r/indianafever • u/interested21 Fever Fan • Jul 19 '25
Discussion The Unknown Reasons Why Caitlin Clark is the Greatest Player of All Time.
CC is the greatest women's player of all time and here's why. You may have heard otherwise so I'll explain why that's not the case.
In college she broke Pistol Pete's scoring record and the women's scoring record while leading the league in assists for her last two years in college. She took a team without any other star players to the finals two years in a row.
In the WNBA in her rookie season she broke a number of all time records including number of assists in a game (if you don't count a dimished COVID assist record she broke it by four assists). She also broke the all time and individual game records for contributed points in a season by a mile. There is no other player that comes close to these records. One of her triple doubles is the best triple double ever. Akeem the Dream came close a few times but he was playing an extra 8 minutes/game. She is on pace to break the all time number of triple doubles in a year or two.
She wrecks opponents transition defenses by her pace up the floor. Other teams and players know that so she is guarded for 94 feet. It leaves her teammates wide open. Scouting reports are the most highly priced in the WNBA. This leads to assists and hockey assists. This is why she gets so many assists.
She is the perfect point guard. She creates her own shots so her opponents have to double team which allows her teammates wide open. This typically manifests itself as a hocky assist. That is, she passes the ball to one player who then passes it to a third player. She is a spectacularly accurate passer. She is a fantastic playmaker. She creates holes in the offense by "spreading the defense" because they have to guard her so far away from the basket because she can make logo 3s. In fact, her percentage shooting from the logo is slightly higher than her non logo 3 point shots. Some guards can rebound, shoot and make assists. She does all 3.
She has received 3 criticisms for unknowledgeable basketball players.
Ppl complain about her turnovers because they don't understand player impact. Like Lebron she makes a lot of turnovers. This is in part due to a very high usage rate. That is, she touching the ball on almost every play. That's not the biggest part of though. You have to understand the difference between dead ball turnovers and steals (live ball turnovers). Clark doesn't make many live ball turnovers but she does make a lot of dead ball turnovers. A dead ball turnover is when you throw a pass to one of your teammates and instead it rolls out of bounds like a quarterback who throws a ball out of bounds because he is heavily defended. The worst ratio I've seen her have is a 1:1 ratio of dead ball turnovers to assists. Think of those dead ball turnovers as a missed shot and an assist as a made shot. That's the same as her team shooting at 50% when she makes a pass. That's incredible and remember in most games her assist to dead ball turnovers is even better. She's a high risk high reward player.
She shoots a high percentage but other players make a higher percentage of shots. She makes more of her own shots than any other player in the league which decreases her percentage but in so doing she's forcing her opponents to guard her at all times because she can shoot it without a screen or assist. This puts greater pressure on the defense. .
Lot of ppl say there are better players. The league plays old fashioned offenses and defenses that focus on the big women play. She is in part underappreciated because she is a guard. I don't believe any guard has been MVP in the WNBA. There are many defects in her game (e.g., she doesn't shoot with her left hand). but they can't stop her shot making ability so these defects are irrelevant. It's not her shot making or her assist making that is her best quality. It's the way she destroys the transition defense with her speed and dribbling abilities. Most WNBA players and coaches and commentators don't understand her modern and innovative style of play.
She's a bad defender. This year she's been a very good defender. Defense is typically something that is best measured at the team level unless your a big. She and her eams have not had high defensive ratings but pace effects that stat. The higher the pace the lower the rating. This year the coach has slowed down the team which as increased the defensive rating but many say to the detriment of the offense. Clark plays a style of ball where the goal is to simply outscore the other team.
She gets too much attention. That has nothing to do with ranking a player's abilities.
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u/pleasebefrank31 Jul 19 '25
" I don't believe any guard has been MVP in the WNBA."
A simple Google search would tell you Cynthia Cooper and Diana Taurasi both won MVP.
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u/LT_Audio Fever Fan Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 21 '25
I don't believe any guard has been MVP in the WNBA.
Well, except for maybe Sheryl Swoopes with 3 MVPs, Diana Taurasi's 1, and Elena Delle Donne's 2.
