Caitlin Clark Is Beating LeBron James In Impressive Online Metric
Caitlin Clark will never win an NBA championship, but she's already beating LeBron James in a critically important online metric.
Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes play Colorado in the Sweet 16 this Saturday in the women's NCAA Tournament. The spotlight on her has become blinding.
Whether she wins the championship in her final year or not, she will go down as the greatest women's college player in the history of the sport and the highest-scoring player in major college basketball history.
That got me thinking:
Just how much attention is currently being poured on Clark?
The answer is a lot.
Caitlin Clark is the most famous college basketball player in America. (Photo by Rebecca Gratz/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Caitlin Clark has more online interest than LeBron James.
I hopped on over to Google Trends to figure out one simple question: Is there currently more interest in Caitlin Clark or LeBron James?
The answer stunned me. I truly thought there was no way Clark could be generating more online interest than the four-time NBA champion and Lakers star. I was very wrong.
Below is a graph of interest in Clark (blue) compared to LeBron (red) going back the past month to late February. Online interest for people searching news about her is up 16% over LeBron James.
Caitlin Clark drawing more search interest than LeBron James. (Credit: Google Trends)
Below is a breakdown of every state when it comes to who draws more online interest over the past month.
More states are searching for Caitlin Clark news than LeBron James. (Credit: Google Trends)
Now, what does this mean? Does this mean Caitlin Clark is more popular than LeBron James? Is she a bigger name? No, that's not what it means.
What it really means is that over the past 30 days, the Iowa sensation has driven a lot more interest online when it comes to news than LeBron.
It's not as surprising as you'd think once you break it down. She broke the women's scoring record right at the end of February, Pete Maravich's all-time scoring record in this time window, Iowa won the B1G women's tournament and she's making an NCAA Tournament run. LeBron James is……just continuing to be LeBron James.
Caitlin Clark is a star women's basketball player. (Photo by Bailey Hillesheim/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
What will be the most interesting trend to follow is what kind of attention Clark continues to get once she goes pro. Can she keep the momentum high? We'll see, but there's no question she'll be the most famous player in the league as soon as she enters it.