Summer of discontent

 The WNBA's All-Star weekend has arrived, but the Star who moves its needle will not be on the floor. Caitlin Clark is hurt again, and as goes Caitlin, so goes the WNBA.

The summer of her discontent, in other words, has become the summer of the WNBA's.  And through not much more than bad luck on Clark's part, and a bit more than bad luck on that of the league.

Let's start with Clark, as of course we must.

This was supposed to be a dream season for her and the Indiana Fever, but it instead become a season of endless frustration for both. With a new coach (Stephanie White) and an infusion of new, proven talent (Sophie Cunningham, Natasha Howard, DeWanna Bonner), Clark's Fever were regarded as legit contenders for the league title. But it's all gone south faster than a snowbird in January.

Instead of emerging as one of the league's best teams, the Fever are instead 12-10 and treading water in sixth place. Cunningham and Howard have lived up to their hype, but a disgruntled Bonner left the club last month, ostensibly because she was unhappy coming off the bench. And as for Clark ...

As they say, it's been one damn thing after another.

First she strained her left quad and missed five games; then she suffered a groin injury and missed five more. Then, late in Tuesday's win over the Connecticut Sun, she came up hobbling after a dish to Kelsey Mitchell, walked the length of the floor to bang her head against the stanchion, and then retreated to the bench, where she covered her head in a towel and briefly wept.

She knew before anyone else, see, that she'd tweaked the groin again. 

So she'll miss the All-Star Game and the 3-point contest, even as she sits on the bench as her team's captain. It will be the 13th game she'll sit out, counting a preseason game and the 11 regular-season games she's missed -- exactly half the campaign. And even when she's played, she's not been the Caitlin Clark who filled arenas last season; although she's averaging 16.5 points and is second in the league in assists per game with 8.8, her shooting eye has deserted her. 

In 11 games, she's shooting just 36.7 percent -- including an abysmal 27.9 percent from behind the arc, where her patented logo 3s have been mostly logo misses. Of her 104 3-point attempts, 75 have failed to bed down.

And as goes Caitlin ...

Well. Her struggles have become the league's struggles, at least to an extent.

The spotlight she's brought to the WNBA has boosted its national profile, but it's also boosted its national profile. Which is to say, it's brought increased scrutiny to the league's shoddy officiating and it's propensity for oncourt goon-ery -- at least some of which is media whipped cream, as it almost always is.

Clark, of course, has been at the center of much of the latter; as opponents continue to get physical with her for the same reason they get physical with any linchpin star -- if you can knock her off her rhythm, you can knock her team off its rhythm -- the media has transformed her into some sort of dime-dishing Joan of Arc. It's as if no WNBA star ever got bumped and banged around until Caitlin came along.

Not there isn't a pinch of truth to that.

There does, after all, seem to be a particular egregious-ness (targeting?) on occasion to the bumping and banging Clark receives. But the league's flagrant foul numbers suggest she's no more a candidate for martyrdom than, say, Sabrina Ionescu, Chelsea Gray or any other backcourt star. And if you're prepared to say, as some are, that her recent spate of injuries are proof opponents are deliberately trying to hurt her because they're jealous of her, you must also consider other possibilities.

The one the Blob embraces, albeit without any proof: It's common knowledge Clark spent a lot of time in the weight room in the offseason bulking up and reshaping her body. The results are visually obvious. Makes you wonder (or at least it does me) if that's part of why she's suddenly plagued by muscle strains when she was never bothered by them either at Iowa or in her rookie WNBA season.

More muscle mass, more muscle to strain or pull or tweak. Hey, it's a theory.

At any rate, Clark's injury woes fit neatly into the narrative that the WNBA is full of out-of-control brutes, and that ham-fisted officiating is largely to blame for that. Undoubtedly there's a pinch of truth in that, too -- and surely more than a pinch where the officiating is concerned.

But the rest of it?

Sorry, drama fans. Bad luck, mostly. As ordinary as that sounds.