Caitlin Clark timeline

Indiana’s next Caitlin Clark checkpoint is six days after camp opens: the Fever are scheduled to play their first preseason game on April 25 at Barclays Center against the New York Liberty, then open the regular season at home on May 9 against the Dallas Wings. (fever.wnba.com) (wings.wnba.com) That short runway starts with training camp on April 19, which means Indiana will go from draft night to live games in less than two weeks. The Women’s National Basketball Association lists May 8 as the leaguewide opening night, with Indiana’s first game landing on May 9. (indystar.com) (wnba.com) The roster is still unusually bare for a team built around a superstar guard and a former No. 1 pick in the post. IndyStar reported this week that Indiana had only three players under contract for 2026 because the new labor deal pushed most veterans into free agency at the same time. (indystar.com) Those three are Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston, and Makayla Timpson, so the front office is not tweaking around the edges. It is rebuilding most of the house while keeping the two main load-bearing walls in place. (indystar.com) The next tool for that rebuild is the 2026 Women’s National Basketball Association Draft on April 13, where Indiana owns the No. 10 pick in a 15-team first round. Indiana was not in the lottery because it reached the 2025 semifinals, so its draft slot sits in the back half of the round. (wnba.com) (indystar.com) Local draft boards say Indiana is looking for defense on the perimeter, not another ball-dominant scorer. IndyStar’s latest mock draft linked the Fever to Shyanne Sellers of Maryland, a 6-foot-2 guard who spent Clark’s college years chasing top backcourts and guarding multiple positions. (indystar.com) Indiana’s preseason is also bigger than the usual two-game tune-up. After New York on April 25 and Dallas on April 30, the Fever added a May 2 home game against the Nigeria women’s national team at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. (fever.wnba.com 1) (fever.wnba.com 2) Off the court, Clark’s paycheck is changing almost as fast as Indiana’s roster. The Women’s National Basketball Association and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association announced a new collective bargaining agreement on March 20 that lifts the team salary cap to $7 million in 2026 from $1.5 million in 2025. (wnba.com) That cap jump is why projections for Clark’s salary moved from rookie-scale money to more than half a million dollars. Yahoo Sports and other outlets reported that Clark, who made about $78,000 in 2025, is now projected around $530,000 for 2026 under the new rules. (sports.yahoo.com) (sportingnews.com) Teams are already pricing in the Clark effect on the gate. Washington scheduled three home games against Indiana in 2026, and the Mystics’ official schedule shows those meetings on June 11, July 28, and August 28. (mystics.wnba.com) (sports.yahoo.com) So the next month is not one story but four stories stacked on top of each other: a draft on April 13, camp on April 19, preseason starting April 25, and Clark’s third regular season opening on May 9. By then, Indiana will have shown whether it spent this strange, wide-open offseason building a contender or just clearing space around its two stars. (wnba.com) (indystar.com)