In Tuesday night’s 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.
Caitlin Clark is playing the best basketball of her career
Fresh off a 32-point outing against. the Seattle Storm, Clark is averaging career-highs across the board.
Noa Dalzell is a senior writer covering the WNBA and all of women’s basketball for Breakaway, SB Nation’s women’s sports vertical, as well as the Celtics for CelticsBlog.
Amid the usual litany of off-court storylines, it’s been a superb on-court season for the Fever star.
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).
She’s also quietly upped her efficiency — 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.
And, this year, she’s shooting 44.3% from the field and 35.4% from three, both career-highs. While turnovers continue to be an Achilles heel, she’s averaging fewer per game this year (4.7) than in her rookie campaign (5.6).
Clark now has the 31st-best true shooting percentage in the WNBA (60.3%), which means she’s 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).
It still feels like there’s another gear Clark can reach from beyond the arc — she shot 37.7% from three in college — but even if that doesn’t happen, she’s established herself as one of the league’s best guards just a season removed from a campaign in which she missed time due to groin and ankle injuries.
Most importantly, the Fever are winning. They currently have the 5th-best record in the WNBA, but they’re 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’re averaging 95.8 points per game, which is 4 more points than the team with the next-highest points per game average (Minnesota).
Clark is still just 24 years old — 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’s quietly already having a career year.
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