Start with a full-court pass. Start with something almost no one else could see. Start with her feet just past the logo, finding her way out of a trap, sinking a signature bucket. Start with her scrambling past a defender, catching and shooting from the corner, her body falling away in a shot that is miraculously good enough to make up for all of the mechanical rules it breaks.
Or realize that it does not particularly matter where you start. Therein lies the beauty of Caitlin Clark: All roads lead to potential highlights. (Each of the above examples, plus a few more, came from one game earlier this week, when Clark’s Indiana Fever bested the Atlanta Dream by an overtime score of 104-100.)
As the WNBA’s regular season heads into its final stretch, Clark is wrapping up a rookie campaign not quite like any that have come before. After a singular college career, she entered the league under the weight of tremendous expectations, frequently positioned not so much as a basketball player but as a cultural phenomenon unto herself. That dynamic came with intense scrutiny and coverage to match, including plenty from people and places who had rarely shown previous interest in women’s basketball—or women or basketball, for that matter. The cumulative effect could be staggering. Yet she has ultimately done something that previously seemed all but impossible given the context.
Clark has played to match the hype.
The national discourse around the 22-year-old sometimes drifted so far afield of basketball that it could feel totally divorced from what she was actually doing on the court. First there was discussion of her primarily as marketing engine or economic force. (Both of which she has been: WNBA attendance, viewership and merchandise sales have spiked, with a consistent focal point in Clark. The Fever have seen explosive growth in everything from tickets and jerseys to mascot bookings and beer sales.) And then was discussion of her as a symbol in a dizzying array of culture wars, repeatedly drafted into discussions only tangentially related to her, if at all. What she herself actually said or did seemed to matter little here: Fires raged around projections and loose abstractions. At least one book is being written about the impact of her summer. It’s hardly surprising that when Clark plays her final contest of the regular season on the road in Washington, D.C., on Sep. 19, lawmakers from both parties will be using the game as a fundraiser.
But underneath all of that conversation, of course, Clark was hooping. And on the other side of some early growing pains—especially during a brutal opening stretch of schedule for Indiana—she has become simply too good to ignore. Put aside everything off the court for a moment. Clark has started to grow into the player that was promised.
The core of that is still what made her so effective in college at Iowa. It’s her shooting range, yes, but it’s more so her vision and her ability to facilitate. She’s no longer as vexed by professional defenses as she was in her first weeks in the league. The same traps and blitzes that stymied her in the early going no longer prove quite so effective. Clark returned after the Olympic break notably stronger and smarter on the floor. The result is what has become a historically potent offensive campaign: No one has ever scored this much while assisting this much. No player in WNBA history has ever averaged 15 points and eight assists per game for a season. (Connecticut Sun forward Alyssa Thomas came very close last year, with 15.5 and 7.9, respectively.) Yet now Clark is clearing that comfortably, with 19.1 and 8.4, positioning herself not just for rookie records but for league ones. She could set the single-season mark for assists as soon as Friday.
It’s helped earn a chance to play into October. That, of course, has required far more from Indiana than just Clark.
A Fever squad that originally looked stiff and disjointed has found its identity over the last few weeks. They’ve picked up the pace and ditched much of their reliance on forced set plays. Kelsey Mitchell is playing some of the best basketball of her career. Aliyah Boston, the 2023 Rookie of the Year, has grown more assertive in the paint and found her chemistry with Clark. Head coach Christie Sides has found rotations that work—more of Lexie Hull, who has established herself on the wing, less of Kristy Wallace—and has shown a greater willingness to make adjustments. And a key part of that growth for the group across the board has been Clark, at point guard, setting up everyone to play their best.
The backcourt pairing of Clark and Mitchell has recently looked among the best in the WNBA.
“Me and Caitlin, as well as our group, I think we just found a way,” Mitchell told the Associated Press earlier this month. “I think our pace is kind of setting us apart from a lot of different teams. Because you like to get the ball up and down the court at such a high pace. And I think the way that we play, it just makes our games thrive even more.”
This puts the Fever in the playoffs for the first time since 2016. A path out of the first round will be difficult. (It lies through either Minnesota or Connecticut—both fierce teams who’ve handled Indiana capably this year.) But it feels striking here that any such potential exists at all, especially considering how this group looked over the opening weeks of the season, when they started 3-10.
“I feel like any team that goes through adversity grows together, and definitely with our schedule at the start, we were forced to kind of build that quickly,” Lexie Hull told SI in June. “Hopefully, by the end of the season, we’ll be able to look at that start and be like, That helped prepare us for the end… You’re forced to kind of block out the noise. Everyone has an opinion. And so it’s trying just to not let that creep in and stay strong together and have our circle be really tight.”
The noise has only increased in the months since. But so has the level of performance at its center. The question of whether Clark’s might be the best rookie season ever is tricky—Candace Parker has an unassailable spot in the record books as the only player to win Rookie of the Year in the same year as MVP, but given the historic play of Las Vegas Aces forward and presumptive MVP A’ja Wilson, that fate is unlikely for Clark. There have been past rookies who scored more (Seimone Augustus) and certainly those who were far stronger defenders (Tamika Catchings). Clark still has a few games yet to build her case. But she’s already established a rookie season that has felt singular in its gravitational pull.
Clark has made the adjustment. It’s now up to everyone else to adjust to Clark.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Caitlin Clark Has Lived Up to the Hype.
