Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark will make her first appearance in the annual WNBA 3-Point Contest on Friday.
Clark will join Kelsey Plum and Sonia Citron in competing with former contest winner Sabrina Ionescu and defending champion Allisha Gray for the three-point title at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
Gray will also compete in the Skills Challenge, in which she will compete against Natasha Cloud, Skylar Diggins, Erica Wheeler and Courtney Williams.
The 3-point contest and skills challenge will take place at 8 p.m. ET on Friday ahead of Saturday night’s All-Star Game in Indianapolis.
The skills challenge will feature a timed obstacle course testing skills, including dribbling, passing and a variety of shots, according to the WNBA.
The competition will feature three of the league’s top four assists leaders in Williams, Diggins and Cloud. Wheeler will join in after missing last year’s event due to flight issues.
Gray made history by becoming the first Atlanta Dream player to win an All-Star event, as well as the first WNBA player to win both the 3-point contest and the skills challenge, during the 2024 event.
She heads into the 3-point contest ranked behind only Rhyne Howard, Kayla McBride and fellow competitor Plum for the WNBA lead in three-pointers made.
Gray went 22-for-40 last summer to win the competition. In order to defend her title she will have to outshoot Ionescu, who went 37-for-40 to set a single-round record while winning the 2024 contest.
Ionescu, who did not participate in the 2024 event while preparing to represent Team USA during the 2024 Paris Olympics, is shooting 30.9 percent from deep so far this season for the New York Liberty.
Clark, who set a league rookie record by making 122 three-pointers last season, turned down an opportunity to participate in the 2024 competition because she said she needed a “break” after heading directly from college to the WNBA.
The reigning Rookie of the Year will hope joining in on the 2025 event will help spark a bounce-back from what has so far been an injury-plagued second WNBA season, during which she has shot just 28.9 percent from behind the arc.
Citron will enter the 3-point contest as the lone rookie in the field. She has made 36.3 percent of her shots from deep while attempting 6.2 three-pointers per game as a starter for the Washington Mystics.
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