With all the fanfare surrounding Caitlin Clark’s entry into the WNBA, the questions for the college phenom were fired as high as one of her signature logo 3-pointers.
Was the No. 1 pick a long-shot MVP candidate? Could she play her way onto Team USA for the Olympics? Could she transform the Indiana Fever into a playoff team?
Certainly she would be a shoo-in for Rookie of the Year.
About that.
While Clark — despite a certain mood of deflation that comes with, oh, not scoring 40 points a night, like she did when Iowa played the likes of Purdue — remains the heavy award favorite at FanDuel with -750 odds, she finds herself in a compelling Rookie of the Year race in the early going with other members of the star-studded class of 2024.
Angel Reese (+1300) and Cameron Brink (+750) have emerged as Clark’s primary competition for the hardware. Clark opened the year with -600 odds, but, per oddsmakers, is now an even larger favorite.
After scoring a professional-career-high 30 points for the Fever on Tuesday night in a matchup with Brink and the Los Angeles Sparks, Clark is averaging 17.3 points per game. That ranks 13th in the WNBA.
She also ranks fourth in the league with 6.3 assists per game.
That’s a laudable top-line Rookie of the Year résumé.
But Clark’s main demerits come from inefficient shooting — she’s at 38.1 percent from the floor and 31.3 from 3-point range — and a whopping 5.5 turnovers per game, the most in the league by a wide margin. She was charged with seven turnovers in the loss to the Sparks.
“I think I’ve improved a lot since the beginning of the season,” Clark said. “The biggest thing for me is once I get in [the paint], I still get a little indecisive, and that’s honestly where a lot of my turnovers are still coming from.”
There’s also the matter of Clark’s questionable impact on the other side of the ball for the 1-7 Fever, who rank last in the WNBA in defensive rating and scoring defense.
That’s why Clark does not fare as well as other rookies in some advanced metrics.
Brink, the No. 2 pick, leads all rookies with 0.4 win shares — a metric that calculates a player’s impact on team success — thanks to her prowess on defense.
The 6-foot-4 Brink is already one of the WNBA’s premier rim protectors with a league-leading 3.0 blocks per game, to go with 9.5 points and 5.3 rebounds.
Reese, the No. 7 pick, comes in behind Brink with 0.3 win shares.
She has scored in double figures in each of her five games, and recorded her first WNBA double-double Tuesday night with 11 points and 12 rebounds in the Chicago Sky’s loss to the Seattle Storm.
The forward is averaging 12.0 points and 8.5 rebounds. Her 4.8 offensive rebounds per game lead the league.
Reese also ranks sixth in the WNBA with 6.6 free-throw attempts per game, proving the attributes that made her a star at LSU are translating to the pros.
And that’s before mentioning the fearless attitude — just take her comments after getting body-slammed by Alyssa Thomas over the weekend as Exhibit A — she has brought to the Sky, who are faring best of the projected lottery teams with an early 2-3 record.
Clark, in comparison, has 0.0 win shares — less than other rookies such as the Sparks’ dynamic-scorer sleeper Rickea Jackson (0.2), former Iowa teammate Kate Martin (0.1) of the Las Vegas Aces and the Washington Mystics’ Julia Vanloo (0.1).
Going by PER — or, player efficiency rating, by which 15 is the league average — Clark (17.1) has a narrow edge over Brink (17.0) and Reese (15.3).
Clark just finished one-fifth of the 40-game WNBA schedule, and her fellow rookies have made even less headway.
That leaves plenty of time for Clark to continue her adjustment to the pros and pull away for the expected Rookie of the Year coronation — and plenty of opportunities for burgeoning stars in Reese and Brink to say: not so fast.