The NBA struck gold at its All-Star Saturday Night in 2024 by putting on a shooting competition between Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu. While the league has come under criticism for its Saturday slate growing a bit stale — in large part due to a less than stellar Dunk Contest field most years — the competition between Curry and Ionescu was legitimately great, with the Golden State Warriors star just coming out on top.
The hope, per reports, was that the league would be able to build on this and expand the competition for All-Star in San Francisco this year, with the ideal field featuring Curry, Ionescu, Klay Thompson, and Caitlin Clark. But unfortunately, that will not happen, as Shams Charania of ESPN brought word on Wednesday that Clark is turning an invitation to participate from the NBA down.
“Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark will not participate in NBA All-Star special 3-point shootout in San Francisco and ‘wants her first three-point contest to be at WNBA All-Star in Indianapolis this summer,’ her representatives at Excel Sports said today,” Charania posted to his Twitter account.
The news comes one day after Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported that Clark was “disinclined to participate” in the event, citing the fact that the Indiana Fever star would prefer not to shoot off of a rack. It’s a big blow for the NBA, as a shooting competition with those four would be legitimately fantastic, but we’ll see if the league has anything else up its sleeve to get the Splash Brothers, Ionescu, and another W standout together.