Clark says best is yet to come after dazzling WNBA rookie year

NEW YORK — Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark said she has only scratched the surface of what she can accomplish after her record-breaking rookie season ended in the first round of the WNBA playoffs on Wednesday.

The Rookie of the Year led the Fever to its first postseason appearance since 2016, and, while it exited the playoffs with an 87-81 defeat by the Connecticut Sun on the road, Clark assured fans that bigger things are on the way.

"I feel like I had a solid year, but for me the fun part is I feel like I'm just scratching the surface," she told reporters. "I feel like I can continue to get a lot better."

Clark took some time to get going, but once she gelled with her teammates, including two-time All Star Kelsey Mitchell and last year's rookie of the year Aliyah Boston, she put up extraordinary numbers in her debut year.

The 22-year-old broke the single-season assists record (337), smashed the rookie scoring record with 769 points and, in July, became the first WNBA rookie to score a triple double.

"We came together and had a lot of fun playing with one another," said Clark. "That's sometimes the worst part of it — it's like you feel like you're playing your best basketball, and then it has to end."

It was exactly the kind of run that the WNBA had hoped for, as it worked to capitalize on the "Clark effect" that saw television ratings shattered in her wake in her record-breaking final collegiate season with Iowa.

The six-foot sharpshooter became appointment viewing in college thanks to her dazzling three-pointers and she had her best weapon on display in the WNBA, recording the most with 122 of them.

Viewership of WNBA games on Ion more than doubled from 2023, the network said. Seven games had more than 1 million viewers — all of them Fever games.

The Fever's final regular-season game brought in a WNBA record crowd of 20,711 to the Capital One Arena, where the home team Washington Mystics won 92-91.

Clark had scarcely a week between her final college game and the WNBA Draft, where a television audience of 2.45 million, a record for the event, tuned in to watch her go first overall.

While some WNBA players head overseas in the off-season to supplement their income, Clark, who has already signed a host of lucrative endorsement deals, appears unlikely to follow suit.

"I feel like basketball has really consumed my life for a year," she said. "I feel like taking some time to myself and really enjoying that and reflecting back and, you know, it was special."

Third-seeded Connecticut will now face Minnesota in the semifinals, which begin Sunday.

Meanwhile, Alyssa Thomas and Stephanie White said racist and homophobic comments directed at WNBA players need to stop.

The Connecticut Sun star and coach were speaking after their team finished off its sweep of the Fever on Wednesday night.

"I think that, in my 11-year career, I never experienced the racial comments like from the Indiana Fever fan base," she said.

"It's unacceptable, and, honestly, there's no place for it. We've been professional throughout the whole entire thing, but I've never been called the things that I've been called on social media, and there's no place for it."

Thomas knows that the game has grown this year, with many new fans watching on television and in the stands. But, the All-Star forward doesn't want fans that are disrespectful to the players in the game.

"Basketball is headed in a great direction, but we don't want fans that are going to degrade us and call us racial things," she said.

White defended her team and its players, saying that it's more than just them getting attacked.

"We've seen a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia throughout the course of our country," White said. "Sport is no exception, and it's unacceptable to be quite honest."

Agencies