WNBA rules Caitlin Clark's 31-foot game-winner legally expunges her missed free throws
BY: @sports_correspondentJUN 09, 2026
Following a rough stretch for the Indiana Fever, league officials confirmed Monday that Clark’s deep three-pointer mathematically overrides any fundamentally unsound basketball played earlier in the game.
The WNBA’s competition committee issued a memo clarifying the league's scoring rules, noting that heavily contested shots from beyond the logo inherently generate enough social media impressions to void up to four missed 15-footers. Clark, who missed crucial free throws down the stretch and briefly appeared to doom the Fever to another loss, utilized the 31-foot loophole with 1.2 seconds left to successfully launder her shooting percentage before the final buzzer.
An uncontested free throw simply does not offer the return on investment our broadcast partners expect in the modern game. While we appreciate the theoretical value of a free point, a 31-foot buzzer-beater perfectly aligns with our core objective of producing highly monetizable, zero-context highlight packages. Frankly, making the free throws would have been a breach of her brand guidelines.