It’s only her third year in the WNBA, but Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark is already facing pressure to take her game to new heights.
“When is she gonna start winning at the next level?” Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd, 62, asked on the Monday, May 18, episode of his show, The Herd. “She has not won a playoff series yet. My take is, she has her [Scottie] Pippen, Kelsey Mitchell.”
The Fever drafted Clark, 24, first overall in the 2024 WNBA Draft. During her rookie season, she led Indiana to a seven-win improvement from the previous year and its first playoff appearance since 2016. Her second season, however, was derailed by injuries, and she appeared in just 13 games.
Four regular season games into her third season, Clark is off to a fast start, averaging better than 24 points per game and nine assists.
“This is not hating on Caitlin Clark, but the stage of ‘Wow, who’s the new kid?’ I’m done with that,” Cowherd continued. “That was awesome. That was Taylor Swift’s self-titled album … and then it was Fearless, which crushed her self-titled album. I need Fearless.”
Though the Fever are 2-2 on the young season, they are expected to contend with the top half of the WNBA. Postseason success, Cowherd said, will help bring Clark to the next level.
“Has she won a playoff game?” he asked. “No, she hasn’t even won a playoff game, forget a series. … This team should vie for the championship if she is what I think she is.”
Cowherd’s comments came nearly a week after Tyrone Johnson, cohost of the popular Craig Carton Show, compared Clark to former New York Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin.
Lin, now 37, sparked “Linsanity” during the 2011–12 season when he came out of nowhere to propel the Knicks to the playoffs. He then fell hard back down to Earth the next season and bounced around the league, never reclaiming the magic he found in New York.
“The Caitlin Clark thing is over because she’s not the best player in the WNBA,” Johnson opined earlier this month. “She’s not the best guard in the WNBA. She’s not even the best guard from her college class because that’s Paige Bueckers, who plays for Dallas, who beat them in the season opener. This could be a situation where … we look back on Caitlin Clark, and we’re not gonna look back on her like she’s Michael Jordan. She’s Jeremy Lin. This is just Linsanity.”
He added, “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.”
