Caitlin Clark officially announced Thursday night she was done for the season, and there goes that fairy tale finish. The force of nature that put the WNBA on the national radar a year ago chose, along with her team, the force of nurture.
In other words: Take the rest of the season off, kid. Heal up. Don't hurry back on our account, because our account ain't as hefty as we hoped it would be.
No, it's not. What began with some fairy-tale ruminating -- Can Caitlin lead the beefed-up Fever to the WNBA title in her second year? -- has devolved into a quiet and mostly mundane reality: This Fever team isn't going much of anywhere.
After Clark went down for good on July 15 (although no one knew it would be for good at the time), and her enforcer/sidekick/provocateur Sophie Cunningham went down with a season-ending knee injury, the air went out of all those lofty hopes. Those injuries and a spate of others, the defection of DeWanna Bonner, and head coach Stephanie White's odd periodic absences have resulted in a win-a-couple, lose-a-couple season in which the strobe-lit Fever has become just another .barely-above-.500 basketball team.
They'll likely still make the playoffs, because they still have players: Kelsey Mitchell, Natasha Howard, Aliyah Boston, Lexie Hull. But they're more and more looking like a first-round bow-out, same as last year.
Do you rush Clark back for that?
Absolutely you do not.
So she's done for 2025, and, meanwhile, the league goes on without her drawing power and, frankly, without all the racially-charged they're-pickin'-on-Our Caitlyn noise. Down in Dallas, Paige Bueckers is having a Caitlyn-esque rookie season; if she's not quite the phenomenon Clark was a year ago, she's proving every bit her on-court equal. Aja Thomas and Brianna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu are still around. And Angel Reese is still stirring things up as the semi-official Lightning Rod of Chicago.
In the latest episode of What Angel Craziness Is This, she voiced her frustration in the Chicago Tribune with her miserable Sky, saying the team had to get better players and that they "can't rely" on point guard Courtney Vandersloot to come back from an ACL tear "at the age she's at." This undoubtedly landed with a booming thud in the Sky locker room, and it got Reese suspended by the ballclub.
So the WNBA still has that going for it, I guess.
As for Clark, her sophomore season wasn't so much a sophomore slump as a sophomore wash. Plagued by both left and right groin injuries and a quad strain, she played in just 13 games, averaging 16.5 points, 8.8 assists and 5.0 rebounds. But she shot just 36 percent from the field and under 30 percent from the 3-point arc, where she made her rep as the Step-Back Logo Three Girl.
In this truncated season, unfortunately, she was more the Step-Back Logo Brick Girl. Or the Damn, She's Hurt Again? Girl.
It was both dismaying and shocking, considering she'd been injury-free at Iowa and in her spectacular rookie season in the Dub. The Blob's pet theory, which is likely as full of sawdust as most pet theories, is that what happened to her this season might have something to do with how hard she worked in the gym to bulk up during the offseason. More muscles, more muscles to strain or pull or tweak.
And, no, I'm not a doctor or a physical therapist or a trainer. I don't even play one on TV.
Sadly, Caitlyn Clark won't be playing a Genuine Phenomenon on TV anymore this year, either. It's the smart play. It's also, needless to say, a damn shame.
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