After a year of broken records, singular play, unforgiving spotlights, sold-out arenas, occasional growing pains and fierce, unending national discourse, Caitlin Clark is left with the one thing she had been unable to buy over the last year. She finally has some real time off.
The 22-year-old phenom was declared WNBA Rookie of the Year on Thursday. The announcement was somewhat anticlimactic both in that it had been leaked—seemingly first by the WNBA Players’ Association and then by media—and in that it had seemed obvious for weeks. Who else but Clark? Her season came to an end last week after her Indiana Fever were swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the Connecticut Sun. It ended a stretch not quite like anything the sport has seen before.
