Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images
Caitlin Clark’s rookie season in the WNBA has exceeded expectations and seen her become of the top players in the league.
INDIANAPOLIS — Fever head coach Christie Sides had a goal in mind for Caitlin Clark heading into the Olympic break. While her point guard was doing so much to lead the Fever statistically, Sides wanted to empower her to become the team’s vocal leader as well.
To do so, she spent practices telling only Clark what she wanted communicated to the rest of the team, forcing the rookie to lead her teammates. Whether it was play calls during scrimmages or informing them of the next drill, it was Clark’s voice the team heard.
The results have been apparent since the restart. The Fever are one of the league’s hottest teams and Clark is at the center of their resurgence. While her efforts are certainly showing up in the box score — she’s averaging 22.6 points, 7.8 assists and 5.4 rebounds on 45.2% shooting since the league returned — they are also showing up in other ways, too.
Her teammate, Kelsey Mitchell, is playing about as well as anyone in the league right now. With her 23 points in Wednesday’s win over the Sun, she became the first player in franchise history with five straight 20-point games.
During that stretch, Clark has taken those lessons learned in practice and applied them to the court, calling plays on the fly to get Mitchell the ball when she gets on hot streaks. It’s what you’d expect of a veteran point guard, yes, but not necessarily from one in the third month of their professional career.
It’s a shining example of how Clark has zoomed right past the checkpoint of a good rookie season and is now a bonafide star. The so-called rookie wall that stops most first-year players by midseason appears to have been nothing more than a hurdle for Clark to leap over.
“I think that Olympic break really helped her out with that rookie wall, her getting that full week off and getting her legs under her,” Sides said before Wednesday’s win. “She just keeps growing and learning the game, her teammates, the style of play we’re trying to play. I love the fact that she’s a playmaker first. That’s where she is. I love that.”
The records are falling by the wayside nightly at this point, many of them having to do with that playmaking. But in the victory over the Sun, Clark also set the rookie 3-point record, going along with her rookie single-game 3-point record set earlier this season.
She also owns the rookie season assists record, as well as the outright single-game WNBA record for assists. If she continues her current pace of 8.1 assists per game, she will break the league’s single-season assists record in the final game of the regular season.
Record-breaking has become commonplace for Clark. It’s led to multiple accolades this season, the most recent seeing her named the first Eastern Conference Player of the Week.
“It’s definitely cool,” Clark said. “It’s definitely a hard award to win, especially in this league whether you’re in the Eastern Conference or the Western Conference…I think, for myself, coming out of the break and really playing aggressive, good basketball is something that I’m proud of and I feel like, as a team, we’ve done that, too.
“I felt I could gain some confidence even going into the break and just being able to carry that once we started playing again. I think I’ve been able to stack some games together,” Clark continued. “Just continuing to find more consistency has been my biggest goal and I think I’ve done a good job of that.”
The Fever’s rise out of the basement of the league and into the thick of the playoffs was not something Clark did on her own. Both Mitchell and Aliyah Boston have won Player of the Week honors this season, too.
But Clark has been the straw stirring the drink throughout. Since the 2-9 start, she’s averaging 19.3 points, 9.1 assists and 6.1 rebounds. That ranks her 10th in the WNBA in points and first in assists.
In that same span, the Fever have the highest offensive rating in the league and only the Liberty and Lynx — two of the top three teams in the league — have better records than Indiana. After being fed to the proverbial wolves to open the year, Clark and the Fever have come out the other side not just better, but one of the best in the league.
The debate is no longer whether Clark is the Rookie of the Year, but instead whether Clark could play her way onto the All-WNBA First Team by season’s end. Few players in the league have the offensive responsibility Clark has this season with the Fever.
Clark currently sits 11th in the league in scoring. However, none of the 10 players above her average even six assists per game, let alone the over eight Clark dishes out per contest. Over the last two months, she is averaging 20.8 points (fifth in the league) and 10.5 assists (first).
And the debate as to whether the Fever will make the postseason for the first time since 2016 has slowly become a debate about how high up the standings the team will finish as the wins keep piling up.
Clark has transformed the Fever franchise and the league as a whole. She’s become one of the faces of the WNBA just 30 games into her career, and it’s no longer just about her popularity or about her being one of the next ones up.
She’s already here.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.
