Over 17,000 seats to today’s open practice session for the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team were sold out and the footage shows that nearly all of them were occupied. It was an impressive feat for a practice and one that has caused no end of memes.
Since news of the practice sellout first became public, fans have made reference to the great Allen Iverson’s iconic “practice” rant from back in the day.
“Was just told it’s officially a sellout — that’s, like, 17,000 people — for the Iowa and South Carolina open practices today,” The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach wrote on X.
A good portion of the replies and reposts of that post are a combination of gifs of Iverson giving the speech or other people paraphrasing it:
“Not a game. We talking bout practice,” one user wrote.
“Mf-ers are paying to watch practice? We’re talking about PRACTICE?! Not a real game, but practice? Couldn’t be me…” wrote another.
“Not a game, not a game but practice. We talking about practice,” a third wrote.
“Practice…we talkin bout practice??? 19,000 tickets registered for @iowawbb and Gamecocks open practices,” Holly Rowe joked.
The Caitlin Clark Effect is proving to be very, very real. The last two games that she’s played in have both broken records for viewership and set marks that the sport hasn’t seen in decades.
It’s widely expected that tomorrow’s game between the Hawkeyes and the South Carolina Gamecocks will break the mark once again.
With that many people tuning in for a practice, why can’t they break the record again?