When Indiana was eliminated by the Las Vegas Aces two days ago I think there was a collective sigh among the management at the WNBA and well as the companies that broadcast the games. They know that Caitlin Clark and Co are the only really big reason why anyone watches the WNBA and their departure is going to result in a dramatic drop in viewership. They will of course do everything in their power to conceal that this happens and will deny it with every fiber of their being for some reason.
This fault of the "W" to forever deny that impact that Clark has had on the league is mind-boggling. They should be rolling out the red carpet for her everywhere that she goes.
The final game vs. the Aces was a difficult watch for me because of a couple of reasons: One, the Fever didn't really perform as well as they needed to, and two, there seemed to be a bit of "home cookin'" going on as far as the referees were concerned in this one.
I'm not going to take away from the Aces' performance. They played a good game and were the better team. They weren't as much better as the score would indicate though and there was a lot of lack of balance as far as the officiating was concerned.
The coach of the Fever put it best at the post-game interview when she said "These games are a case of margins. They got 35 free-throws and we got 20."
There was plenty of fouling going on but it DID seem like the Fever were getting called on everything while the Aces were getting away with a lot of hard fouls without the refs so much as batting an eye. I wonder how much "pleasing the home crowd" plays into the decision making of a referee in this sport honestly.
Caitlin Clark was elbowed in the face in the center of traffic in the paint and didn't get a call. I'm not a referee, but I'm pretty sure that you are never allowed to elbow someone in the face.
The head ref looked a bit confused and perhaps a bit scared when CC walked up to him to show that she was bleeding in her mouth from the contact that he and his two assistants failed to see.
Now to be as fair as I can be about this particular foul, it definitely was not intentional and could very well be determined to be incidental contact. However, we need to once again look at the level of rather brutal physicality that tends to spiral in these WNBA games because the refs aren't keeping the aggression down on the part of BOTH teams.
It didn't stop the refs from calling 27 fouls on the Fever while only calling 19 on the Aces. Many of the fouls called on the Aces didn't result in free-throws due to the non-shooting nature of the foul and while I hate to beat a dead horse yet again, this lack of apparent fairness towards the Fever is pretty difficult to ignore.
You need to dig into the facts though and the fact was that Clark and co were pretty ice-cold as far as their stats are concerned. When CC and Mitchell do a combined 6-23 from 3-point range, this is not a good thing at all. Most of the time a 3-point attempt gets rebounded by the other team and that was the case in this game.
The Fever got within 2 points in the late 4th quarter, but unfortunately they couldn't keep the momentum going. You can tell that the entire women's basketball world mostly supports the Fever because the arena in Las Vegas was its most loud when Indiana nearly took the lead in the 4th
The season is over for the Fever, but I think most people would agree the season is over just generally speaking for most viewers. I don't think anyone really cares all that much about seeing the rest of the tournament but this will not be spoken about by the MSM, even though it should be.
The following day the other favorite team in the Dallas Wings were eliminated by Golden State (San Fran) and I am sure, to a lessor degree as it may be, that the management at the networks and in WNBA were unhappy about this. The story was largely the same over there with fan-favorite Paige Beuckers (pronounced "Beckers") underperformed and didn't really even attempt much from 3-point range. Historically speaking, if Beuckers gets less than 20 points, the Wings lose. She had 17 points and shot an abysmal 3-14 in overall shots.
Now we go to the semi-finals for 5 game series that I would be willing to bet that almost no one will watch but it will still be on the news constantly, encouraging people to change the channel if that is something that people still do. To give an idea about how unpopular these games actually are, you can still get tickets to the actual games for around $60. The NBA Conference finals (which is essentially the same thing) normally cannot be gotten at all for under $1000. I'll save my "equal pay" rant for another time.
