{"id":840385,"date":"2026-08-01T12:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840385\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T12:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:52:17","slug":"caitlin-clark-is-making-strong-wnba-mvp-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840385\/","title":{"rendered":"Caitlin Clark Is Making Strong WNBA MVP Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5s\">Prior to Friday night&#8217;s Indiana Fever victory over the Portland Fire, ION put a graphic on the screen displaying the top 5 candidates for WNBA MVP. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5v\">It featured A&#8217;ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, Kelsey Mitchell of the Fever, Paige Bueckers of the Dallas Wings, Olivia Miles of the Minnesota Lynx, and Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty. All five are indeed having great seasons and there is nothing wrong with them receiving consideration. But another name must be added to that list, and high up\u2014Caitlin Clark.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I cannot stress how loud I laughed at this graphic shown just now <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/maLoq493dd\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/maLoq493dd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 hawkize (@stillnothawkize) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/stillnothawkize\/status\/2083355840329797744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">August 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"61\">In the game that took place right after the graphic was shown, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/wnba\/fever\/caitlin-clark-triple-double-keeps-fever-winning-streak-going-vs-fire-takeaways-01kyxgygvhjm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Clark registered her fourth career triple-double. <\/a>She scored 26 points to go with 10 rebounds and 10 assists. It continued a torrid streak for Clark who is now averaging 29.4 points and 9 assists across her last five games, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/onsi\/womens-fastbreak\/news\/caitlin-clark-creates-many-more-wnba-records-in-fever-win-vs-storm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with her career-high performance against the Seattle Storm<\/a> on July 17 serving as the catalyst.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"64\">But her complete body of work is also elite. Clark is third overall in points per game (behind only Wilson and Mitchell) at 21.6, and sits in second in assists dishing out 8 a contest (trailing Alyssa Thomas who is averaging 8.3). Not to mention she is doing it very efficiently.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"67\">Clark is shooting a career best 44.6% from the floor and 35.5% from deep, with the degree of difficulty on many of her shots being high considering her average three-point distance is further than anyone else. To put those numbers into perspective, Clark&#8217;s true shooting percentage (which factors in field goal percentage, three-point percentage, and free throw percentage) is 61%. Bueckers is at 60.9% and she is widely lauded for efficiency.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6a\">This all comes as the Fever keep rising in the standings. Indiana has won five games in a row and sits fourth in the league record-wise. Despite working her way back from injury at the beginning of the month, Clark has missed only four games this year, so shouldn&#8217;t be counted out on account of that. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6d\">The Fever feature the best offense in WNBA history up to this point, and Clark is of course the point guard at the helm of that.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6g\">A&#8217;ja Wilson <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/onsi\/womens-fastbreak\/wnba\/2026-wnba-mvp-race-predicting-this-season-s-early-frontrunners-01kvp1259j52\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has been the prohibitive MVP favorite <\/a>all season, and her statistics back that up, as she is averaging 26.4 points to lead the league and grabbing 9.7 rebounds for the defending champs. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/onsi\/womens-fastbreak\/wnba\/wnba-s-caitlin-clark-a-ja-wilson-player-of-the-week-honors-could-preview-mvp-race-01kv8pderrk0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">But Clark is next to her<\/a> when it comes to the odds and her case just continues to get stronger with each subsequent monster performance.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-10\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6j\">She&#8217;ll have a chance to make the MVP conversation around her even louder if the Fever can defeat the league-leading Lynx on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.minutemediacdn.com\/platform\/google_discover_icon.svg\" class=\"shrink-0\"\/>Add us as a preferred source on Google<a aria-label=\"Follow si.com on Google News\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=si.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" class=\"flex h-[30px] w-[30px] shrink-0 items-center justify-center rounded-full bg-primary font-group-large text-sm font-medium text-white transition-colors hover:bg-secondary focus:bg-secondary md:w-auto md:gap-2.5 md:px-4 md:py-[5px]\">Follow<\/a><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to Friday night&#8217;s Indiana Fever victory over the Portland Fire, ION put a graphic on the screen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-840385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}