PHOENIX — Caitlin Clark sat on the bench for the first time Sunday and clapped as the final seconds ticked away. The Indiana Fever rookie celebrated an 88-82 victory over the Phoenix Mercury with teammates, then found herself surrounded by television cameras and photographers. As she spoke to an ESPN reporter, Diana Taurasi was 20 feet away, walking toward the home team's locker room.
This game was a big one for the Fever, their first win over a winning team in 20 tries, but it also provided a before-and-after picture that was impossible to ignore. Clark, 22, is the hotshot rookie, the future of the WNBA. Phoenix's Taurasi, 42, is the league's leading scorer, someone who has a street outside the arena named after her.
In front of a sold-out crowd at Footprint Center, Clark was steady for 39 minutes. Despite making 4 of 14 shots, she finished just shy of her first professional triple-double with 15 points, nine rebounds and 12 assists. “My gosh … she's just an unbelievable passer,” Indiana coach Christie Sides said. “She just finds the plays that need to be made.”
Taurasi had 19 points, 3 assists and 3 rebounds in 32 minutes. Two nights earlier, in a home win over the Los Angeles Sparks, Taurasi had made five 3-pointers. Against the Fever, she shot 2 of 10 from long range but never found an offensive rhythm.
a near triple-double from Caitlin Clark in today's win over Phoenix 😈 photo.twitter.com/KSJriLAb3l
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) June 30, 2024
Aside from the courtside interview, in which she praised her team’s resilience, Clark didn’t speak to reporters after the game. Sides said the guard wasn’t feeling well and needed to meet with the coach. It’s also a fair bet that Clark didn’t want to be put in the position of answering questions about beating Taurasi, the rising star toppling a legend. In some ways, that’s been a challenge for the entire Indiana franchise.
This weekend, Sides was asked twice to assess Clark’s performance. On both occasions, her answers focused more on the Fever’s youth and their collective growth. After Indiana’s loss to the Seattle Storm on Thursday, Clark met reporters alongside teammate Aliyah Boston. After reporters asked Clark a fifth straight question, Clark waved her hand and said, “Ask Aliyah a question.”
If anyone can relate to this, it’s probably Taurasi, but that comes with an asterisk. She was in a similar situation 20 years ago. Like Clark at Iowa, Taurasi had finished her college career at Connecticut as the best player in the game. She was the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft and was expected to improve the league. The difference was the media attention. Since joining the league, Clark has been the center of countless debates — some about basketball, some about race. She’s learned that anything she says can become a national headline or a talking point.
Perhaps that explains her reaction Saturday when asked about the WNBA All-Star Game, set for July 20 in Phoenix. Despite being ranked second in recent fan voting, Clark wanted no part of the conversation. “I don't know if I'll be there,” she said after practice at Arizona State University. “I'm not going to talk about hypotheticals. I'm focused on playing basketball. It'll all take care of itself.”
In the same media session, Clark was asked about her first memory of Taurasi, a difficult task considering she was only 2 when Taurasi first joined the WNBA. But after thinking about it, Clark said Taurasi had always been someone she associated with professional women's basketball. She appreciated the intensity and fire with which Taurasi played, calling Sunday's game a chance to compete against the best, “a dream come true.”
“That's someone I idolized as a kid and looked up to and wanted to be one day,” Clark said. “I don't know if there are many people who can do it like she can.”
As a Phoenix rookie in 2004, Taurasi immediately became the face of the franchise. Her first home game drew 10,493 fans, the most for a season opener in three years. For many away games that season, Taurasi met and interacted with a select group of 50 fans before the game. Former Phoenix general manager Seth Sulka told reporters at the time that the attention was unlike anything he had ever seen in the WNBA.
“I loved it,” Taurasi said when asked about Sunday. “I just enjoyed playing basketball. I didn't really care about the outside noise or what people thought. I enjoyed every minute of it. Being a rookie was cool, man. It was fun. You could do whatever you wanted, you didn't know any better. In Sports Illustrated, Slam … ESPN the Magazine.”
Taurasi looked at a young reporter in the room.
“You're too young. You don't know what I'm talking about,” she said.
