Commentary: Could the WNBA have prevented Caitlin Clark’s injury?

At the start of the 2025 WNBA season, Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever were scheduled to play 41 of their 44 games on national television – the most of any team in WNBA history. It was a smart decision; Clark is the league’s biggest star, and the 2025 Fever were built to contend for a championship. Nobody, however, could’ve foreseen that injuries would limit the basketball star to playing just 13 games.

Last week’s news that she wouldn’t be returning confirmed that the playoffs, which begin this weekend, will happen without her.

Her absence means that fewer fans will tune into playoff matchups. But Clark’s season-ending injury is a reminder that there’s an even bigger and more consequential matchup looming: The league and its players’ haggle over a new collective bargaining agreement.

In this battle, Clark’s absence highlights just how dependent the league’s business is upon healthy athletes. That’s the kind of leverage WNBA players need to secure a fair and healthy future for the league and themselves.

By any measure, the 2025 WNBA season has been a success. In mid-August, with three weeks left to go in the season, the league broke its single-season attendance record, held since 2002. Meanwhile, as of late July, viewers of all nationally broadcast WNBA games were up 21% over 2024. Notably, viewers of nationally broadcast WNBA games not featuring the Indiana Fever were up 37%.

That’s the good news. The bad news is injuries. In 2024, WNBA players missed a combined 711 games because of them. In 2025, they’ve missed a combined total of 945 games and counting, according to independent tracking by the Next Hoops. Those ballers range from little-played bench players to perennial all-stars such as Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier.

Without them, chances to build storylines and a fanbase that can sustain the league over seasons and years are lost. Missing players are also an immediate lost business opportunity. Early in the 2025 season, when Clark was still playing, the Fever’s nationally televised broadcasts drew an average of 1.81 million viewers; when she didn’t, the team’s average dropped to 847,000.

Of course, Clark is in a class all her own. But it’s not a leap to surmise that interest in other teams drops off – if only on a local basis – when their stars can’t play. That’s why addressing injury-related absences should (in theory) be a top commercial priority for the WNBA.

Actually tackling the problem isn’t simple, though. Doing so requires balancing profit-making commercial prerogatives with employee safety precautions.

Consider, for example, the WNBA’s calendar. This year, the league expanded from a 40 to a 44-game regular season schedule that ran from mid-May until its conclusion this week (with playoffs running into mid-October). That created new revenue-generating opportunities, including increased ticket, merchandise and sponsorship sales. However, rather than play those games over an expanded calendar, the league shoehorned the games into roughly the same amount of time once devoted to a much shorter season (32 games, as recently as 2021).

The reasons for this move are complicated. Some WNBA teams share arenas with NBA teams, and scheduling both into the fall is complicated. There are also potential conflicts with league broadcast partners like ESPN. The consequences are grueling: According to data compiled by Garret Gastfield, a researcher at ESPN, the average number of days between WNBA games has shrunk from 4.03 days in 2021 to 2.7 in 2025.

That lack of rest takes a toll, according to researchers and current WNBA players. In June, for example, Natasha Cloud of the New York Liberty suggested that if the league keeps adding more games, “injuries are going to continue to go up.”

Negotiations over the new collective bargaining agreement, which expires after the WNBA Finals at the end of October, provide an opportunity for the league to do right by its players.

For starters, it should agree to extend the season deep into the spring and fall so that players receive adequate rest between games. Of course, the competition for eyeballs will be fierce, especially in the autumn months. But if Clark has taught the WNBA anything, it’s that sports fans are hungry for competitive, high-level women’s basketball. The commercial incentive is there; now the league should signal that it at least wants to work around the complications.

Once the calendar is fixed, it’s time to view better compensation as a health and safety issue too. For years, WNBA players have sought out off-season opportunities to play and earn more money away from the WNBA. Some go overseas; some stay and play in domestic US leagues. Either way, added wear and tear adds to injury-related risks and fatigue. Better WNBA compensation, including a salary cap pegged to the league’s growing revenues, would be a powerful incentive to rest rather than play.

Prior to Clark’s injury-shortened season, the WNBA could more easily dismiss these proposals and the concerns that motivate them. But as the commercial toll of Clark’s absence grows, especially during the playoffs, the league is under pressure to listen and act. The message should be clear: A league that doesn’t protect its players doesn’t have a sustainable future.