Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever will visit the Connecticut Sun tonight, getting another crack at one of the league’s top contenders after falling to them twice in the past month.
The Fever’s early struggles have been well documented, but they’ve actually won two of their last three heading into this matchup. The No. 1 overall pick was able to put up 30 points, eight rebounds, six assists, and four steals in an 85-83 win at Washington on Friday, the best performance of her career so far. Tonight’s matchup against Connecticut could serve as a good barometer for how much progress the star player and her team has made in the first month of the season.
But of course, that isn’t being discussed right now. Because the take machine must feed.
The latest Caitlin Clark related discourse revolves around her being left off the Team USA roster for the Paris Olympics beginning next month. It’s understandable considering that the reported roster is stacked with veterans whose combined accolades includes five MVP’s, seven WNBA Finals MVP’s, nine scoring titles, and 18 WNBA championship rings. Several of these players were on the 2020 gold medal team including Diana Taurasi, who is set to participate in a record sixth Olympic-games this summer. The Athletic’s Shams Charania even included in that report that Clark could be an alternate if one of them can’t participate. That could very well be the case considering that Chelsea Gray has yet to suit up for the Las Vegas Aces this season due to a foot injury. The Fever guard acknowledged that her inclusion on the roster could’ve gone either way and that if she doesn’t make it to Paris, it will give her something to work for when the Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028.
All of this sounds reasonable and yet the rookie’s “snub” has sparked multiple days of outrage similar to last week’s discussion over Chennedy Carter’s hip check foul. Team USA basketball has been criticized for leaving Clark off the roster as bad faith actors have once again flooded the zone with hot takes. So of course it naturally led to ESPN’s First Take hollering about the topic on Monday morning, with Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe’s critiques centering around Team USA missing a golden opportunity to “grow the game.” The former even went as far as calling the decision idiotic, yelling over ESPN women’s basketball analysts Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike in the process. Keep in mind that the U.S.-Japan final in the 2020 games (played in 2021 due to COVID-19) averaged nearly 8 million viewers and according to Sports Media Watch, was the most watched women’s basketball game in five years at the time. That growth happened while Clark was preparing her sophomore season at Iowa by the way.
Every discussion surrounding her inevitably turns into weird culture war and it’s already become exhausting just one month in. There is no need for this and we do not have to do this every other day. You want to know how the Clark can be used to grow the game? By focusing on the game! The phenom has been thrown right into the fire during the first month of the regular season and she is being routinely tested by the best players the league has to offer. Her not immediately setting the WNBA on fire like she did at Iowa is a compelling story and there’s an opportunity here to showcase her game-by-game progression while introducing new viewers to the already established stars around the league.
So when the Fever steps on the court against the Sun this evening, I implore you to not think about the Team USA controversy. Don’t think about attendance numbers or ratings or if other players are resentful of her or any of the take-based discussions we’ve had for the past month. Just tune it to see if she can lead her team past a bonafide MVP-candidate in Alyssa Thomas. Trust me, we’ll all be better off for it.