Howard Megdal dishes on Caitlin Clark book, Team USA snub, WNBA ratings amid Fever superstar's injury and more (Exclusive)

As he details Caitlin Clark’s meteoric rise with both her talent and popularity, longtime women’s basketball writer Howard Megdal does so with lots of nuance and perspective.

In “Becoming Caitlin Clark,” Megdal delves into Clark’s stardom and how the Indiana Fever’s guard has fueled the WNBA’s popularity and her exclusion on the 2024 U.S. Women’s Olympic basketball team. But Megdal, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The IX Newsletter, addresses those issues without hyperbole and hot takes. Instead, Megdal offers substance based on exclusive interviews and extensive institutional knowledge of women’s college basketball and the WNBA.

Megdal spoke to Sportskeeda about some of those topics and more. He also has planned public appearances to discuss his new book at the following dates/locations:

· June 18, 2025, King County Library System, Issaquah, WA. Public virtual event.

· June 18, 2025, Cherry Hill Public Library, Cherry Hill Township, NJ. Public event.

· June 19, 2025, Books & Greetings, Northvale, NJ. Public event.

· June 22, 2025, Barnes & Noble Marlton, Marlton, NJ. Public event.

· June 25, 2025, P&T Knitwear, New York, NY. Public event.

· July 9, 2025, Head House Books, Philadelphia, PA. Public ticketed event.

· July 10, 2025, Barnes & Noble Paramus, Paramus, NJ. Public event.

Editor’s note: The following one-on-one conversation has been edited and condensed.

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Howard Megdal on Caitlin Clark (Exclusive)

What’s the favorite thing you learned about Caitlin while doing this book, considering you have already covered her career extensively before diving into this?

Megdal: “The thing that amazes me is that she has been a public figure really dating back to middle school and early high school. Her first high school game at Dowling High School was front-page news in the newspaper. Despite the fact that there is an increasing amount of attention on her and around her, at no point have we seen her falter. We haven’t seen her falter on the court. We haven’t seen her falter in her public statements. In so many ways, she was built for this. This would be forgiven for somebody who is only 23 years old now. But what she has managed to do with a microscope on her, we’ve seen very few, if anyone, do this in the history of women’s sports. It’s nothing short of remarkable to me. That is the biggest and most impressive thing. You would think there has got to be a public meltdown somewhere. There’s been nothing. It just reflects the way she is, so built for this.”

Where do you attribute that comes from?

Megdal: “There are multiple ways I attribute it. Those ways dovetail on why this needed to be a book and the way it was put together. One significant part of this was that she was born and raised at a time and place that allowed her to be a full expression of a woman’s basketball player. She is doing this in the state of Iowa, which has a century of not just nonstop girls’ and women’s basketball. But they treat those figures with respect and elevate those who do it best into famous people within the community. When she is growing up, she’s doing this and playing in a way that her on-the-court method of playing mirrors the 6-on-6 style that was the dominant way that women’s and girls’ basketball have been played in Iowa for 70 years.

She was doing it in a moment in which the people who came before her built a platform that she was able to maximize. Then you put it all together. I think it’s impossible to tell this story without understanding the superlative levels that Caitlin Clark is reaching. But it’s also impossible to do it without understanding that there is an infrastructure there. If it did not exist? What we’re seeing from Caitlin, even with all her greatness, would not be possible, either.”

In your book, you explain well that it’s not an ‘either/or’ on the role Caitlin has played with growing the WNBA and the success/challenges the league has had leading into her arrival. Can you explain more of that for this audience?

Megdal: “It’s important to think of it in a five-year arc. She gets to college at a very specific moment in women’s college basketball. She gets to college at a moment when ESPN finally decides to broadcast all of the games that it had the rights to in the NCAA women’s tournament. She is escalating her popularity in 2023 at a moment when the NCAA fixed one of the greatest own goals in the history of American business and started using its own ‘March Madness’ branding for the women’s tournament after being publicly shamed for doing so.

She did this at a moment when the WNBA was run by Cathy Engelbert, somebody who understands business in such a way that the WNBA finally started advertising on NCAA women’s basketball ‘March Madness’ tournament broadcasts. For most of the history of the WNBA, a question that was asked was, ‘How do we translate the popularity of women’s college basketball to the pros?’ Somehow, advertising on the games that everybody is watching was never part of the potential solution.

So by the time that Caitlin is drafted first overall after building so many audiences with her captivating play and having people have more access to her games than anyone ever before, she was able to help bring an audience from college to the pros in the likes that we haven’t seen in the WNBA prior to this. You put it all together. This doesn’t matter if Caitlin is not this transcendent player that people absolutely love watching. But I also would say if the circumstances I just described had taken place 10 years earlier, this would have been Breanna Stewart doing it. If this had happened in 2010, Maya Moore would’ve been doing it. If this had happened in 1978, it would’ve been Ann Meyers Drysdale and Molly Bolin Kazmer doing it. So those factors need to exist for this transcendent moment to take place. Had Molly existed now, Molly could’ve been Caitlin Clark. If Caitlin Clark existed during Molly Bolin’s time, we would not have gotten to watch and appreciate her the way that we are now.”