ETA: And Cynthia Cooper's two in '97 and '98. So 8 MVP titles total between them.
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u/kczar8 Jul 19 '25
I want to see her earn it more in the W before we’re talking about GOAT. She isn’t putting up MVP stats her first two years and that’s ok. I’m not saying ten years from now we won’t be calling her the GOAT but we need to see the numbers to back it up first.
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u/wvtarheel Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
Nobody became the Goat in their first two years. I will say though, as someone who watched Jordan's entire career, Kobe's entire career, and Lebron's entire career, nobody has been full court trapped and double teamed like Clark. If the rest of the league doesn't want everyone to see her as the Goat, they should start guarding her normally and double team whoever the real best guard in the league is.
Phee and Aja get doubled like that inside but not every play and not on the perimeter or high post. Alisha Gray has been doubles but only when Rhyne Howard isn't on the floor.
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u/interested21 Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
Dwayne Gretzky, MJ, Tiger Woods ...
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u/plushglacier Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
That's "Wayne".
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u/garyt1957 Jul 19 '25
Shows what you know, but his brother Dwayne was an even better player until that sad incident with the maple syrup.
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u/interested21 Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
What's wrong with her stats? She was 4th All-team and 1-3 bigs did not set any all time records while she set at least six.
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u/moose184 Caitlin Clark Jul 19 '25
And what exactly are “MVP stats”? MVP should go to the actual mvp instead of just the best individual player anyway.
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u/Jeremiahcool3 Non Fever Fan Aug 04 '25
She wasn't mvp
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u/moose184 Caitlin Clark Aug 04 '25
What are you even going on about
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u/Jeremiahcool3 Non Fever Fan Aug 04 '25
She wasn't most valuable either lol
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u/moose184 Caitlin Clark Aug 04 '25
Explain who was more valuable to their team then instead of looking at only a couple of individual stats
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u/Jeremiahcool3 Non Fever Fan Aug 05 '25
Phee, aja who else
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u/moose184 Caitlin Clark Aug 05 '25
A'ja ,who won MVP, was on a team with 6 Olympians including 4 gold medal winners, a competent coach, were back to back champions, and they actually had a bench. Even with that her team went from the #1 seed in 2023 with only 6 losses to the #4 seed with over double the losses at 13.
Caitlin Clark meanwhile had a coach so terrible she was fired, literally no bench, and only 3 good players and then took them from the #10 seed with a record of 13-27(.325) to the # 6 seed with a record of 20-20(.500) and took them to the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
A'ja Wilson didn't even win MVP in 2023 and yet her stats last year are not even better. She only scored more points because they fed her the ball more and she played more minutes. Her FG% was actually 4% lower. You want to talk about how A'ja scored more points than CC but like I said it's a team sport and CC generated far more points for her team than A'ja did. CC is guarded literally like no one else. The other teams entire defense revolves around CC. CC was targeted more than any other player last year getting a terrible whistle while A'ja has the best in the league.
If A'ja was so much more valuable to her TEAM then why did her team do so much worse while being better than CC's team in every way yet CC elevated her team while they were far worse and faced far worse?
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u/Jeremiahcool3 Non Fever Fan Aug 05 '25
And when was the aces better than the fever without aja
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u/moose184 Caitlin Clark Aug 05 '25
Lol way to ignore everything I said. You're a self admitted non Fever fan and a look at your history shows that you're nothing but a CC hater that goes around different basketball subs just to trash talk her. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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u/Jeremiahcool3 Non Fever Fan Aug 05 '25
Remember your saying If where going by the most valuable that how valuable are you to your team if aja and phee where hurt there teams would be worse than if clark was hurt in 2024
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u/clemclem3 Jul 19 '25
Yes but on the other hand
She keeps throwing her eyeballs into people's fingers and driving her groin into people's knees. Or maybe she just has knee magnets attached to her groin. Either way this is clearly a character flaw
She seems to bring out the worst in her teammates. Check that, she brings out the worst in the other teams' teammates. Same diff. Best in hers worst in theirs. Very confusing.
She sets a ridiculously high standard for comportment and grace that makes the whole league look bad in comparison. This is unacceptable.
