In Tuesday night\u2019s Indiana Fever win over the Seattle Storm, Caitlin Clark was on one. Clark tallied 32 points on 9-14 shooting to go along with 7 assists and 4 rebounds, and the Fever improved to 18-10 on the season.<\/p>\n
Amid the usual litany of off-court storylines, it\u2019s been a superb on-court season for the Fever star.<\/p>\n
Clark is averaging 21.5 points per game, the third-most in the league, and 7.9 assists per game, the second-most in the league. (In other words, no single player creates more on offense than she does).<\/p>\n
She\u2019s also quietly upped her efficiency \u2014 in her rookie season (in which she was named to the All-WNBA First Team), she shot 41.7% from the field and 34.4% from three. In her sophomore season (in which she appeared in just 13 games due to a myriad of injuries), she shot worse, hitting 36.7% of her shot attempts and 27.9% of her threes.<\/p>\n
And, this year, she\u2019s shooting 44.3% from the field and 35.4% from three, both career-highs. While turnovers continue to be an Achilles heel, she\u2019s averaging fewer per game this year (4.7) than in her rookie campaign (5.6).<\/p>\n
Clark now has the 31st-best true shooting percentage in the WNBA (60.3%), which means she\u2019s been more efficient than a long list of top guards that includes Marina Mabrey, Jackie Young, Chelsea Gray, Allisha Gray, Rhyne Howard, Sabrina Ionescu, Veronica Burton, Courtney Williams, and dozens of others. (Kelsey Plum, Sonia Citron, Kelsey Mitchell, Kayla McBride, Paige Bueckers, and Olivia Miles have all been more efficient, however).<\/p>\n
It still feels like there\u2019s another gear Clark can reach from beyond the arc \u2014 she shot 37.7% from three in college \u2014 but even if that doesn\u2019t happen, she\u2019s established herself as one of the league\u2019s best guards just a season removed from a campaign in which she missed time due to groin and ankle injuries.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, the Fever are winning. They currently have the 5th-best record in the WNBA, but they\u2019re only a game and a half removed from second place, where the Las Vegas Aces currently sit. They have the second-highest point differential in the league (+6), which trails only the Minnesota Lynx. They\u2019re averaging 95.8 points per game, which is 4 more points than the team with the next-highest points per game average (Minnesota).<\/p>\n
Clark is still just 24 years old \u2014 and will likely get a lot better before she peaks. But, as strange as it is to say about the most polarizing player in basketball, she\u2019s quietly already having a career year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Tuesday night\u2019s Indiana Fever win over the Seattle Storm, Caitlin Clark was on one. Clark tallied 32…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-791679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791679","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=791679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}