During the Indiana Fever’s loss to the Seattle Storm on June 27, Caitlin Clark ran 16 pick-and-rolls. She was trapped on 10 of them. Such defensive attention has been the norm for the No. 1 overall pick, who has spent the first half of her rookie season trying to adjust to the professional game while being guarded like one of the best players in the WNBA.
“It’s a women’s game now,” Fever veteran Erica Wheeler said. “It’s not college anymore. We’re a lot faster and stronger… In the beginning she struggled a little bit because she didn’t know what the physicality was like, but now she knows. She’s reading the game way better, and as you can see the numbers don’t lie.”
Through 22 games, Clark is averaging 16.1 points, 6.0 rebounds and 7.4 assists, which would make her the fourth player — and first rookie — with a 15/5/5 season. She leads all rookies in scoring and assists, is second in the league in the latter category, and needed just 20 games to set the Fever’s rookie assist record. Recently, she became the first rookie ever to record a triple-double.
Clark can truly do it all on the offensive end, but while her long-range 3-point shooting is her “super power,” as Steph Curry put it earlier this year, her playmaking is arguably the most exciting aspect of her game.