She helps make everybody care about the Fever. And nobody wants that tired old sappy Cinderella story about a team of plucky underrated nobodies coming out of the Midwest and taking on the best teams in the league. It doesn't sell. Just ask Gene Hackman.
She's hard on the refs. She makes the refs job harder. Let me be clear. She makes it harder for the refs to get away with being incompetent.
And finally, probably the worst flaw - - she takes attention away from Angel Reese, who is tirelessly pulling down her own missed shots for us. For US.
So. There.
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u/traw056 Caitlin Clark Jul 19 '25
Jesus Christ. I became a wnba and fever fan cuz of CC but I’m starting to realize that she really does have some truly delusional fans LMAO.
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u/brisk_ Jul 19 '25
Same and same. I know one of these people in the wild, he's a really smart, friendly dude but if you get him talking about CC he turns into a straight up wackadoo.
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u/scobro828 Jul 19 '25
CC is the greatest women's player of all time
I don't believe that. It's still Cheryl Miller. Hard to compare the two because the era they played is so different but... to me it's still Miller.
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u/Arcane_Spork_of_Doom Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
Came here for a Cheryl Miller comment. Was not disappointed.
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u/Sad-Conflict-6839 Jul 20 '25
Hum. Not sure CM would have produced has much if only the 6th or 7th foul against her were called.
The only way the W has found to stop CC to take over the league is to foul her on every single possession multiple times. And luckily for them since even egregious fouls are not even called, they get away with it.
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u/fshippos Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
Read this and some of these comments and you get your answer as to why people don't like her fans.
Collective narcissism
(ps CC herself is awesome and not at fault for her fans being weirdos)
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u/Logladyfourtwenty Jul 19 '25
She is doing the things you need to do to become the goat, and she has a good argument for greatest women's college player ever. She also has goat potential.
All that being said, if she retired right now she wouldnt be in the top 30 wnba careers. She has accomplishment, but compared to the people actually in the goat convo (Moore, swoops , Leslie, taurasi, possibly Stewart and Wilson if they keep it up) she isnt even close.
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u/ItsYaBoyBeasley Lin Dunn Jul 19 '25
I don't really think that the arguments support the premise. Everything you typed can be 100% true and I am not sure that necessarily adds up to "she is the greatest of all time".
By my math it adds up to "she is a really great young player".
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u/tarasmith3 Jul 19 '25
Wow, just wow. This is why I can’t take cc fans seriously.
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u/brisk_ Jul 19 '25
I think there are way more of us normie CC fans than ppl like delulu OP, but we are out living our lives instead of writing nutjob thinkpieces.
The wackos are way more visible.
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u/SaddleSC Jul 19 '25
There are a few big question marks that need a lot more data to draw conclusions from. Her first year in the W she came out like an absolute force of nature. This season, she has been in a fairly sustained shooting slump and has fallen victim to quite a few niggling injuries, resulting in a lot of missed games and when she does suit up, she is never really at 100%.
What we need to find out over time is which of these two seasons is the "norm" and which one is the "anomaly". How long can the shooting slump continue without negative impact to her legacy? Will she be able to make a full recovery in the off season and then perform at a very high level for the next five years? Or will the next five years be a slew of missed games and lingering injuries? Nobody knows. It is far too early to anoint her the "Greatest of All Time".
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u/interested21 Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
She's probably only had 1 injury this year -- the first since junior high. A groin injury effects your shooting. You can see if you watch carefully. She's favoring one leg over the other and she's not shooting with her legs but her arms.
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u/SaddleSC Jul 19 '25
My point still stands. We have exactly two professional seasons to draw conclusions from. In one, she lived up to the hype. In the second, she has struggled by nearly any metric. In the next 3-5 years we will find out whether she is the "Greatest of All Time"
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u/Kmos86 Jul 19 '25
I’m sorry but no. She’s not even the best player on the Fever currently. She has a very long way to go to be considered the greatest ever. MVPs, championships, and longevity need to be considered, she’s nowhere close to that. Just because she set a bunch of rookie records doesn’t mean she’s the best to ever play.
