Something Strange Is Happening to Caitlin Clark Since She Took a Hard Foul

What’s wrong with Caitlin Clark? Her body isn’t broken from the physical play she’s endured. But her three-point shot is.Ms. Clark and the Indiana Fever lost their second straight game of a challenging West Coast trip on Sunday, losing 89-81 to the Las Vegas Aces in Las Vegas. It was Indiana’s 16th straight loss against Las Vegas, a drought dating back to 2019. But the headline emerging from the game is the continued slump of one of the league’s most prolific three-point shooters.Ms. Clark recorded a double-double in the loss, collecting 19 points and 10 assists. She became the fastest player in WNBA history to reach 400 career assists in only 48 games. But her 1-of-10 shooting from three-point range continued a troubling pattern.Since enduring a hard foul during a Commissioner’s Cup-clinching win over the Connecticut Sun on June 15, Ms. Clark’s shooting eye has been off. She is just 1 of 17 from three-point range, which includes a 0-for-7 effort in a loss to the Golden State Valkyries on Thursday. Ms. Clark will have a chance to break the slump when the Fever finish their West Coast trip on Tuesday against the Seattle Storm. While there’s no reason to panic over her recent shooting struggles, it’s glaring when one of the best shooters in basketball — men or women — can’t find the bottom of the bucket.“I’ve got to find a way to continue to shoot and remain confident in myself because I know I’ve put the time in,” Ms. Clark told reporters in Las Vegas. “I don’t feel like it’s that off necessarily … but yeah, it would be nice if they went down.”Apparently, there’s nothing physically wrong with Ms. Clark, though her shooting slump comes following the hard foul she absorbed in the Fever’s pivotal Commissioner’s Cup-clinching win over the Connecticut Sun on June 15. Ms. Clark was initially poked in the eye by Sun’s defender Jacy Sheldon before being blindsided from a body check by the Sun’s Marina Mabrey. Ms. Sheldon received a Flagrant 1 for the eye poke, while Ms. Mabrey’s penalty was upgraded to a Flagrant 2 by the WNBA.The rough play came in just her second game back after missing five games due to a quad injury. In the two games after her return, both at home, Ms. Clark was 11-of-20 from three-point range and showed no signs of rust.Shooters shoot. So don’t expect Ms. Clark to suddenly become shy about launching shots from deep. “There are going to be stretches that are really good and there’s going to be stretches that aren’t as good,” she said. “Obviously, it’s frustrating. You want them to go in.”Lost in her shooting woes is that she remains one of the league’s top passers. She recorded her 400th assist in the first quarter of Sunday’s game, feeding the ball to Natasha Howard for an easy lay-up. She reached the milestone faster than any other player in league history, topping Ticha Penicheiro, who needed 55 games to reach 400 during the 1999 season. Ms. Clark already owns WNBA records for most assists in a single season (337) and most assists in a single game (19). Shooting isn’t the only weapon in her game.“The challenge for myself going forward is to continue to pour into every other aspect of the game,” she said. “I can continue to have an impact in all those other areas.”Interestingly, there hasn’t been a repeat of the rough play witnessed against Connecticut, where Ms. Clark was knocked around like a piñata. The presence of Fever enforcer Sophie Cunningham might have quelled some of that after she dished out her own hard foul against Ms. Mabrey.“It was a build-up for a couple of years now of them just not protecting the star player of the WNBA,” Ms. Cunningham said. “At the end of the day, I’m going to protect my teammates. That’s what I do.”Her fiery attitude has resonated on social media. Ms. Cunningham’s TikTok following jumped from under 400,000 to more than 1.3 million in less than a week. Her Instagram account more than doubled to over 839,000.

Something Strange Is Happening to Caitlin Clark Since She Took a Hard Foul

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