Clark becomes first rookie in WNBA (and NBA) to do this
INDIANPOLIS (WISH) — The history-making keeps coming for Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark.
The probable Rookie of the Year became the first rookie ever — in either the WNBA and NBA — to be named Player of the Week three consecutive weeks.
The league gave her the weekly Eastern Conference Player of the Week award Tuesday after averaging nearly a triple-double over the last three games. She racked up 15 points, 10 assists and 7.7 rebounds a contest over that time as her team went 2-1, including Sunday’s overtime thriller against the Atlanta Dream. Her 26 points and 12 assists in that game mark her 14th double-double of the season — a new franchise record for most double-double performances in a single season.
While Clark was pleased with the comeback win against the Dream Sunday, she knows that those kinds of performances during regulation won’t cut it come playoffs.
“The Liberty, Connecticut, Minnesota. Those are teams that do not let you back in from a 16-point lead,” Clark said after the game Sunday. “That just doesn’t happen, and we have to find a way to respond a little earlier for ourselves. We sometimes get down, and we don’t always stop the bleeding right away. But I think the positive is, and I’ve said it before, at the beginning of the season that was really bad news for us, and 16 turned into 30 or something like that and now we just find a way to chip away.”
The No. 1 overall draft pick from Iowa netted 13 three-pointers over those three games, on her way to setting a another Fever record of 111 triples this season. She’s also just 53 points away from breaking Seimone Augustus’s rookie single-season scoring record — which sits at 744 points currently.
The Fever has just four games left of the regular season before entering the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Three of those four will be at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, including back-to-back battles with last year’s champions — the Las Vegas Aces.