‘The Caitlin Clark thing is over’: radio personality is wrong about her

“But when we look back on this, we’ll go, this girl had the world by the balls. She had everybody loving her. People who hate women’s sports were tuning in just for her. And we look at Jeremy Lin and look at her, we’re going to find out that at the end of the day, it was the exact same thing.”

Clark is Still Performing

The reality is that Clark has indeed been struggling, at least by her lofty standards. Her three-point shooting has been downright atrocious, she has been struggling mightily on the defensive side of the ball, and she currently leads the league in turnovers. Despite all of that, Johnson’s take was still completely wrong.

Even when she’s struggling – as she has in the first two games of the season – Clark is still the most dynamic player on the court, and she finds ways to impact the game in other ways when her typical ways aren’t working.

For all the criticism she’s received this season, Clark actually put together two very complete games in the first two games of the season when you look at the stat sheet. In the season-opening loss to the Dallas Wings, Clark scored 20 points with seven assists and five rebounds. Against the Los Angeles Sparks on Wednesday, Clark had four rebounds, nine assists, two steals, and a block while putting up 24 points.

The numbers she has put up simply do not align with the criticism that she has received.

Even Without a Three-Point Shot

The three-point shot has always been the most important part of Clark’s game throughout her career. She made more three-pointers than anyone else in NCAA history at the college level, and set some three-point shooting records in her rookie season in the WNBA, too. But even as she’s struggled from beyond the arc, she has not struggled to score with efficiency and consistency in other ways.

So far this season, Clark is a dismal 3-for-16 from three-point range – just 18.8%. Given her reliance on her three-point shot throughout her career, you’d expect these struggles to drastically impact her scoring output, but it hasn’t. In fact, Clark’s scoring is actually up this year.

Clark averaged 16.5 points per game last season. During her record-breaking rookie season in 2024, she averaged 19.2 points per game. Through two games this season, Clark is averaging 22 points per game, ranking No. 6 in the league in scoring.

While the three-pointers aren’t falling, pretty much every other shot is. From inside the three-point arc, Clark is a ridiculous 13-of-19, making 68.4% of her shots. She’s also been perfect at the free-throw line, making all nine of her free-throw attempts.

If anything, Clark’s offensive performance this season has been more impressive than previous seasons because she’s proven that she can score and impact the game reliably and consistently, even when her three-point shot is not falling. And it’s quite unlikely that the three-point shooting slump is going to last forever.

She’s Not Going Anywhere

Even if Clark were truly struggling, Johnson would still be wrong, and his take would still be ridiculous. With no disrespect intended to Lin, Clark has already made a far greater impact on the WNBA than Lin ever did in the NBA. She would go down as the most important player in league history even if she never played another game.

But she’s also not going anywhere.

Like it or not, Clark is the face of the league, regardless of what some “marketability” rankings might say. For her era to truly be “over” like Johnson suggests, she would have to be struggling so badly that she was simply unplayable. Instead, she’s averaging 22 points and eight assists per game.

She’s not perfect. There are holes in her game. There is real room for improvement. But the notion that she’s just a flash-in-the-pan star who is quickly fading away is just laughably incorrect, and all the numbers show it.

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