Given that nuance, how do you look at the current circumstances with the WNBA’s ratings during Caitlin Clark’s injury? Various reports said the ratings have declined by 55% since her injury. What do you expect the interest level will look like for however long she’s out?

Megdal: “It’s a little confusing to me. One of the numbers that I was curious about was the Indiana versus Chicago game that took place last weekend when she was not playing. That still drew 1.29 million viewers. That outdrew the men’s French Open final. I don’t necessarily understand when a metric is just measured with Caitlin and without Caitlin. If Caitlin Clark is playing, it’s going to draw more eyeballs. That’s true in any sport. If LeBron James is playing, more people are interested in watching the Lakers than if LeBron James is not playing. When Stephen Curry isn’t playing for Golden State, that changes. When Shohei Ohtani isn’t playing, not as many people are as interested in watching the Dodgers.

Caitlin’s star power is undeniable. But the flipside of that is that any WNBA game prior to Caitlin arriving in the league was drawing in the kind of ratings that the non-Caitlin Indiana game of this past weekend drew. People would’ve been blown away. Another proper context is to look at the 2025 NCAA women’s tournament. You saw a decline in ratings from Caitlin Clark’s peak in 2024. But you also saw ratings higher than any previous NCAA women’s basketball tournament in recent memory on television. That is the real answer here. Like with any movement that is driven by star power, the crest of the wave is the highest that we’ve ever seen. But when the wave recedes, the low tide is significantly higher than it has been on this team.

I don’t expect that to be a temporary phenomenon. There are stars that are coming behind her, whether it’s Paige Bueckers, JuJu Watkins, or Hannah Hidalgo. There is a huge range of folks coming in the time ahead. If you pan it out even further, imagine how many young girls who are watching Caitlin Clark and being influenced by her game right now will be the must-watch players in the class of 2035.”

It also seems very clear in your book that, based on your conversations with both Caitlin and other WNBA players, both parties have a pretty full appreciation for both Caitlin’s role in the league’s popularity and the other players’ roles in the league’s popularity. Can you unpack that for me?

Megdal: “Yes! It may not be possible to hold two disparate ideas at the same time within a tweet (laughs). But the WNBA players, coaches, and front offices are very capable of doing this, and do so. It always struck me as beyond weird when you’d see people who should be capable of doing that failing to do so. The bottom line is that you absolutely at the same time can be delighted that the new media rights deal is up by eight or nine times in significant part because of the numbers put up last year because of Caitlin Clark’s rookie season and not exclusively, but at the same time get frustrated at the 100th question you get asked about Caitlin Clark or not want to celebrate Caitlin Clark in a post-game press conference 10 minutes after Caitlin Clark went out and beat you. Those two things are not mutually exclusive in any realm that recognizes how human beings think.”

Your book also sifted through fact and fiction on why Caitlin Clark didn’t make the women’s U.S. Olympic team. Can you explain the thought process?

Megdal: “It was simultaneously easy to understand if she had been included and easy to understand if she hadn’t been included. There was no obvious, ‘She should’ve been on this team instead of this person.’ There are two starting guards for the defending WNBA champions with Chelsea Gray and Kelsey Plum. Diana Taurasi played in her sixth Olympics, and it was an unprecedented thing in ways her leadership mattered up and down that roster. Caitlin would have been a very understandable and solid addition, and I believe she’s going to win plenty of gold medals in her future as well.

But it wound up becoming one of the best things that could’ve happened to her. She actually had weeks of rest. She actually got to recover. Her numbers before and after the Olympic break were stark. I think that reflected more than just adjusting and adapting to the league. She had actual rest and was actually getting to practice. For all of these reasons, I think it made her a better player on the other side of it. It was a difficult decision for the people who made it. I know that. I reported at length the how and the why that happened. But there was no malice in it. That’s maybe a symptom of the larger public discourse in America today. But assuming malice is a thing that I think people do to their great fault, again and again. That’s certainly been applicable with Caitlin.

Interestingly, you quoted Caitlin saying she thought all the players on the USA Team were deserving and that she would’ve felt offended for all parties if she was chosen just to help bolster interest. What do you make of that?

Megdal: “She’s a 22-year-old who somehow has that depth and understanding about the world and is able to zoom out. That part never stopped amazing me, even with all the lights on her. Just after a game, she is capable of doing that. That wasn’t even a pro thing. She was capable of doing that in a press conference following a second-round loss to Creighton in the NCAA tournament as a sophomore. There is a maturity and wisdom there that repeatedly blows me away.”

