It was quite an April for Caitlin Clark. The Iowa Hawkeyes returned to NCAA championship game, and the Indiana Fever selected her with the top pick in the WNBA Draft — as both events notched record-setting viewership numbers. And then there’s that reported $28 million shoe deal from Nike. Yeah, not a bad April.
The next big question for Clark is how she’ll fare as she makes the jump to the pros. She joins an Indiana team that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016, but boasts reigning Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston and an upswing as the Fever won more games in 2023 than it did in 2021 and 2022 combined. Everything is trending in the right direction in Indianapolis ahead of training camp, which gets underway on April 28.
Whether Clark can turn the Fever into a playoff team as a rookie is not the only big question on the horizon for her. A few weeks before draft night, USA Basketball invited her to the women’s national team training camp in Cleveland. The only collegiate player in the group, Clark was ultimately unable to participate because she led Iowa to the Final Four that weekend, but the fact that she was already in the mix with Team USA spoke volumes.
Can she become the first American player to…
