Women's Fastbreak On SI

Fever Fans Convinced Caitlin Clark Effect is Behind Massive WNBA Playoff Change

A massive announcement by WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has Indiana Fever fans convinced the Caitlin Clark Effect is in full motion.
Grant Young|
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) smiles while answering a question Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, after an Indiana Fever practice at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) smiles while answering a question Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, after an Indiana Fever practice at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. | Grace Smith/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

About an hour before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals between the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty tipped off, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert took to the podium and announced massive changes to the league in 2025.

One announcement is that the WNBA Finals would become a seven-game series, starting in 2025. This is a huge change as the WNBA Finals has been a best-of-five contest since 2005.

Another announcement Engelbert made was the league's regular season is expanding to 44 games, as opposed to the 40-game slate it has had for the past two seasons. It had been at 36 games for the 2022 season but has been either 34 or 32 games for the vast majority of the WNBA's history.

Engelbert made a third announcement: Rather than the first round of the playoffs (which is a best-of-three series) starting with two consecutive games for the higher seed and then the third game for the lower seed, it will instead be a 1-1-1 format. Meaning, the first and third games will be at the higher seed's home stadium and Game 2 will be at the lower seed's home stadium.

The current first-round format was highly criticized during the Indiana Fever vs. Connecticut Sun series because Indiana's Gainbridge Fieldhouse didn't get to see superstar Caitlin Clark and her teammates play a home game as they lost the first two games to Connecticut and were therefore eliminated before Game 3.

As a result of this, Fever fans on social media are claiming that the change was made as a result of the iconic Caitlin Clark Effect.

"#WNBA #Commissioner #CathyEngelbert announced The #WFinals Will Be A #Bestof7Series starting in 2025. The first round will also move to a 1-1-1 format. We need as much #CaitlinClarkEffect exposures we can get." one X user wrote.

Another fan added, "1-1-1 in the first round aka the Caitlin Clark effect".

"Caitlin and the Fever got real motion," said a third.

Regardless of how it came to be, this rule change is being received extremely well by the women's basketball community.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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