Caitlin Clark shoots herself out of slump, but Fever defense has her attention after loss

INDIANAPOLIS – No one, other than those on the court, could hear what Caitlin Clark was saying as the Indiana Fever superstar still screamed anyway. It didn’t matter that her defiant declarations, evidenced by her flexing and stomping, were being drowned out by the home crowd she’d just sent into jubilation.

This moment was about more than the game-tying 3-pointer she drilled with 3.1 seconds left against the Washington Mystics. It was a chance for one of the WNBA’s flag bearers to return to a familiar place, where her long-range shooting helped her bend the game to her undeniable will. Clark struggled from distance through the first 11 quarters of the season, missing 18 of her first 23 3-point attempts.

She finally responded on Friday by drilling five 3s in the fourth quarter to force overtime, only for the Fever to still fall 104-102 to the young but poised Mystics. Clark’s emotions, which bubbled to the surface more than a few times Friday as she drilled an array of deep 3s, were understandably muted after the back-and-forth contest.

“That’s like the hardest thing as a basketball player is when you’re not making shots, to really stay in it,” said Clark, who scored 17 of her game-high 32 points in the fourth quarter. “So, I’m certainly proud of myself. Really, really battled,”

Clark and her teammates had been nearly flawless, at least offensively, with the game on the line. Yet, the defeat still left Clark questioning the Fever’s defensive DNA.

“It starts with me, and if we don’t have three clunky quarters, we don’t force ourselves into basketball heroics,” Clark said. “We don’t want to play that way.”

Clark added that she can appreciate the high-intensity moments that often captivate the crowd. Friday’s game was full of them as the Fever and Mystics had six lead changes in the fourth quarter. There was almost a seventh as Mystics guard Sonia Citron, who scored a team-high 30 points, threw in a half-court shot at the end of regulation that was a split-second too late.

Washington ultimately held on, with Citron and rookie Cotie McMahon, who made her WNBA debut Friday, each scoring 5 points in overtime. But from Clark’s perspective, the game wasn’t necessarily lost in the extra frame. It was decided much earlier, when the Fever’s defensive effort wasn’t up to par, and the Mystics feasted, particularly around the basket. Washington outscored Indiana 58-28 in the paint and, as a result, shot a blistering 56 percent from the field.

Perhaps even more concerning than the Fever’s poor defensive showing against the Mystics is that it wasn’t an outlier but an early-season theme. The Fever became the eighth WNBA team in one season to suffer multiple losses when they’ve scored 100-plus points. Indiana has played only three games.

“Shots did start falling,” Clark said of Indiana’s fourth-quarter and overtime surge. “And I think we’ve been letting that dictate how well we play defense too much, which is disappointing for us as a group. We gotta be able to defend all of the time. So, I think that’s our biggest area of growth. Like, yeah, everyone wants to guard when they’re making shots. … (But) when things aren’t going well, we still gotta be able to defend.”

Fever coach Stephanie White shared the same assessment. At one point, after Citron cut backdoor for an easy layup off an inbound pass late in the third quarter, White called a timeout as her frustration boiled over.

“We put a lot of pressure on our offense to be perfect when we don’t consistently defend,” White said. “… We’re taking chances (on steals), we’re fouling shooters who are about to shoot tough shots, we’ve got breakdowns in coverages. We gotta find combinations of players and rotations that’s net efficiency can be good. We can’t wait to play defense in situations where we feel good.”

White, however, commended players’ resilience, which was spearheaded by fiery leader Clark. The two-time All-Star proved yet again why her spotlight is different than everyone else’s. When her 3-point shot is falling, she’s capable of making the near-impossible look routine, and her herculean effort was almost enough Friday.

Almost.

Indiana trailed by eight points with 50.5 seconds left in the fourth quarter before Kelsey Mitchell’s 3-pointer, Myisha Hines-Allen’s layup and Clark’s seventh 3-pointer pulled the game even. It was an enthralling but heartbreaking finish for Indiana, the type that can build character or break it if the Fever don’t take a hard look in the mirror.

“It just comes down to defense and a will to defend and getting stops,” Clark said. “That’s what’s gonna allow us to play in transition and that’s what you saw in the fourth quarter when we got stops. That was exciting basketball. That’s how we want to play all of the time, but it all comes back to us playing defense.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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