Your book also details what it’s like to cover Caitlin day-to-day with all the fandom, her game, and everything else. What have been the highlights for you with that?

Megdal: “It’s like the band you always love is being discovered (laughs). There are a lot of elements to it. But one of my favorite things as a father in his mid-40s, I get a lot of people around my age and gender cohort who find out what I do, and they are almost apologetic that they haven’t been watching women’s basketball sooner. They talk about how it has been brought to them here. The point that I make to them again and again is that there was no infrastructure that made it easy to connect, follow and find the WNBA the way we are able to do so now.

The thing that I always urge them is, ‘If it’s Caitlin that brought you here, that’s great. Here are these other stories that are also going to be amazing.’ I expect a lot of that fandom to be sticky. I don’t know many people who watch the WNBA and come away thinking, ‘Oh boy, that wasn’t for me.’ People who come to WNBA games tend to want to stick around and see them again and again. Part of it is if you know the stories behind it. That is why we cover the day-to-day, and that’s why it’s important not just to cover Caitlin. It allows people full access to understanding the world they’re now inhabiting.”

You wrote a lot about Caitlin’s relationship at Iowa with Coach Lisa Bluder. Caitlin told you that Lisa “never stopped coaching me. She never stopped holding me accountable.” How did that dynamic shape Caitlin?

Megdal: “Lisa was so generous with her time. I was so appreciative of it. We spent hours talking about this. One of the most interesting things that Lisa said to me is that early in her career, she didn’t think she could have done right by Caitlin the same way she did later in her career. Lisa, being a veteran coach, meant that Caitlin wouldn’t be able to run roughshod over her. So the net result was that Lisa had a lifetime of wisdom and experience that she was able to impart on Caitlin Clark. That significantly shaped not only the player that she became. But frankly, it shaped the person that she became in the locker room once she got to the pros. Lisa Bluder’s role in this cannot be overstated.”

What role has being part of the Fever franchise played anything with their front office and joining a talented team that she has gotten close with, including Aliyah [Boston] and Lexie [Hull]?

Megdal: “It’s a perfect fit. Lin Dunn putting that team together was a big deal in and of itself. Lin Dunn understands basketball like few people I’ve ever met or had the privilege to cover. She knew what was necessary not just for Caitlin, but around Caitlin, to put that franchise in a position to be the contenders they will be for years to come, in all likelihood. That was a critical part of it.

It helps that the ping pong balls fell Indiana’s way two years in a row. They get Aliyah Boston, a generational center that you can turn around and pair with Caitlin Clark. Caitlin is going to a place that is on the rise and is in a position to be able to maximize everything. They are only a few hours away from the home she grew up in. There is a lot around this story. Players get injured. We saw JuJu Watkins get hurt in the NCAA tournament and is going to miss a year. Think how different things would have been had Caitlin Clark gotten injured and how that 2024 season would’ve been like at a moment the WNBA is negotiating a new media rights deal, and the Indiana Fever have the top overall pick.

All of these things would’ve fundamentally changed. There is no getting around it. I think about this as it relates to JuJu Watkins, too. I’m heartsick about this idea that we’re going to miss a full year of what would’ve been a JuJu reckoning both as a basketball player and in broader popularity and culture. But Caitlin didn’t miss a game in college. That is a big deal, too, when you think about this growth.”

What do you expect the rest of Caitlin’s second season will look like once she returns from her injury?

Megdal: “As long as she’s healthy, she’s going to blow up. I talked about this a little bit in the book. She gets to the pros, and they have 11 games in the first 20 days. That was the hardest WNBA schedule by sheer coincidence. This was made before Indiana even had the top pick. But that was the hardest WNBA schedule in 21 years. They were 2-9 to start. Caitlin had struggles, and she always has owned her struggles even as she works to improve them. And yet in those first 11 games, she was at or above comparable levels of production to Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird. Those were 11 games compared to their entire rookie season. Then she grew exponentially. Now she is on a team that is surrounded by folks who are massively capable of maximizing what she is able to do.

There is no ceiling. There is no limit on this beyond the imagination of what someone is capable of doing. The only ceiling that she’s going to have is that this is a really, really hard league to win in, and the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx are sitting right there and are not going anywhere. Then, after the 2025 season, 80% of the players will be free agents because they have CBA negotiations, leading everyone to choose not to sign beyond 2025, except for rookies and two players. The entire thing could be thrown up in the air again. We’ll see what the Fever look like in 2026. But by any logical way forward, Caitlin Clark’s season is unimaginably high.”

Mark Medina is an NBA insider to Sportskeeda. Follow him on X, Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook and Threads.