WNBA thread… 28.5 ain’t your pay cut

Fumbled an inbounds pass in last minute.
It has been a tough start to her career.

 

The league is tough on guards in general. Including and especially rookies.

It's an ultra-physical short season, similar to college. Only the players are much better defenders.

Kelsey Plum is shooting 37% from the floor and might All-WNBA. It's just an incredible uphill climb in the sport.

 

Not to mention that men's players have an offseason to prepare for their rookie years. The women basically go straight from college to a pro training camp and into real games. That can't be easy. Will be easier to judge Clark's transition at the start of the next WNBA season.

 

She's really good, even now. And they all know it. And she got all this notoriety because she's good, because NIL changed the conversation and because, unlike so many of great players, she chose not to be part of the super teams at UConn or Stanford or South Carolina.

Had Clark done that, she wouldn't have broken any of the records because those three schools - good as they may be at women's basketball - are about the coaches, not the players.

Caitlin Clark wouldn't have been taking logo 3s at UConn. Geno wouldn't have let her. Because UConn is about Geno.

 

Also UConn has enough talent across the roster that they can afford to work for higher-percentage shots.

 

UConn FG: .4967
Iowa FG: .4953

Wasn't UConn's best team, of course. Injuries, too.

But rarely has there been a clearer argument for a player and a program mutually benefiting from not choosing an all-star team than Clark and Iowa. And that was, on some level, offensive to the many women's players who chose to play for a super team. They watched Clark play free, lead a lesser team to the finals twice, and not have to compromise one bit of her game or personality in the process.

The logo 3s were a strategy, too, of course. Defenses had to extend out to her, which opened up the drive and the floor for spacing.

 

It’s a weird dynamic at work here with Clark.

Her stardom and excellence have created a legion of fans, many of whom are not particularly knowledgeable about the world of women’s basketball. They all thought she’d roll into the WNBA and conquer all and sundry.

This phenomenon is related to the fact that women’s college basketball has more popularity than the WNBA has had. Surely, if Clark can dominate in the bright lights of March Madness, she’ll roll on a random weeknight game against the Minnesota Lynx, would be the perception from her super-fans … as well as vapid media outlets.

It was a pretty disrespectful view of the WNBA. One undoubtedly not lost among those in the league.

I’m sure players do appreciate her impact, but players also have the twin mission to measure up to her as well as demonstrate to Clark that they aren’t a bunch of marks she’ll be popping logo threes over the top of.

I’m sure there’s some jealousy of her comfort in her fame. Probably some (most likely inaccurate) perception that she courts fame over concentrating on hoops. There will be competitive types who will want to take her down a peg.

On top of that, scouting is assuredly better in the WNBA and with a far greater concentration of talent to implement a defensive plan, for example.

Clark has always been turnover-prone. That was going to be exploited at the pro level in a way it wouldn’t have been at Iowa. Partly due to disparity in talent college vs. pro, but partly due to the fact Iowa’s “others” were good enough to make any sell-out on Clark a risky proposition.

In all of the above sense? She was sorta set up to fail out of the gate, especially among those who saw her as the new shiny object.

And, yes, her petulance is a thing and doesn’t help. She got a lot of calls at Iowa that she won’t get in the pros. She needs to realize that.

I’m certain she’ll be fine, but could probably do better if the microscope wasn’t on her 24/7, but that horse left the barn.

Also, this thread title still sucks balls.

 

Great post, B-Baller.

The two things that could be considered weak spots in Clark’s game are her defense and inability to hit mid-range pull up shots. At Iowa there were other players who could cover for her on defense and she didn’t really need mid-range jumpers to score.

She’ll need to improve in both in the WNBA. And yes, with every single opponent determined to show that there was talent in the league before Caitlin Clark showed up.

 

I've seen two of her games in the WNBA, and I don't have a ton of familiarity with the league. But man, it seemed like a weird throwback to the 1990s NBA in many ways. Just a lot of plodding bigger players, clogged lanes, and lots of contact that just wasn't called. (I think on subsequent plays, Clark throw an elbow that hit her defender in the face that wasn't called, and she got cleared out on the other end and it wasn't called.) It feels like they're still years away from Clark and players like her "extincting" the lumbering bigger players out of the game. Curry and other athletic 3-point shooters made it hard to hide guys like Roy Hibbert, plus the NBA significantly tightened rules about hand-checking in the 00s in order to encourage offense.

The other pretty obvious issue with Indiana - That team is absolute dog shit. Boston was the #1 pick last year, and her PER is 9.6 currently - usually, around 15 is considered league average. She's shooting 38 percent and averaging 1.1 FTA per 36 minutes, which is crazy low for a 6'5" center. Smith (second overall pick in 2022) is the team's actual second best player right now. Wallace and Fagbenle have done OK through five games, but the team has zero depth and a weak starting five.

 

This is gonna put the USA Basketball selection committee in quite a pickle in a couple weeks.

 

They were in one anyway. There's way too many good/great players to fit on a 12-man squad. There's about five players who will get left off that should be on it.

 

The announced attendance for tonight’s Sparks-Fever game at Crypto Arena is 19,103. That’s a sell out and a Sparks record. Capacity for Lakers home games is 18,997.