Commentary: Caitlin Clark is coming, and the WNBA better get ready for her

The public’s collective agape-ness at Caitlin Clark’s parachuting shot continues, and so does the watch to see whether she’ll become weighted by all the obligations to be great. Indiana Fever shirts, socks and lanyards with her number have flown off the shelves, no doubt to be followed by tote bags, tea towels and, what’s next, tourist tickets for pilgrimages to her childhood home? At some point, surely, Clark will drift back down into a more ordinary realm. Won’t she? No. This kid’s not going to fall back to earth.

“Reality is coming” for Clark, WNBA veteran Diana Taurasi predicted. But it’s the 22-year-old Clark who’s altering realities and the WNBA that’s grappling with newness, starting with the tremendous spike in sales. “We used to play in a barn with, like, six fans,” Indiana forward NaLyssa Smith said as training camp opened. The Fever’s preseason opener Friday against the Dallas Wings was sold out by early last week – a road exhibition game in Arlington, Texas – and the public’s flocking instinct is not wrong. People rightly sense that a revolutionary player has entered the league and it’s the pros who need to get ready.

Clark is going to make an impression on the floor, not just the box office. This is not hyperbole. It’s chartable. Her logo-distance range and NCAA scoring record get all the attention, but what makes her utterly unprecedented is how she combines that shot with her passing and polyhedric floor vision. There has simply never been a player, male or female, who coupled shot-making with playmaking ability such as this. She’s really two players in one.

According to the data platform CBB Analytics, Clark registered an assist percentage of 50.3 in her epic final season at Iowa. She accounted for more than half her team’s baskets when she was on the floor with her passing – and that was in addition to her scoring average of 32 points. The only NBA player who had a comparable assist percentage was John Stockton (50.2). Nobody else is even at 45%. Chris Paul (44.6), Luka Doncic (42.3), Steve Nash (41.5), Magic Johnson (40.9)? Nope.

Listen to Smith, after just two practices with Clark: “Man, she’s insane. You could just tell there is no hype behind what everybody is saying,” Smith said. “That girl can play. She can shoot, and she can pass the hell out of the ball. I got to run to get in shape, so I can get my little layups.”

There is every reason to think Clark’s duality will only be enhanced in the pros, where she will have complementary teammates such as Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell. After just a couple of practices, according to Clark, Fever coach Christie Sides told the team, “Everything already seems to be a whole level up from last year.” The multiplicity of threats Clark enables with her shoot-or-pass intelligence is a predicament for opponents. She’s terrific at seeing driving lanes but can stop on a dime to drill a midrange shot or a 3-pointer: Her true shooting percentage, which measures efficiency on all shots, is better than 60%.

Bigger, stronger defenders may be able to get in her face and stop her shot. Go ahead. She’ll make you pay for it by shredding you with a flick of the ball – and do it at just “the right angle,” Boston commented. “We know if we run, Caitlin’s going to find us.”

Unlike at Iowa – where she was playing with homebred players, few of whom had pro potential – with the Fever she’ll have targets with great hands at every spot on the floor. “Being able to pass the ball, that’s something I can always do,” Clark said after her second workout. “… I can always get my teammates open and set them up for success, and that’s something I’ve been able to find over the first two days, and that’s something I can always rely on.”

There’s more at work in Clark than skill or efficiency, something invisible beneath the muscle that in former days was called “feel for the game.” She creates space by being almost insidiously persuasive with the ball – she does to defenses what she does to audiences, attracts all their attention and energy. Opponents tend to watch her with the same stupefaction, momentarily frozen by the question of what she’ll do, and when she catches them at it, there goes the dexterous pass. She suckers them in and then reconfigures the floor. Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff once said, “She sees the floor and makes the right decisions as well as anybody I’ve seen, maybe ever, in college basketball.”

Then there is this: At every single juncture of her career, Clark has grinned in the face of pressure, shrugged at it and met the moment. At Iowa over her past two Final Four seasons, she was asked to bring a value of anywhere from 50 to 75 points to her team, night in and night out – and lived up to every promise and ask.

Even as defenses increasingly keyed on her, she still drove an offense that averaged 91 points a game. The more teams tried to stop her own offensive outbursts, the more dangerously she enabled others. Nobody, not South Carolina or LSU or Connecticut, stopped that.

“I’m a real big fan of what she’s already been able to accomplish in the spotlight, the tremendous spotlight,” Fever General Manager Lin Dunn said on the night she drafted Clark. “I also think that she’s going to adjust to the pros better than people think she is. … When you watch Clark, you say: ‘How does she hit those 3s from the logo? How does she make those great passes?’ She’s physically strong. She’s got strength in her legs, in her core and in her hands. So I’m expecting her to have an impact on the WNBA.”

Opponents will, of course, mark her, try to humble her. Good luck with that.

“It’s a target on your back,” Clark acknowledged. “But it’s something you embrace and you love, and you wouldn’t want it any other way.”