Caitlin Clark was one of the most exciting prospects to ever enter the WNBA due to her unique skills as a 3-point shooter and playmaker. But through the first month of her rookie season, most of the discussions about the No. 1 overall pick have featured very little actual basketball.
Instead, it's been a parade of controversies regarding how much credit she should receive for elevating the women's game to new heights, how she's being treated by the league and her fellow competitors and whether she should have made Team USA's Olympic squad.
What Clark is doing on the court to start her career should not be overlooked.
Through 13 games, she's averaging 16.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, six assists and 1.5 steals while shooting 33% from 3-point land. Among rookies she is first in scoring, fifth in rebounding, first in assists, second in steals and first in made 3s. When you zoom out, she's 15th in the league in scoring, fourth in assists and second in made 3s.
In a win over the Mystics earlier this month, she went off for 30 points, eight rebounds and six assists while tying the WNBA rookie record for 3-pointers in a game with seven. In the first 27 years of the league's existence, rookies had a 30/5/5 game on only eight occasions -- Clark already has two of them.
Clark joined Sabrina Ionescu as the only players in WNBA history to have 150 points, 50 rebounds and 50 assists in their first 10 games, and she became the fastest player to reach 200 points and 50 assists by doing so through just 12 games. In May, she was named the WNBA's Rookie of the Month.
All of that is not to say Clark has been perfect. She has had some issues adjusting to the increased level of physicality on both sides of the ball and has been turnover prone. Her 10 turnovers in her debut were a record, and she's leading the league at 5.4 per game. The Fever, meanwhile, are in 11th place at 3-10, though that is certainly not all on Clark.
When considering Clark's struggles, and even her success, the way she's being defended must be ackonwledged. As of June 1, Clark had been blitzed (opponent sends both defenders at her after a screen) 57 more times than any other team in the league, let alone other players. She is grabbed and jostled and bumped for 94 feet. At one point during the Fever's loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on May 28, Aari McDonald was so concerned with face-guarding Clark that she forgot about her second free throw attempt.
Aari McDonald was so worried about picking up Caitlin Clark full court that she forgot about her second free throw. 😭pic.twitter.com/rPUykBXxLq
— Complex Sports (@ComplexSports) May 29, 2024
On Sunday, Clark and the Fever will host Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky in the old college rivals' second professional matchup. Of course, it is also the first time the two teams will meet since Chennedy Carter's infamous shoulder check on Clark, which set off so much of the non-basketball discourse.
For everyone's sake, it would be best if the action stayed between the lines this time around.
