The magic number at Gainbridge Fieldhouse when the turnstiles stop clicking is 17,274. Sellout. Less than half-way through the WNBA season if the Indiana Fever draw fewer fans than that to a game it’s now disappointing.

What was once aspirational, has become commonplace. Whenever the Fever toss a ball up for an opening tipoff, it is routine for a sellout crowd to cheer. Even more remarkable for a team that has foundered at the bottom of the league for several years is how the Fever has become the hottest ticket in sports this summer.

Wherever Indiana plays, crowds follow. Call it the Caitlin Clark Eras Tour. Clark has become the Pied Piper of a new generation of women’s basketball fans. And in many cases, it is a young generation, children of elementary school age who want to see Caitlin and whose parents oblige.

You’ve got to work at obtaining seats to games in Indianapolis, but good luck with getting seats at all in other W cities. Just the other night, when the Fever played the Atlanta Dream, 17,575 fans filled the State Farm Arena. The previous record for a Dream game was about 6,000 fewer, in 2008.

Sunday, when the Fever played at the Chicago Sky, ticket prices averaged $358 and it was another sellout. And that was for a regular-season game in mid-afternoon that was available on ESPN nationally.

A recent hallmark of Fever home games is handmade signs begging TV cameras, or the in-house scoreboard, to show them. Besides expressing love for Clark, specifically, and the Fever generally, some contain messages noting the fan has traveled from Florida to see Caitlin play in Indiana, or from New York.

All of this phenomenal attention was being showered on Clark and the Fever even when the team was being slapped around regularly by the Connecticut Sun and the New York Liberty and dropped to the bottom of the league. Not now. The Fever improved from 2-9 to 7-11, seemingly overnight.

Clark, the 6-foot guard, packed her credentials in her backpack after breaking NCAA scoring and assists records at Iowa University. There were legit reasons why she was the No. 1 overall draft pick in April.

What was unexpected was the carry-on effect of booming crowds. Asked last week what it was like to always play in front of full houses, Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell half-jokingly said, “I blame Caitlin.”

Coach Christie Sides, and the players, also feel as if they are riding a wave of fresh enthusiasm for women’s sports, that they are in the forefront of a movement that has been decades in the making to reward first-class women athletes with rich sponsorship deals and appreciation for their talents.

Women in their 20s now are starting to realize how good they have it the way people are caring so deeply about what they do on the court instead of playing in echoing empty arenas, and now with young fans spending allowances on their jerseys.

Clark has already lived through a somewhat more contained version of this life under the microscope since her college team was greeted similarly her senior year. Full houses? Sure.

“That’s energy we feed off as a team,” Clark said. “It’s fun getting to play in front of these type of environments, when we’re here (Indianapolis) or whether we’re on the road. The crowds have been just absolutely incredible.”

College was good practice for becoming an instant icon in the W. There has been some jealousy aimed at Clark’s wide embrace from star players who can say, “Hey, we’ve been here all along” or “I’m better than she is,” or that Clark is being deified because she is white.

The pettiness is out there in the ether, especially if Clark has an off-game, but she has knocked down any talk of racism or comments about gender orientation and repeatedly calmly seeks to keep all discussion on a high plane and repeatedly, in various ways, says, “I’m here to play basketball.”

Of course, that is not how the Internet works. It is a prowling monster waiting to pounce on any stray remark, or in the case when there isn’t even one, pump up the volume on something said with a totally different inflection.

It was grand television when Indiana swimmer and Olympic gold medalist Lilly King stepped out of the pool at the U.S. Trials for Paris at Lucas Oil Stadium and her boyfriend proposed and she giddily accepted. If that had been Clark it would have broken the Internet.

Clark has committed too many turnovers, but is averaging about 17 points, 7 assists and 5 rebounds a game, statistics worthy of All-Star attention and production worthy of watching. Which feverish Fever fans certainly will continue to do.