Caitlin Clark scored 18 points but the Indiana Fever fell 94-83 to A'ja Wilson's 36-point explosion in a decisive Game 3 elimination in Las Vegas.
Page S2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 2 October 2026
WNBA crowns Reese defensive player of year same night Wilson's defense ends Clark's season, Dream still 30-14.
Hot Mic Moment
This reporter would like it noted, mic allegedly off, that the credentialed press corps drawing broadcast paychecks off these games is the same body filling out the ballots that crown its own awards, and this network does not call that a conflict of interest. A sports page grading its own homework is how campaign finance got its reputation in the first place, and this reporter is asking, plainly, for a transfer to the political desk before sundown.
Gushis side
This reporter congratulates Angel Reese, duly voted the WNBA's Defensive Player of the Year on what this desk is reliably informed were forty-one media ballots, a fine trophy for any young lady patrolling the paint in Atlanta.
The clock ran out on Caitlin Clark's season that same night in Indianapolis, where A'ja Wilson shut the door on the Fever to close the series.
Only three weeks earlier the two of them had stood together at the FIBA World Cup insisting there was no feud to sell, a truce this reporter is delighted to report held.
Nine days before Las Vegas ended it, the Fever had put together their own statement, handing the league-best Minnesota Lynx their largest deficit of the season so far in the final home date, Clark flirting with a triple-double.
Trudyher side
Forty-six ballots, Gus, not forty-one — Fox News had the number October 1st, the same piece wondering whether the league was just rewarding its own hype. Get the box score before the bouquet.
Las Vegas, not Indianapolis — the Fever were the visitors. Wilson dropped 36, the final was 94 to 83, and Clark played through a bloodied mouth for eighteen points before the horn. Fox News had the dateline plain as day on October 2nd.
September 10th, the Morning Star had the photo — both of them call the rivalry overblown. Worth asking who keeps selling it anyway.
September 23rd, same building — the league's best team handed its largest deficit of the year, and the kid still flirting with a triple-double. That's a building you fill with hype, not against it.
Thirty and fourteen in July, thirty and fourteen in September, and forty-six people found improvement anyway. Go lie down, sugar.
Settle down about the conspiracy — nobody's grading homework in secret here. But you tripped into the real story: Fox News asked this exact question on October 1st, out loud, under its own byline — whether the WNBA's own media just rewarded the hype it keeps insisting it's trying to quiet.
“They hand out the defense trophy the same night actual defense ends a season, and the record that earned it hasn't moved all year — forty-six voters found improvement where the scoreboard found none. That's the con: the league says it wants less hype, then writes the hype a trophy. Somebody's selling tickets off a storyline nobody in that building can actually defend.”
“Look, defense doesn't show up in a box score the way points do, that's the whole case for advanced metrics, and nobody's rigging anything — did I say rigging? Forget I said that — forty-six media members just see what the stat sheet misses. The record held steady because the Dream were already good, that's not the league's fault, that's just basketball.”
The receipts
Angel Reese earned 46 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year votes, but the Atlanta Dream's unchanged 30-14 record raises some serious questions.
· Clark and Reese unite during World Cup to silence rivalry talk from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever drop statement win on top-seeded Lynx in final home game from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.