This past month, the city of Indianapolis hosted the 2025 WNBA All-Star Weekend. This comes a year after the city hosted the NBA All-Star game and just over a month after hosting three games during the NBA Finals. While hosting WNBA All-Star Weekend marks the end of an exciting summer of sports in the city, it also provides the opportunity to reflect on the growth of women’s basketball in the state.
Organizers expected around 70,000 fans to attend the weekend, with 16,000 fans ultimately attending the All-Star Game itself. This all even though Indiana’s franchise player, Caitlin Clark, was held out of the weekend festivities due to a lingering groin injury. Clark was set to participate in the 3-point contest and the All-Star Game as captain. Clark was elected one of the captains for the game by receiving over 1.25 million votes from fans. Although Caitlin Clark did not participate, Indiana fans still got to see the hometown Fever represented during the weekend.
Indiana Fever stars Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell played in the All-Star games, scoring 9 and 20 points, respectively. In addition, Fever star Lexie Hull participated in the 3-point contest in Clark’s place and finished 3rd with 20 points just behind eventual winner Sabrina Ionescu and finalist Allisha Gray. The massive turnout for the event and the Fever's representation in WNBA All-Star Weekend are simply one of the many ways we see the growth of women’s basketball in Indiana.
We can see the representation the Fever had in the Pacers' epic run to the finals just this June. It is NBA tradition to have celebrity fans sitting courtside at games. Pacers fans will most notable remember this from the Pacers’ playoff series against the New York Knicks, which featured celebrities such as Timothee Chalamet, Kylie Jenner, Russell Wilson, Spike Lee, and Ben Stiller, who famously got into a twitter exchange with Tyrese Haliburton by tweeting “Good thing he brought his duffel for the flight to NY” referring to Tyrese’s game six pre-game outfit before the Pacers defeated the Knicks to close series in 6 games prompting Tyrese to tweet back “Nah, was to pack y’all up”. Needless to say, celebrities are a feature during the NBA playoffs.
During the Pacers' playoff games, we saw the constant and regular presence of Fever players sitting courtside at the games. Caitlin Clark was a regular feature courtside at Gainbridge Fieldhouse with a variety of her fever teammates, including Lexie Hull, WNBA All-Star Aliyah Boston, and Natasha Howard. Clark’s most famous courtside appearance was in Game 3 of the NBA finals, where she put up the famous Reggie Miller choke sign during the Pacers' win over the Thunder. Every time Caitlin Clark and her teammates would appear on the jumbotron, the Indiana crowd would cheer loudly in support of their franchise star.
Looking beyond their presence at Pacers games, there is also a greater presence of the Fever in the city of Indianapolis as a whole. Students on campus over summer may have seen the 30-story Nike ad of Caitlin Clark on the JW Marriott Hotel close to campus, saying “From Downtown in my Town. Welcome to Indianapolis”. It was most likely hard to miss, as the 30-story banner of Clark is the largest banner ever installed on the JW Marriott Hotel, which routinely has installed other banners of Indianapolis sports figures.
In addition, there is now a greater presence of Fever games being hosted downtown. Indiana sports fans will recall the sight of large crowds walking downtown before Colts and Pacers games wearing team jerseys and apparel.
With the rise of women’s basketball in Indiana, a similar crowd can be found at Fever games, with fans filling up downtown around gametime wearing their jerseys and team spirit. This increased fan presence has included Pacer players such as Tyrese Haliburton, Bennedict Mathurin, and Andrew Nembhard, all of whom have attended Fever games. Tyrese Haliburton also attended the 2025 WNBA All-Star game in Indianapolis to the joy of fans who had just seen the Pacers’ franchise star suffer a torn Achilles in game 7 of the NBA finals just over a month earlier. Furthermore, in August 2024, when Caitlin Clark broke the WNBA rookie record for most three-pointers in a season during the Fever’s game against the Connecticut Sun, Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson, gymnast Simone Biles, and track star Gabby Thomas were courtside.
The presence of these prominent figures courtside at Fever games, combined with the increased crowds downtown wearing Fever apparel and the representation the Fever had courtside during the Pacers' run to the Finals, demonstrates the rising cultural prominence of women’s basketball in Indiana. A common statement in Indiana basketball culture is “In 49 states, it's basketball, but this is Indiana”. The city’s hosting of the WNBA All-Star game, along with the Fever’s rise through Caitlin Clark and her teammates, proves that in 49 states… It’s just basketball… but in Indiana, our culture is everyone’s basketball, not just the men’s.
Mahir Islam (he/him) is a senior majoring in Political Science with a minor in Criminal Justice. He is a writer for the Campus Citizen. In his free time, Mahir likes to watch football or kdramas and other tv shows.
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