{"id":239565,"date":"2025-10-20T22:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/239565\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T22:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:00:08","slug":"fevers-caitlin-clark-is-expected-to-be-better-than-ever-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/239565\/","title":{"rendered":"Fever&#8217;s Caitlin Clark is expected to be better than ever in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hype and attention have followed Caitlin Clark for years &#8212; and while <a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/wnba\/indiana-fever\/news\/caitlin-clarks-coach-reveals-what-she-hates-about-fever-stars-narratives\/a68eae11260d15b253c018c1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Clark&#8217;s head coach doesn&#8217;t like some of the narratives<\/a> around her, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/wnba\/indiana-fever\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Indiana Fever<\/a>&#8216;s star point guard has shown a tremendous capacity to block out the noise and focus on basketball.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Clark did not play a ton of basketball in 2025. She spent much of her second WNBA season injured, finally revealing on Sept. 4 that groin and ankle injuries were not going to allow her to play again. The Fever reached the WNBA semifinals without her and pushed the eventual WNBA champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/wnba\/las-vegas-aces\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Las Vegas Aces<\/a> to the brink before bowing out in a winner-take-all Game 5.<\/p>\n<p>Despite her injury-plagued sophomore season in The W &#8212; and despite a dip in offensive production when she did play &#8212; Clark remains firmly among the MVP favorites entering 2026.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/wnba\/indiana-fever\/news\/fever-predicted-pair-caitlin-clark-sharpshooting-star-indiana\/bf6df5979ee5d14e85b89199\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Fever predicted to pair Caitlin Clark with sharpshooting star from Indiana<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to new odds from <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nj.betmgm.com\/en\/engage\/lan\/geolocator?orh=promo.betmgm.com&amp;wm=7140858\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">BetMGM<\/a>, only Minnesota&#8217;s Napheesa Collier (+230) is a better bet to win WNBA MVP next year than Clark (+300). Clark is ahead of Las Vegas&#8217; A&#8217;ja Wilson (+380), whose four MVP awards are a league record, and well ahead of the rest of the field &#8212; which includes Breanna Stewart, Alyssa Thomas and Paige Bueckers.<\/p>\n<p>After averaging 19.2 points on 41.7 percent shooting in 2024, Clark&#8217;s scoring average dropped to 16.5 points on 36.7 percent shooting in 2025. She also shot just 28 percent from 3-point range after making more than 34 percent of her attempts as a rookie.<\/p>\n<p>Injuries may have played a large role in that. The oddsmakers certainly believe so, creating even more anticipation as to what Clark can achieve with a full offseason and a return to health in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>More WNBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hype and attention have followed Caitlin Clark for years &#8212; and while Clark&#8217;s head coach doesn&#8217;t like some&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-239565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}