Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark‘s highly-anticipated WNBA debut against the Connecticut Sun was a tad anti-climactic, as the rookie struggled to find her groove and her team suffered a 21-point blowout loss. Four-year veteran Dijonai Carrington put on a defensive masterclass against the young guard, who shot only 5-of-15, including 4-of-11 from beyond the arc.
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Clark’s underwhelming debut was disappointing, but veteran analyst Frank Isola sympathized with the Fever guard and blamed women’s basketball’s packed schedule for her performance. On SiriusXM NBA Radio, the Isola said,
“All these [rookies] went from their college season, which probably for a lot of them probably starts in August when they start training. You go through a whole season, the Final Four in the case of Caitlin Clark and Kamilla Cardosa, and then right into the [WNBA] training camp. There’s really no break that you are getting there. So I wonder if she’s a little worn down as well.”
Caitlin Clark had some struggles in her WNBA debut last night@TheFrankIsola explains to @Scalabrine why it could take some time to adjust to the league but she will still find success#FeverRising pic.twitter.com/7cR88onwMo
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) May 15, 2024
Isola’s assessment is spot on. Clark’s final season with the Iowa Hawkeyes commenced in October 2023 with two exhibition games and ran until April 2024. A week later, she was picked first overall in the 2024 WNBA Draft and immediately began preparing for this season. She only had a 5 week rest period between her final game for Iowa and her WNBA debut for the Fever, which is a shockingly small amount of time.
While her performance wasn’t much to write home about, Isola credited Clark for scoring a team-high 20 points and claimed he saw enough to believe she could replicate her elite shooting from her Iowa days in the WNBA. He did acknowledge that committing 10 turnovers while providing only three assists was concerning but suggested that she’d improve as she plays more games.
The young guard did not live up to the lofty expectations in her debut and while there was widespread disappointment about her performance, veteran Diana Taurasi predicted it’d happen months ago.
Caitlin Clark’s underwhelming debut proves Diana Taurasi right
During an appearance on SportsCenter in April, women’s basketball icon Diana Taurasi was asked if she had a message for Caitlin Clark before she jumped from college to the WNBA. The veteran bluntly said,
“Reality is coming. You look superhuman playing against some 18-year-olds but you’re going to come play with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time… There is gonna be a transition period where you’re going to have to give yourself some grace as a rookie.”
Taurasi’s warning was dismissed as an oldhead being bitter about the attention that a young star was receiving. But Clark’s debut proved that she was spot on. The guard struggled to find the time and space she was afforded during her Iowa days and it reflected in her underwhelming 5-of-15 shooting performance.
As Taurasi said, Clark will find the transition from college basketball to the WNBA difficult initially, especially considering she had less than a month to prepare, but her talent will eventually shine through and she’ll put the same numbers from her college days that made her a household name.
