frequently or as daringly as Clark, and it's made her an instant favourite among basketball fans.

There is a saying that not all publicity is good publicity, and the WNBA and Clark are currently experiencing the growing pains that come with having more eyes on the game.

Clark being praised for essentially saving the WNBA hasn't always gone down well with her predecessors and some current players, who have openly wondered why they too didn't garner such attention.

Reese famously said in a press conference during her rookie season that the increased attendance wasn't solely due to Clark's game, but because of hers as well.

The rivalry between Clark and Reese has led to plenty of bad-faith arguments between the most passionate fans of either player, debates that are commonplace in the NBA where GOAT discussions are a daily occurrence.

Clark and Reese carrying a rivalry from college basketball into the big league is reminiscent of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson going from battling for an NCAA title in the late 70s to supercharging a flailing NBA in the 80s.

The spark Reese and Clark's rivalry has brought to the WNBA has been compared to the impact of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird's arrival in the NBA in the 1980s. (Getty Images: Andrew D. Bernstein)

The WNBA has also caught the attention of the infamous NBA Centel account on X, which has almost 680,000 followers. NBA Centel has become a part of mainstream online basketball discourse since mid-2022.

The account attempts to fool people, particularly actual players or reporters, by posting tweets containing headlines that seem semi-realistic but are actually satirical. People who get fooled are said to have gotten "Centel'd".

Not everyone is a fan of Centel culture. The account often attributes its fake reports to real news breakers around the league, something that has rubbed these reporters the wrong way, as much as they might try to laugh with everyone at all the jokes.

It is debatable whether Centel is actually good for basketball discourse or not, but there is no doubting its significant role in the online basketball community, particularly on X.

Clark's audacious game has also made her an on-court target. Enforcers on opposing teams are more than happy to hammer her with hard screens and fouls during games, and have been able to get away with ridiculous levels of contact at times.

Clark's teammate Sophie Cunningham has become a sensation after defending her in an on-court tussle. Last week, Cunningham took exception to Connecticut Sun guard Jacy Sheldon, who had poked Clark in the eye earlier in the game.

Cunningham was ejected. But she has since become an online sensation, amassing more than 1 million TikTok followers in the week that followed her clash with Sheldon, such is the rabid following Clark has in the basketball community.

"During that, it was just part of the game. I think the refs had a lot to do with that. It was a build-up for a couple of years now of them just not protecting the star player of the WNBA," she said in a later press conference.

"At the end of the day, I'm going to protect my teammates. That's what I do."

Clark's arrival, along with that of fellow stars such as Reese and Paige Bueckers, has the WNBA poised to rake in more money than it ever has before, and the players are currently advocating for higher salaries themselves.

Last October, WNBA players opted out of their collective bargaining agreement and they are seeking contracts that are more representative of the league's growth.

Caitlin Clark is not hated within the WNBA, say Becky Hammon and A'ja Wilson Photo shows A woman in a white jersey with the words Fever and number 22 pushes a woman in a black jersey away The coach and star player of the reigning WNBA champions have rubbished claims that veterans in the league are jealous of the attention top draft pick Caitlin Clark is getting.

"But it definitely starts with valuing the players in a way that makes sense for what we're doing out here, and also makes sense for the people that follow us and the fans that are supporting us," WNBA players union president Nneka Ogwumike said.

"We've seen a lot of growth recently, so we have to see that being reflected in how we're compensated to continue to give you guys games like this every night."

There is no question that women's basketball is growing at a rapid rate and it will likely be a headliner event like men's basketball has become by the time the LA Olympics roll around.

Having observed the growth in the women's game over the past few decades, Jackson has just one piece of advice for players on the cusp of their own Matildas moment.

"For the next generation of young basketballers coming through, I'd say just have fun, but also find a passion off the court," she said.

"Basketball is fantastic, and it's great to be obsessed with it, but you've got to find who you are off the court.

"I think that is one of the biggest lessons I've learnt. When I understood my value as a person, not just a basketball player, that's when life got a whole lot better for me."

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