Caitlin Clark: Greatness.
The Indiana rookie has cemented her superstar status as the Fever chase down a potential playoff spot.
As the WNBA season began in May?
Caitlin Clark was one of the league’s most curious cases.
Not as a question mark, per se: the first overall pick of the Indiana Fever and having just concluded perhaps the greatest four-year run college basketball had ever seen, she was already a household name, a pop culture fixture, before she even stepped on a professional court.
Her game, the very apex of modern basketball, a guard who, having led the NCAA in scoring and assists both thrice over, had a skill set already so complete, it checked virtually every box of offensive qualifiers: playmaking ability, vision, physical dictation and brilliant shooting - enough so, that she was actively drawing comparisons to NBA legend Stephen Curry.
It wasn’t as though the WNBA or women’s basketball at large hasn’t seen its share of stars, of course. And even through all the noise surrounding Clark, one would be remiss to not consider the possibility that her larger profile, earned though it was, could surpass whatever she did on the court.
Yeah.
So much for that theory.
On Friday night, in the Fever’s 100-81 win over the Chicago Sky? Clark, as she has been all season, was the lynchpin.
With a career-high of 31 points on 8-14 shooting, including hitting five of her nine attempted three-pointers, the all-but-guaranteed Rookie of the Year also dished out twelve assists and picked up four boards in thirty-one minutes of work.
Her 31-point, 12-assist game is the first in WNBA history, per CBS Sports.
It is, in many respects, the exclamation point on her season.
Up against fellow rookie phenom, Chicago’s Angel Reese? Clark left no doubt: in the race between the two for end-of-year honours, she will come away the victor. Now, that isn’t a slight to Reese, who has been incredible in her own right, as she set two all-time season records on Friday night (most double-doubles and most rebounds by a rookie) but Clark’s brilliance has been all-encompassing in a way Reese’s simply hasn’t been.
A pure facilitator, who is leading the league in assists, scorer and play driver, the engine who drives Indiana on the court.
She has set record-after-record this season, more than living up to her billing as the next WNBA star of record: expectations, exceeded.
To her credit however, Clark has done all she can to shift the conversation away from any individual achievements, specifically as the discourse pertains to her and Reese.
Instead, her focus is on the bigger picture - like potentially securing a playoff spot:
We don’t wake up and think about individual awards. I know that’s what all of you think we do. We don’t. That’s what everybody wants to make this about but both of our teams are competing for playoff spots. That’s our main focus.
Our focus is on winning basketball games. It’s as simple as that
So as the Fever continue their post-Olympic break tear, now 5-1 since the hiatus and back to .500 on the year, after a challenging 1-8 start? Their destiny, as it were, is in their hands. To that end, winning helps and with their win on Friday, Indiana has won three in a row (Chicago, in contrast, has now dropped five straight and is seeing their playoff odds continue to diminish).
But however the chips lay when the dust settles this season, Clark will continue to be the star around which both Indiana and the larger WNBA orbit around.
The question is?
Just how far she’ll go.