Caitlin Clark named WNBA All-Star on day she brought star power to the Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS — For all the magicians, hypnotists, impersonators and Cirque du Soleil productions in casino showrooms here, Tuesday’s headliner of the night in the Entertainment Capital of the World was Caitlin Clark.

The Las Vegas Aces have built up enough goodwill from winning the last two WNBA championships to have sold all their season-ticket memberships. They typically play before 10,000-and-change capacity crowds at their Michelob ULTRA Arena at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

“Vegas has been showing up the last two or three years,” said Aces Coach Becky Hammon, “so I’m not surprised.”

The Aces are aces with Las Vegans. But it was the Indiana Fever’s Clark who inspired the champs to move Tuesday’s game to the twice-as-big T-Mobile Arena, the home of the NHL 2023 champion Vegas Golden Knights.

Tuesday’s crowd was 20,366, the most-attended sports event in the eight-year-old arena’s history and fifth-largest crowd in league history. It was the league’s biggest attendance since 1999. A lot of fans came from a lot of different places for this one.

The state of Iowa and University of Iowa certainly were well-represented here. The bumblebees didn’t overwhelm the Vegas Strip Tuesday, but it sure wasn’t hard to spot them among all the other tourists from everywhere and anywhere.

“Tonight it felt very different,” Clark said. “There were just mobs of people just watching us warm up and stuff. There were 20,000. That’s a lot of people.”

For three quarters, it was a ballgame that had the fans of both teams excited. Then the Aces showed why they have four 2024 U.S. Olympians. Sixth-year pro Kelsey Plum was the guard of the night, pouring in 34 points with six 3-pointers and plenty of scores in transition.

Plum was the player Clark replaced as NCAA women’s basketball’s all-time leading scorer. Plum is great. She had 10 of the Aces’ 12 straight points to start the fourth quarter and blow the game open.

Sixth-year center A’ja Wilson, who had 28 points and blocked five shots, averages 27 points. She is on pace to break the WNBA single-season scoring average record. She also is great.

Las Vegas won, 88-69. The margin was the same as in the Aces’ 99-80 win over the Fever on May 25, but Indiana was a better team this time. So was Las Vegas, which didn’t have Olympic guard Chelsea Gray available back then. The Aces, after limping to a 6-6 start, are 5-0 since Gray returned from injury.

Clark had 13 points and 11 assists. She could have had another half-dozen assists, but the recipients of her passes have to make their shots. Clark was only 4-of-12 from the field and 1-of-7 from deep.

She did have her usual headliner moments, like three assists and a steal in a 45-second stretch of the first quarter. The higher-pitched sounds of the cheers for her — Clark is the children’s choice as well as that of their parents — were sustained during that run.

Aces fans had plenty of their own moments to be loud, often induced by the dominant and confident play of Wilson and Plum.

July 20 will be a big night for the WNBA when Team USA plays the remaining WNBA All-Stars in Phoenix before the Olympians head for Paris.

Clark and Chicago’s Angel Reese are rookies who were voted to the 12-player All-Star team. Clark got the most votes of anyone in the fan portion of the vote, with 700,735. Fans, a national media panel and current WNBA players did the voting.

Fever teammates Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell will join her in Phoenix. Sitting between the two at their postgame press conference here, Clark had an arm draped around each.

Clark and Reese will be teammates for the first time. The world likes to pit the two against each other, and Reese has helped that along. They were 1-1 against each other in the last two NCAA tournaments, and their WNBA teams have had ferocious scraps.

“I know people are going to be really excited about (she and Reese as teammates),” Clark said, “but I hope it doesn’t take away from everybody else. This is a huge accomplishment.for everybody on Team USA and everybody on Team WNBA. They all deserve the same praise.”

That exhibition might be the toughest game the U.S. team faces as it pursues an eighth-straight gold medal.

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Another sidebar you’ll hear about is Clark playing against the Olympic team after not being given one of its 12 roster spots. If she has any resentment about that, she has kept it hermetically sealed.

“I’m just going to soak in the (All-Star) experience,” Clark said. “You never know if you’re going to be able to get back there.”

Ah, but Clark will be back in All-Star Games, again and again. Oh, the 2028 Summer Olympics are in Los Angeles. She’ll have the ball in her hands there.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com