By The Numbers: A'ja Wilson, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark re-writing WNBA history

Over a lifespan, there are moments that can be pointed to as utterly transformative to ourselves or the world around us. Lives are measured in years but built in single seconds. 

That philosophy can be applied to much more specific entities — like (spoiler alert) the ninth episode of the first season of Game of Thrones forever changing television by killing the main character, or more recently, Charli XCX dropping BRAT, changing not only the music industry but summer as a whole over the course of only 41 minutes, 30 seconds. 

In this case, it’s taken less than a single season of basketball for the WNBA to transform completely. Years from now, people will look back on the league as having two very distinct periods: Before and after 2024. 

History books have been completely re-written this season, with the headline-snatching trio of A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark seemingly never skipping a day when it comes to setting new benchmarks. 

Wilson, the prohibitive favourite for MVP, is on pace to put up single the greatest WNBA season of all time, while Reese and Clark have been as advertised, setting the league ablaze right from the jump to completely alter the rookie landscape. 

Names atop leaderboards don’t last forever, and all the records set this year will likely be broken sooner or later. But 2024 will be the year that the WNBA was forever changed. Here’s a closer statistical look at how historical and transformative this season has been. 

1 - The number of WNBA players to be named player of the month as a rookie. Caitlin Clark stands alone. After a stellar month of August that saw Clark average 24.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 8.5 assists and 1.0 steals per game while shooting 46.9 per cent from the field and 37.3 per cent from deep, she became the first and only rookie to hoist the monthly award. She’s also only the third player in the NBA or WNBA to do so, joining Larry Bird in Feb. 1980 and Kelvin Ransey in March 1981.  

7 - Clark has seven 20-point, 10-assist games this season. Only two players have more, Diana Taurasi with nine (559 games played) and Courtney Vandersloot (422 games played). A reminder: Clark has only played 34 games. Her ability to run an offence at this point in her career has been peerless so far. 

8 - That ability to run the Fever offence has already paid dividends for the franchise, as Indiana snapped an eight-year playoff drought by booking a ticket to the big dance. The Fever currently sit at 18-16, good for third in the Eastern Conference and sixth overall in the league. They're also 7-1 since the all-star break, the best mark in the league in that span.

11 - Though Angel Reese’s double-double prowess has been the talk of the town (and for good reason, as we’ll get into later), Clark has been setting records of her own, with her 11 point-assist double-doubles demolishing the previous rookie record of three set by WNBA legend Sue Bird in 2002. She’s also the single-season leader in double-doubles by a guard with 13 and counting.

12 - Maya Moore set the record for most 30+ point games in a season with 12 such outings in 2014. A’ja Wilson seems destined to break that record, sitting at 11 with seven games to go. Her recent numbers certainly indicate history is on the horizon, as she’s averaging 34.8 points per game over her last four, with two 40+ points games. 

19 - On July 17 against the Dallas Wings, Clark broke the single-game assist record, diming up her Fever teammates 19 times. She also scored a breezy 24 points on 52.6 per cent from the field that game. No big deal. 

20 - Clark might be averaging 18.9 points a game, the ninth-most in the WNBA, but somehow she has yet to shoot the ball more than 20 times in a single game. Though her surface-level 42.5 field goal percentage and 34.3 three-point percentage might not be outstanding, she's found ways to rack up points without costing her team possessions — through her stellar free-throw shooting (90 per cent on 4.4 attempts per game) or insistence on the long-ball (league-leading 297 three-point attempts).

28 - Angel Reese is only three double-doubles away from tying the all-time record of 28 set by Alyssa Thomas in 2023. Having already set the consecutive double-double record at 15 games and with 10 double-doubles in her last 11 games, her name is likely to sit atop that list by season’s end. She has already beat the previous rookie double-double record of 22 set by Tina Charles in 2010 and is the first-ever rookie to record a double-double in the All-Star game.

34 - Caitlin Clark became the fastest player in WNBA history to hit 100 3-pointers, accomplishing the feat in 34 games by shooting 8.7 threes a game and hitting 3.0, a 34.3 per cent clip. She’s also the first-ever rookie to record 100 three-pointers in a single season. 

36.68 - Wilson is on pace to have the best season of all time by player efficiency rating (PER), with a ridiculous mark of 36.68. For context, Nikola Jokic’s MVP 2021-22 season came in at a 32.85 PER, the highest-ever mark in the NBA. The 3.83-point gap between Jokic's season and Wilson's is the same as the gap between Jokic and 54th place on the all-time NBA list — Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 2022-23 season (29.01). 

99.63 - With her second triple-double coming in Wednesday's game against the L.A. Sparks, Clark notched more triple-doubles than 99.63 per cent of all WNBA players. She’s also the only rookie in WNBA history to put up a triple-double. 

190 - Angel Reese’s height in centimetres, making her the second shortest player in WNBA history to lead the league in rebounding behind six-time All-Star Chamique Holdsclaw (188cm), who averaged 11.6 RPG in 2002. Holdsclaw was in her fourth WNBA season.

316 - 2023 was a historic season for assists, with Alyssa Thomas of the Connecticut Sun snatching the all-time top spot with 316. Close behind was Courtney Vandersloot with 314 and Chelsea Gray came in at fourth with 291. All those marks are likely to get taken down a notch by the end of this season as Clark enters Friday’s game against the Minnesota Lynx with 286 assists, only 30 behind the all-time number. With six games to go, she only needs to average five a game to break the record. For good measure, she’s currently averaging a league-leading (obviously) 8.4 a night and the rest of the Fever offence has shown no signs of slowing down, making the most of her unparalleled playmaking. 

434 - As of Friday, Angel Reese is sitting at 434 rebounds, already eclipsing the previous single-season record of 404 boards set by Sylvia Fowles in 2018. With seven games to go, she only needs to grab 9.42 per game the rest of the way to break the 500-rebound threshold. Should be easy enough if she continues to pick up rebounds at a 13.2 per-game clip. 

939 - Like with assists, scoring hit record marks in the 2023 campaign as Jewell Loyd, Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson all set top-three marks all-time in a single season. Loyd took the top spot with 939 points, but she without a doubt won’t be there for long. Wilson is coming for the record and is only 30 points away, sitting at 909 with seven games to go. The 1000-point threshold will also likely be broken, as Wilson needs to only average 13 points per game to reach the four-digit mark. Just to prove how dominant Wilson has been this year, the next closest mark in 2024 is Kahleah Copper with 756 points. There is no better player in women’s basketball.

20,366 - On July 2, 2024, the game between Wilson’s Las Vegas Aces and Clark’s Fever in Vegas saw a crowd of 20,366, the most in the history of T-Mobile Arena and the most for a WNBA game since 1999. They were only 308 short of the 20,674 record set in an outing between the Washington Mystics and Cleveland Rockers in 1999.  

536,262 - The Indiana Fever have already set the WNBA attendance record, with 536,262 fans (and counting) attending home or away games this season to catch a glimpse of the league-altering Clark. But it isn’t just the Fever seeing those boosts, as league-wide, attendance is up 44 per cent since 2023 and up 18 per cent if you discount all Fever games. The game continues to grow. 

Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis has been an electric factory, as the arena is seeing an average of 15,772 fans in attendance per game, blowing last season’s average of 5,699 out of the water. For context, the Eastern Conference finalists Indiana Pacers averaged 16,526 fans per game.