Caitlin Clark has standing offer to join 3-on-3 league
Two 3-on-3 basketball leagues unsuccessfully courted Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark during her rookie year in the WNBA. Clark ultimately turned down a $5 million offer to become the first woman to compete as a player in BIG3, and a more recent (but less lucrative) offer from Unrivaled.
After Clark turned down BIG3's offer, its founder — the rapper Ice Cube — said he would not press forward with negotiations in an interview on the Dan Patrick Show.
"Nah — we know how to take no for an answer," Cube said.
"Nah we've moved on. She's focused on the #WNBA and we really didn't get great engagement from their team. I think the agents were hating on it a little bit."
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) June 13, 2024
-@IceCube on whether Caitlin Clark's 2-years, $10 million offer to join the @TheBig3 still stands pic.twitter.com/GmxMZGDSnR
Clark still might have a future in Unrivaled. Former Turner executive David Levy, who brokered the television-rights deal between TNT and the first-year league, told John Ourand of Puck on The Varsity podcast that Clark was welcome to join Unrivaled in the future.
"There's always a space for her in Unrivaled," Levy said. "Hopefully she'll play in season 2 and season 3."
Levy seemed to understand why Clark was reluctant to take on any extracurricular work in 2024.
"The day she finishes the NCAA tournament, she then has to go into the WNBA draft," Levy said. "She gets drafted. A couple days later, she's on the basketball court playing for Indiana. Really no rest, no time. And let's be honest: she took on a lot when she joined the WNBA. There was things around racism, things around women's sports, all the weight on her — Olympics — and I gotta tell you, she handled it remarkably well. Even (being excluded from the United States' Olympics roster), she said, listen it's going to motivate me to work hard for the next Olympics."
Clark has certainly earned the right to enjoy a quiet offseason. Perhaps as her endorsement contract money flows in, she won't need extra work a year from now, either, and can take on the challenge of 3-on-3 basketball if she wants.
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