After getting her flowers at Iowa, Caitlin Clark tries to lift her WNBA team from the dirt

INDIANAPOLIS — There’s a reason why the Indiana Fever had the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick in 2024. And in 2023.

They weren’t good. They still aren’t.

There’s a reason why WNBA all-time scoring leader Diana Taurasi said what she said last month about Caitlin Clark moving up to the pros.

"Reality is coming. There’s levels to this thing. And that’s just life. We all went through it. You see it on the NBA side and you’re going to see it on this side.

“You look superhuman playing 18-year-olds, but you’re going to come with some grown women who’ve been playing professional basketball for a long time.”

No one else in the WNBA’s 28 years has sold more tickets in advance, gotten more games moved to bigger arenas in cities with smaller gyms for their WNBA teams, and gotten more preseason attention put on the league than Clark.

But becoming a professional facsimile of the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I clearly will take more than two games for Iowa’s two-time National Player of the Year.

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Thursday night, before a sellout of 17,274 in Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Clark had five fouls and two baskets. She scored nine points, was 1-of-7 from 3-point range, and was guarded fiercely by New York Liberty eight-year veteran Betnijah Laney-Hamilton.

“Caitlin demands so much respect out there and attention and that’s what we did,” New York Coach Sandy Brondello said. “We have Betnijah Laney. What more could you ask? One of the best defenders in this league, if not the best.”

The whopping crowd, here to see Clark play a regular-season home game for the first time, didn’t get much joy over the course of the game other than when Clark scored seven unanswered points late in the third quarter to help Indiana briefly climb within 11 points.

The final: Liberty 102, Fever 66. Ouch.

Clark had six assists and seven defensive rebounds. But New York, which went 32-8 last season, is significantly better than Indiana and showed it with an offense that flowed and winners who got after it defensively much better than the Fever.

No. 1 draft picks go to teams that need a lot of help. Indiana needs help from Clark, help that will come gradually instead of today.

“People are playing her hard, people are playing her aggressively,” said Fever forward Katie Lou Samuelson. “We can do a better job trying to help her get some space and help her get some freedom.

“We trust her, and we want to keep figuring out how to work with her in the best way. … Teams are really, really, really hounding her, a full-court 94 feet.”

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Christi Sides, 13-29 in a season and two games as Indiana’s coach, kept talking after the game about the need for her players to display mental toughness, pride, and such. Her team got killed on the boards Thursday, made just 36.7 percent of its shots, and defended in name only.

The 17,274 didn’t come to see fundamentals, though. They came for Clark. So many bought and wore red or navy blue Clark shirts. So many roared every time she did anything in the game. So many were muffled by halftime, when the Fever trailed 48-31.

“It’s a process and she’s going to be fine,” Sides said. “She’s figuring it out. She just needs to get a little bit of confidence right now. I think she’s taking some shots she normally knocks down.”

Clark just got done with a college season that had an exhibition game last Oct. 15 in Kinnick Stadium and concluded in the April 7 national title game in Cleveland.

This isn’t college ball where you play a game, then get two, three, maybe four practices before the next one. The Fever lost, 92-71, at Connecticut on Tuesday, played Thursday, face the Liberty in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. Next week they have a home game Monday, then play at Seattle, Los Angeles and Las Vegas within a 4-day period.

Indiana will have played 11 times when the season is just 20 days old.

“It’s been the same (the) whole time we’ve had the league,” Clark said before the game. “It’s been the same for every rookie that’s come into this league.”

“She’s a volume scorer, shooter. She’s our point guard,” Sides said. “So now our players who have been here, it takes time to get used to how she plays. It takes time for her to get used to how they play.”

Clark will be fine in this league, probably closer to excellent, and probably sooner rather than later.

But Taurasi, a 41-year-old who scored 23 points for the Phoenix Mercury on Tuesday to start her 20th season with the team, knew of what she spoke.

The WNBA is grown women.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com