Like Clark, Taurasi still faced physical play, with veterans trying to put her in her place. Opponents respected her talent, but they made her earn theirs. On April 5, while doing TV commentary during the Women’s Final Four, Taurasi recalled a “Welcome to the WNBA” moment and how an intimidating defender named DeLisha Milton-Jones punched her in the face twice. It created a rivalry of sorts.
During a recent phone call, Milton-Jones, the coach of the women's program at Old Dominion, laughed. She had seen Taurasi's comments on social media. “I thought, 'Invite me on your show so I can tell them the other side,'” she said.
Milton-Jones was aware of Taurasi’s skills. In the WNBA, she saw it up close. How Taurasi manipulated the game with her vision. How she understood distance and timing. How she applied a point guard’s touch to multiple positions. But what impressed Milton-Jones most was how Taurasi came up with tricks that most rookies took a season or two to learn.
Milton-Jones said that when she came up for a jump shot, Taurasi would jab her in the stomach, just hard enough to make her flinch and miss her shot. On offense, Taurasi was coming off a pindown and tried to jam Milton-Jones to create space.
“She literally punched me in the stomach,” Milton-Jones said. “Then she just took off. My coach was yelling at me, 'You've got to guard her!' And I said, 'She just punched me in the stomach!' She was feisty and crafty and she had a kind of veteran style of play.”
(Taurasi responded outside the media room on Sunday: “I think it was my upbringing. Italian Argentines, we are cunning. We always try to find an advantage in some way. In the game of basketball, there are games within the game. And when you are not as physically gifted as other people, you have to find little ways to get that advantage.”)
Carrie Graf, who coached Taurasi her first two professional seasons, said Taurasi's biggest mistake was the officials. She was too harsh. Instead of yelling in their faces, she told Taurasi to use her charisma. To remember that officials are human. But there was no doubting her readiness.
“I can picture this shot as if it were a photograph,” Graf said by phone from Australia. “She went out on the court and stood against the high rafters. She was on the right side and she extended her right arm out as if it was an elevated hook shot. And then the shot blocker came forward with her left hand, and while she was in the air, she went up and grabbed the shot blocker's arm to make some space so she could put the ball on the rim. Women just didn't do that kind of thing back then.”
Diana Taurasi rides against Caitlin Clark in Sunday's match. (Chris Coduto/Getty Images)
Clark has that quality too, but instead of hanging in the air, it pulls up from the logo, a signature move that has made her famous in the sport. She did this twice on Sunday, setting the crowd alight. Even in Phoenix, the “Clark” jerseys outnumbered those of the Phoenix players in many parts of the arena.
Caitlin Clark shows her deep reach with another logo three 🎯 photo.twitter.com/IX8wnVb3g4
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) June 30, 2024
Clark is still working through this transition. As she has done all season, she forced too many passes on Sunday, resulting in 6 turnovers. She attempted a behind-the-back pass that had little chance. She missed a lead pass in transition. She lost the ball and fell to the field.
Before the game (Clark meets with reporters before every game), she said her biggest adjustment was simply the pace of everything. After losing to South Carolina in the NCAA national championship, Clark returned to Iowa City for a day and “that’s when my life changed,” she said.
After the draft, Clark moved to Indianapolis. On May 3, she played her first preseason game. She hasn’t stopped since, playing 20 games for the 8-12 Fever. The exciting part is that she knows she can still grow and learn details that can improve her game. The frustrating part is that she hasn’t had much time to practice.
“I had to learn game by game,” Clark said. “That was actually the biggest adjustment.”
Taurasi predicted as much. She didn’t mean it as an attempt to beat Clark and the league’s talented rookies. Just that the transition often takes time. In a radio interview in Phoenix, Taurasi compared it to a college quarterback adjusting to the NFL. After Sunday’s loss, she expressed how much respect she has for the way Clark is handling it.
“It's amazing what Caitlin has been able to do,” Taurasi said. “Her short career so far has been nothing short of remarkable. The one thing I really love about her is that she loves the game. You can tell she's worked hard for it. And even in her short WNBA career, there's been a lot of pressure, a lot of things that have been thrown at her, she continues to step up and get better every game. Her future is super bright.”
(Top photo: Kate Frese/NBAE via Getty Images)
