Since Caitlin Clark entered the WNBA last year, a total of 60 logo shots have swished through the nylon. She has accounted for 22 of them, three of which came in quick succession against the New York Liberty on Saturday.
It was a nine-point, 43-second flurry of long-shot 3s, channeling both Reggie Miller and Tyrese Haliburton, sending Gainbridge Fieldhouse into a frenzy after her 19-day absence due to a quad injury.
HerHoopsStats started collecting data on logo 3s (attempts made from 30-47 feet) in 2018, but in just 45 games, Clark has already logged more than anyone else.
More than her progenitor, Sabrina Ionescu, who has 19 (one of which came on Saturday). More than DeWanna Bonner, who has 17. More than Diana Taurasi, who has eight. It’s not just the distance but the way she dribbles into them, making the brazen look casual.
Far from being rusty, Clark exploded Saturday like a shaken bottle of champagne left in the fridge too long. She finished with 32 points, nine assists, and eight rebounds while handing the Liberty their first loss of the season. Most impressive of all, she tied a career high with seven 3s, six of them in close proximity to four different logos. Only three were considered beyond 30 feet, but even that is the most ever by a single player in a single game.
Numbers and tracking data can be finicky, but they tell a story our eyes can confirm: Clark does things nobody else can do and is doing them earlier in her career. Only one other player, Candace Parker, has ever put up 32 points, nine assists, and eight rebounds in a W game before. Parker, a living legend, was 32 when she did it. Clark is 23, just a quarter of the way into her second season.
This is why Indiana accelerated its rebuild in free agency this offseason, why it’s building a $78 million practice facility, and why it swapped Christie Sides for a decorated future Hall of Famer in the coach’s seat.
After a rickety, absence-riddled beginning to the season, the Fever are just 5-5, with an uphill climb to reach the level of the healthy Liberty—who were out two key starters in Jonquel Jones and Leonie Fiebich on Saturday—and Minnesota Lynx. Napheesa Collier, averaging a league-leading 26.1 points on absurd 53/44/93 splits, has undeniably been the world’s best player. But Clark’s emphatic return was a reminder that an MVP run, and even a title, remains possible this year, even—hell, especially—if it’s a long shot.
Clark’s teams have a knack for developing rapid in-season chemistry, dating back to her time at Iowa. While Indy is just .500 now, there are still three months before the postseason even begins. Last year’s Fever infamously began the season 1-8 before their improbable playoff run.
Despite the injury, Clark looks sharper than she did a few weeks ago, using her time off to see the floor from a coach’s perspective. Clark’s last game before her return was also against the Liberty, but her performance couldn’t have been more different. In their first matchup, the Liberty forced Clark into nine missed triples and a staggering 10 turnovers, including a game-winning, expertly scouted final strip by Natasha Cloud, a sturdy, experienced, quick-thinking, and quick-moving defender almost lab-designed to impede the Fever’s star.
Cloud knew exactly what Clark wanted to do coming off the screen: cross over, step back to the left, and shoot. So did the rest of her Liberty teammates, who forced Clark to shoot going to the right all night.
The Liberty got the best of the Fever in that clash, but Clark got her revenge this weekend with the right adjustment: She set up her logo triples with drives.
In the first quarter Saturday, after getting switched onto Kennedy Burke, who was funneling her to the right, Clark could have opened the game with a stepback. But she used an in-and-out dribble (an early-season favorite, thus far) to shake Burke before jump-stepping into a floater. Then, she crossed over, got a foot into the paint, evaded the help with a spin move, and drove into an and-1 banker on Rebekah Gardner—a succession of moves that simply was not in her bag last season.
The threat of Clark getting into the paint eventually opened everything up from deep. On Clark’s first logo 3, Marine Johannes had no choice but to give her space. On her second, a transition bomb with all her momentum going forward, Cloud was literally running backward. On the third, her patented lefty stepback, Clark’s rhythm rendered the defense irrelevant. Later in the first, it was her own drive—and a serious miscommunication by New York—that created space for her most open triple of the night.
By the end of the half, she had reduced the game’s most decorated active player, in the guts of another title hunt, to awed laughter. The Liberty’s head coach, Sandy Brondello, could only applaud.
Saturday’s return offered the full gamut of the Caitlin Clark experience. She makes you feel everything: the genius and the madness, the breathtaking highs and the stomach-dropping lows. Seven 3s, sure, but seven turnovers too.
Clark sees things nobody else can. Sometimes she also sees things that aren’t there. There are times when you can feel the chaos she creates enveloping her: the sloppy turnover with 15.1 seconds left in the first quarter, when she would have been better suited dribbling out the shot clock; an impossible skip pass to Sophie Cunningham in the fourth quarter, when another shooter in Damiris Dantas was wide open.
“Maybe I’ll introduce her to DD in the locker room,” Fever coach Stephanie White quipped after the game, adding, “We have the conversation about not making the home-run play, just making the easy one, and she managed the game impeccably from there on out.”
A show-woman at heart, she sometimes plays to the crowd more than to the needs of the game. It’s a tough job—being the musician and the orchestra conductor all at once—but she’s figuring it out.
After the Fever held the lead at the half, the Liberty opened the second on a 7-0 run, capitalizing on missed shots and turnovers. Things could have snowballed when Breanna Stewart poked away Clark’s pocket pass through traffic, intended for Aliyah Boston. But—after having suffered through a few defense-optional possessions before the turnover—she snatched the momentum back, sprinting down the floor and stripping Stewart to make up for her mistake. Clark doesn’t always need a logo bomb or pass through traffic to make her presence known.
From there, the Fever turned it on defensively and made a tactical discovery while pulling away.
“When we came off the ball screen, they weren’t giving up the pocket as much,” Clark said after the game. “And I think that’s where a few of my turnovers came, as I was used to AB being open directly in the pocket. But then it was the spray on the weak side. Lexie [Hull] had a couple. [Kelsey Mitchell] had a couple. Once we really figured that out, we took advantage of what they were giving us.”
New York wouldn’t score for the next four minutes, while the Fever rattled off 19 uninterrupted points. What started off as a Caitlin bonanza in the first quarter morphed into a complete game, with Indiana maximizing the attention her presence demands, hitting nine 3s in the second half.
In that sense, the difficulty of guarding Clark inside-out is reflected on the rest of the roster. Clark’s 3s rule SportsCenter, but the Fever critically lead the WNBA in points in the paint. When they’re hitting the right notes at the right time, guarding both is borderline impossible.
New York played with the resolve and equanimity of a champion. It strategized and recalibrated. Clark simply had more answers that afternoon, and she had them in real time, helping Indiana put up 102 points on the stingiest defense in the WNBA.
“That’s kind of where we grew today,” Clark said. “In the past, that’s kind of where we would crumble. But today, we really stuck together. We went on our own run.”
The Fever will have to continue to improve on the fly, because practice time will be rare for the rest of the month. They play six games in the next 10 days, capped off by a highly anticipated matchup against Paige Bueckers on June 27, which comes on the second night of a back-to-back.
After a brief hiatus, the best show in basketball is back, and she’s only getting better.
