Caitlin Clark is set to return to the WNBA on Saturday when her Indiana Fever takes on the Dallas Wings in a season-opening showdown. This marks Clark’s return after missing all but 13 games last season. Clark’s return to the court has led to a lot of discourse in the media about the impact she has on the Fever and the league as a whole, including some rather outlandish takes.
In the lead-up to the season, Clark has been left off first-team All-WNBA teams and ranked as low as No. 10 amongst the best players in the league, and one WNBA analyst went as far as to suggest that the Indiana Fever were actually more difficult to defend last year once Clark went down with an injury.
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Moten said that with Clark in the lineup, the Fever offense was “extremely easy to guard.”
“This is my hot take,” WNBA analyst and former college basketball player Lawrencia Moten said during a recent appearance on ESPN. “Honestly, the Indiana Fever played some of their best team basketball without Caitlin Clark, and that’s because she’s like the sun that that offense kind of orbits around. The ball is constantly in her hands, which just made their offense extremely easy to guard.
“Now, without her in the lineup, (head coach) Stephanie White had to decide who else was going to get in the mix, and their offense became so much more diverse. We saw Kelsey Mitchell have a tremendous season. Lexie Hull got in the fold. Aliyah Boston had another dominant season. All because they had to do it without Cailin Clark, and that made their offense extremely hard to guard.”
It certainly is a hot take, but it’s also not grounded in any measurable reality. Without Clark, the Fever were noticeably worse across the board on the offensive side of the ball and as a whole.
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With Clark on the court last year, the Fever had more points per game, a higher offensive rating, a higher effective shooting percentage, a higher assist rate, and also simply a better record.
Obviously, Mitchell and Hull’s scoring numbers increased with Clark out since they played similar positions and had to fill the void, but other players suffered in Clark’s absence. Boston’s numbers actually got worse once Clark went down with an injury, as she averaged more points per game when Clark was in the lineup than when she was out of it.
That doesn’t mean Indiana’s offense was perfect when Clark was on the court, and the Fever have been experimenting with ways to make the offense a little less predictable with Clark getting some off-ball looks during the preseason – something she did often at the college level.
But the idea that the team got more difficult to defend after Clark went down with an injury is simply untrue.
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