Fever’s whole approach is setting Caitlin Clark up to fail originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Indiana Fever‘s defensive approach isn’t the reason Caitlin Clark only scored six points on Saturday night. There’s plenty to be figured out after a really rough game for the WNBA superstar.
Advertisement
But something is becoming clear and obvious: The way the Fever are playing defense might be setting Clark up to fail.
Opposing teams want to target Clark in isolation, and the Fever are letting them.
Simply put, the Fever are switching on screens. That allows teams to bring the player Clark is defending into the action as a screener, and when Indiana switches, Clark is then guarding the ball handler. At that point, the player with the ball goes to work to attack Clark.
MORE: Megan Gustafson embodies the story of an expansion team
Clark has defended the most isolations in the WNBA so far this season, more than double of anyone else:
A follow-up post to that goes on to note that the Fever have the highest switch rate in the league last year, after ranking fifth in that category last year.
Advertisement
“I wonder how much of that is something Steph (White) wants more of vs. a safeguard for the navigation issues most of their guards have,” the above poster, Nekias Duncan, writes.
MORE: Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd share a viral video moment
Some screens are sturdy and force switches, but some are more for effect and probably don’t really need to be switched. It’s much of what the New York Knicks did against James Harden recently in the NBA playoffs.
There are definitely ways to hunt matchups, but if the defense works, it can prevent a lot of that from happening.
Right now, the Fever are letting Clark be putting into the action and targeted, over and over, and it might not be an ideal way to proceed going forward.
Advertisement
