Those who don’t know Caitlin Clark well are often taken by her silly and goofy side, a personality trait that’s seen more light in her first WNBA offseason as a one-name superstar. After going toe-to-toe with David Letterman for his Netflix show “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” she’s eased back into basketball by quipping with the media, palling around in practice and making games out of innocuous content requests.
What she doesn’t play about is competition, and certainly not when it comes to basketball. She minced no words and added no humor when asked what success looks like for her and the Indiana Fever this WNBA season.
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A championship. Yes, the freshly collected Fever team “absolutely” and explicitly spoke about it ahead of training camp, Clark said Wednesday during Fever media day.
And rightfully so. On paper, there’s no doubt the Fever can contend with the established best in the league following a busy free agency that added established multi-time champions to a youthful and hungry core.
Down the line Wednesday as each player appeared at the media day podium, they echoed the same values: unity, blocking out the noise, remaining selfless, winning.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark has high expectations for this season. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
“How lucky are we to have such a good roster and so many people that wanted to be a part of something bigger than themselves?” Clark said. “They saw something in this team and this organization and you have to give [ppresident of basketball operations] Kelly [Krauskopf] and [general manager] Amber [Cox] a lot of credit selling them on this, and also them [the players] for being selfless and wanting to come here and be a part of this.”
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The major aspect of that sell is Clark, a top-five MVP vote earner as a rookie who is already etching her name into the record books. When she stood in the Fever’s practice gym at Gainbridge Fieldhouse a year ago, there was “a lot coming at me,” she said. A new city, living out of a hotel, figuring out new teammates on a strict and short timeline, learning new coaches for the first time in four years, discovering how the league she’d always admired operated behind the lens.
“I feel like I’m at a much better spot of understanding how the league works, what to expect, what the coaches and your teammates are going to expect of you,” Clark said. “And obviously, I’ve had a lot of time to rest and get better at things I want to get better at.”
It was a secret to no one, including Clark, she would have to work on strength in her first professional offseason. It’s the next step for every rookie, and the results are clear after a photo of her at the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis went viral in March.
That’s the major difference center Aliyah Boston, the 2023 Rookie of the Year, said show sees now compared to this time last year.
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“Everyone talks about, once again, her 3-point shooting, and we’ve all seen her passing,” Boston said. “But I think her ability to get downhill and really just stay on balance and score the ball, I think is going to be great this year, too.”
Clark remained in Indianapolis during the offseason to work with the new coaching staff led by Stephanie White, a guard on the inaugural Fever team who most recently led one of the league’s best defenses in Connecticut.
“There was rarely a day that I walked in here that the basketball wasn’t bouncing in the offseason, and Caitlin was in here working,” Cox said.
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She individually welcomed most of her new teammates to town as Cox, hired in October, and Krauskopf, who shaped the Fever into 2016 title winners, used their decades of experience in the league to sign players with championship pedigree.
“That was a glaring thing we had to fix,” Clark said.
It started with re-signing guard and top target Kelsey Mitchell, whose scoring average (19.2) tied Clark and ranked barely outside the top five in the league. She was often the sole light in Indiana before cornerstones Boston and Clark came along from winning lottery draws.
“When we look at the foundations of this franchise, you have Tamika Catchings, and Kelsey Mitchell is the next piece of the foundation of this franchise in the last era,” Cox said.
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In forward Natasha Howard, wing DeWanna Bonner and guard Sydney Colson, the franchise added a combined seven WNBA championships to a team that entered the playoffs a year ago with none. The Fever’s five starters had zero games of WNBA postseason experience before a sweep to White’s and Bonner’s Sun.
“I don’t know [in my] 15 years I’ve been on a team where we had this much firepower throughout the whole roster,” Bonner said, a bold statement for a player who won her second title in 2014 playing alongside Diana Taurasi, Penny Taylor, Brittney Griner and Candice Dupree in Phoenix.
The Mercury haven’t won since despite loaded rosters. To win a championship, there’s more than writing down a lengthy list of talented names and accolades.
“We know where we want to be at the end of the season,” Fever free-agent signee Sophie Cunningham, who played her first six seasons in Phoenix, said. “It’s all about stacking the days. I think people have had really good teams in the past, and they just couldn’t make it come together.”
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With all of the attention Clark draws, in season and out, players said their focus is continuing their strong culture and keeping the noise out of the locker room. Bonner was among the free agents who spoke with Clark, Boston and Mitchell about the organization before signing. Already she said she can’t go out in Indianapolis to run errands without hearing excitement from a fanbase without much to celebrate for the past decade.
To bring the Fever their first championship since 2012 will take sacrifice, she said. Selflessness, a standard of Clark’s pass-happy mode of attack, will be the priority.
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“Most good teams have that eight-player rotation,” White said. “We have eight players who could start in this league. We’ve got a nine-to-10 player rotation that we can use on any given day right now.”
Those who signed in Indiana did so to win. Win because they haven’t. Win because they became accustomed to it. Win because it’s been a while since they have.
“It’s a really good combination to be hungry in different ways,” said Colson, a two-time champion with the Aces.
Win because, all jokes aside, it’s why they’re all here.
“I want to win for them, seeing how selfless they are and them choosing to come here and choosing to be a part of the Fever,” Clark said. “They didn’t have to do that.”
