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After losing in Caitlin Clark’s long awaited return from a groin injury, the Fever wrap up their regular season series with the Dream tonight needing a win to extend my favorite nugget of the season, not to mention to salvage a four-game split against Atlanta.
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Thanks to the loss to the Valkyries, Indiana needs a win to reach .500 for the ninth time in 10 opportunities this season, having skipped only 3-3 so far. It would also make the Fever 30-30 in their first 60 regular season games since drafting Caitlin Clark. It’s easy for me to say from the sofa, but I’m guessing the Fever didn’t expect to have their worst offensive showing of the last two seasons in Clark’s return. That’s exactly what happened, though, as they registered their lowest offensive rating (75.3 points per 100 possessions) and lowest field-goal percentage (30.9%) in that span. Both of those were Indiana’s worst in Clark’s career by wide margins, the first time it’s hit worse than 36% from the field or scored fewer than 80 points per 100 possessions since 2023.
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Atlanta is also coming off of a game against the Valkyries, but in this instance it was a win. The Dream are playing the first of six straight road games, with stops in New York on Sunday and Chicago on Wednesday to close out the first half. That three-game jaunt is followed by another after the All-Star break with stops in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Minnesota. The Dream are 4-4 on the road this season but have lost three of four including losses to a pair of teams well below .500 in Connecticut and Dallas. They posted an offensive rating of 112.5 points per 100 possessions on Monday against Golden State, improving to 9-0 this season when they have an offensive rating of at least 105. The good news for the Dream is they’ve hit that threshold more often than most — only Minnesota (14 games), Indiana and New York (10 each) have put up ratings of 105+ more often. The bad news for the Dream is they’re 3-7 when they come up short of 105 points per 100 possessions.
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The Dream and Fever split a pair of very tightly contested games in a three-day span early in the season, each winning on the other’s floor and with both games featuring Clark. She wasn’t on the floor when Atlanta won by 19 points in the second iteration of my favorite matchup in the WNBA, Fever-Dream, in early June. Clark finished with 27 points, 5 rebounds and 11 assists in Indiana’s 91-90 home loss to the Dream on May 20. Then, she was held to 11 points, 4 rebounds and 6 assists in an 81-76 Fever win in Atlanta two days later. I don’t think there could possibly be a better encapsulation of Indiana’s season so far than that juxtaposition of Clark performances and team results.
Clark understandably looked a bit rusty in her first action in two weeks on Wednesday, a stark contrast to the show she put on the first time she returned from injury this season. Atlanta’s top scorer Allisha Gray hasn’t missed any time this season but is showing signs of heating up after looking a bit off for a while herself.
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I’ve spent a lot of time saying unpleasant things about Clark’s performances this season, something I feel somewhat guilty for because injuries have certainly played a role in Clark and Indiana’s frustrating first half. It’s not something I want to be doing as someone who tunes in hoping to watch her hit 200 feet of 3-pointers, like she did while scoring 32 points (second-most in her career) against my Liberty in her first return from injury. Sadly, I only speak the truth, which means telling you that Clark scored 10 points on 4-for-12 from the field on Wednesday, the second-fewest points she’s scored while attempting that many shots in a WNBA game and tied for 45th among her 52 WNBA scoring totals including playoff games. Her 6 assists matched a season-low, which is ridiculous when you think about it and probably had something to do with starting alongside another ballhandler in Aari McDonald while Lexie Hull slid to the bench. Clark still had 4 turnovers though, her eighth straight game with at least that many dating back to before Memorial Day. That streak is the third one of its length in WNBA history according to Stathead.com, along with a 16-game streak of Clark’s last season and a nine-game streak by Lisa Leslie in 1998.
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Gray scored 24 points on 8-for-14 from the field against Golden State on Monday, her second time finishing with that exact shooting line and second time scoring 20+ points in her last three games. That stretch comes on the heels of five straight games under 20 points and under 50% from the field, a run which took a bit of the shine off of Gray’s red-hot start to the season. She’s still below 20 points per game after spending most of May and June above that mark, but her 19.4 ppg would be a career-high by a wide margin. She’s also putting up career-best marks in rebounds per game (5.5), assists per game (4.1) and 3-point percentage (41.6%). She scored 23 points on 9-for-13 from the field the last time the teams played but had 27 points on 9-for-28 in the two May games combined.
The Storm got an unpleasant reminder that it’s hard to win Camp Day games on the road when they became the first team to fall in front of a sea of kids shrieking with glee on Tuesday morning. Seattle seemed to be handling an 8 AM Pacific tip (11 on the East Coast) fine with a 74-66 lead through three quarters, but they just couldn’t get anything right in the final frame, which the Sun took by a 27-9 margin.
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Connecticut snapped a franchise-record 10-game losing streak, which beat the previous record by three games, and earned its first win since knocking off Atlanta on June 6. The Sun will look for their first back-to-back wins of the season after their previous two attempts went about as badly as games can go. Connecticut followed its first win this season with a 48-point loss in Brooklyn, the second-worst margin in WNBA history. The Sun’s win over Atlanta was immediately followed by a 37-point loss at Washington which started the 10-game skid.
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The Storm let a 3-1 road trip slip away in their setback at Connecticut, falling to 3-3 after winning six of their previous seven. Seattle let Connecticut score 117.7 points per 100 possessions in the 93-83 loss on Tuesday, the second-highest rating it’s allowed and third-most points it’s allowed this season (one off of a season-high which has happened twice). The Storm are 8-2 when holding opponents under 80 points this season, but Tuesday’s loss dropped them to 4-6 when giving up 80+ and 0-3 when allowing at least 90 points. This is Seattle’s first of four straight at home, three of which come over the next six days with Washington coming in on Sunday and Golden State on Wednesday.