By Alexander Bernhardt Bloom | alex@queensledger.com
The campaigns by major candidates in the US presidential election have been, by unusual circumstance, set on a truncated schedule this year, and so they shall reach a fever pitch sooner than is custom as we hurtle through the remaining weeks of the competitive season. So too, the WNBA!
The victorious athletes who occupied the Olympic scorecards for Women’s Basketball Team USA in Paris this month have returned and been restored to their home lineups. For those who stayed behind in the States it was a month off, presumably spent resting and watching medal ceremonies and collecting energy and enthusiasm for breaking back into the WNBA season with just five weeks before playoffs begin. Among the major candidates for rookie of the year and several other categories is Caitlin Clark, who appears to have rested sufficiently and then some for continuing her take-no-prisoners pursuit of first-season glory in the league this summer.
The Indiana Fever are currently ranked seventh overall with a record below .500. It’s a position in the standings good enough to get them into the playoffs if they began tomorrow, but a major candidate it does not make them. Clark doesn’t appear distracted by this.
In their first game back, a decisive win on the Fever’s home court over the Phoenix Mercury, Clark led the team in scoring and assists. She left defenders looking silly, confused, blind and embarrassed, dribbling in pirouettes to deceive and surpass them or else coasting as if on wings on her way through the paint as they looked on with arms by their sides. At sixth in the league in overall points – including those accumulated by measures of three (third most in the league) – we could call Clark a major candidate, only it’s not her scoring that everyone is talking about.
In the Fever’s second game back after the Olympics recess Clark clocked 9 assists, a boost to the team on their way to a 92-75 rout of the Seattle Storm and also enough to earn her a new title: most season assists for a rookie on record.
She made it look easy; she made it look good. Clark passed half court to beat the press. She passed full court to beat it again. She sky-hooked a lobber to find a teammate below the glass and later, from the same spot, kicked out to another for the three. She shot their lights out too, amassing 23 points of her own including Clark’s standard-issue flickers flung from depths of the back court so far past the frontier they’ve got unincorporated towns.
Anyway. A lot can happen between now and September, as the old saying sort of goes. While we get there we’d best keep our eyes open, for the major candidates are giving us a lot to look at.
(Photo Courtesy of @caitlinclark22 on Instagram)
