Maybe in May and perhaps even in June or July, it was a debate as to who should be WNBA Rookie of the Year – Indiana’s Caitlin Clark or Chicago’s Angel Reese.
It no longer can be considered up for question. Clark is your choice, and it’s not close. Reese is having a good year and might end up being the best rebounder in league history before she unlaces her sneakers, but Clark’s impact is irrefutable.
Consider that the Fever, who have been running brutal for close to a decade, are not only a playoff team but one with a chance to do serious damage. Tuesday night losses by Chicago and Atlanta officially punched their ticket.
Wednesday night’s 93-86 win over Los Angeles served as a coronation of sorts for Clark and her team on the rise. Indiana didn’t play its best but still won its fifth straight game and is 18-16, which doesn’t sound like a big deal until you realize it’s been years since this team has been on the north side of .500 at any point, let alone 34 games into a 40-game season.
Clark’s contribution? Oh, just a 24-point, 10-rebound, 10-assist triple-double—her second of the year. She’s averaging 18.9 ppg, 8.4 assists and 5.8 rebounds, and her shooting percentage has crawled up to 42.5 after being in the 30s early in the year when the Fever were losing and the skeptics were enjoying a field day.
Clark’s reaction to her contribution?
“Of course, I knew,” she said of the triple-double. “But honestly, like, we were just trying to get stops.”
It’s not just that Clark racks up video game numbers on a consistent basis. It’s that she maintains such a laser focus on winning games. That she’s done this under the highest-powered microscope in WNBA history—face it, most of the people following the league now couldn’t have named five players when it first started in 1997—is even more remarkable.
Face it, the league prostituted her to a certain extent. It built its national TV package around her instead of veteran superteams like Las Vegas and New York. It larded the Fever’s early schedule with matchups against top teams when Clark was learning the pro game and her teammates at once, for ratings purposes.
Indiana’s 1-8 start was predictable, yet the Twitter experts still fired away, ignoring the two things Clark needed: reps and rest.
Huh? How do you get reps and rest at once? Follow along here.
There’s nothing like repetition as a learning tool. Playing and failing against the top teams early helped Clark and her teammates learned what they needed to do to win. A 14-6 record in the last 20 games is proof they’ve done that.
And the rest part of the equation? Give U.S. Olympic coach Cheryl Reeve some credit for this. Reeve was barbecued for leaving Clark off the Olympic team. Besides the fact that at the time the team was selected, Clark really wasn’t a great fit for it, Reeve’s squad won in Paris anyway. As a coach told me one time after an overtime win in the NCAA Tournament, “I don’t autopsy the wins in March.”
Also, even the best basketball players, the ones who love to play the most, need a break. Consider that Clark started practice for her last season at Iowa in late September 2023 and essentially had played or practiced without a real break until the WNBA’s month-long sabbatical for the Paris Games.
It’s not a coincidence that her best basketball—and her team’s best basketball—has come after a month of rest. And now we’ll get to see Caitlin Clark play playoff games later this month.
If it’s anything like her NCAA Tournament games at Iowa, I have one piece of advice for you.
Grab the popcorn, find a TV, sit back, and watch the show. It won’t disappoint.