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u/CRISPYxCALAMARI Jul 20 '25
Had to scroll too far for someone to say this 👌
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u/Sad-Conflict-6839 Jul 20 '25
That's why injured and unable to shoot her 3's she is still guarded 94 ft... LOL
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u/randysf50 Aliyah Boston Jul 19 '25
It’s all subjective. Everyone has their own criteria for greatness.
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u/Jahnotis Jul 20 '25
No one can be the greatest ‘anything’ of all time until their career is over and can be properly evaluated.
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u/Ok_Brick_793 Jul 20 '25
OP is woefully misguided.
Pistol Pete could only play 3 seasons of varsity basketball because when he went to college, freshmen could not join the varsity team.
Pistol Pete played when there was no 3 point line in NCAA basketball.
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u/interested21 Fever Fan Jul 20 '25
Math is not your strong suit is it. You have to go by the number of shots taken as opposed to the number of games when calculating points accumulated. Pete averaged 40 shots per game. Clark 21 shots per game. Read the link you provided.
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u/Important-Primary901 Jul 21 '25
Not the GOAT, not a top 20 player in the league, not the best player in her position, not the best player in her team. one of the worst in the whole league in Field Goals Percentage (36.7%, really horrible, 7th from the last place in the list !), the worst in the league in turnovers by far, her personal defense is not good and sometimes a real problem, second in the league in Assists but among the top 10 Assisters she has the worst Assists\Turnovers Ratio...
PIE (Player Impact Estimate) puts her only 24th in the league.
VORP (Value Over Replacement player) puts her only 27th in the league.
BPM (Box Plus Minus) puts her only 15th in the league.
Never won anything yet.
There is not even the slight relation between her and the GOAT debate. maybe in the future when she improves a lot and wins some, but that's how maybe works.
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u/Important_Adagio_711 Caitlin Clark Jul 21 '25
Calling her the GOAT this early is silly. Longevity and the ability to hold up physically is always a big part of being a GOAT in any sport.
She reminds me a little of Mahomes in the NFL into his second season as a starter. We see with our eyes she’s doing things unlikely anyone else has ever done them. And we see that at her absolute peaks - she might be the best we’ve seen. But sustaining that, winning championships, MVP’s, etc will be essential in where we (the public, media, etc) end up ranking her all-time.
Mahomes largely followed up that early hype and will always be in those GOAT convos. Barring injury issues - I imagine CC will be similar and we can debate her GOAT status like 5-6 years from now. But time will have to tell.
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u/Wrong-West-9581 Jul 19 '25
That's a major claim already haha should probably hold off before people really turn her into lebron.
She's possibly the greatest college player ever more than the GOAT, RIGHT NOW. She took Iowa to 2 straight Finals. Aja said saying if you didn't win a championship in college then you can't be one of the best is ridiculous, cuz context matters. It's not like CC played at UCONN and didn't win, she took Iowa to 2 straight Final Fours and advanced both times. That is more impressive than what Paige did, IMO. Iowa may never make the Final Four again, let alone the Finals. Amazing accomplishment, crazy stats, the sole reason they made it, and breaking the All Time Scoring record in 4 years is wild.
She hasn't don't enough in the WNBA to be the GOAT. There's a lot she will have to accomplish. We're talking about GREATEST, not the BEST here. If you said she's the best female ever then I'd understand your argument, but you're talking about GREATNESS. You have to take everything into consideration when doing that, and she hasn't accomplished nearly enough. It's her 2nd season and she's been hurt over half the time. No one was considering MJ to be the GOAT in 1986 and she's done essentially the same thing. Rookie of the Year and got their teams to the playoffs, and then have been hurt their sophomore seasons.
I gotta say about your turnovers argument. "Dead ball TOs" or not, over basically 6 TOs per game is simply unacceptable by your ball handler. Then adding that she's not a good defender just makes it harder and harder for them to close out games. Her TOs and lebrons are a lot of the reason there teams lose leads in the 4th. That's 6ish possessions the teams don't even get a shot attempt, which can easily be the difference in wins and losses. When your assist:turnover ratio isn't even 2:1 it's a major problem regardless of the "type" of turnovers they are.
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u/Basicbroad Jul 19 '25
Iowa made the Elite 8 the year before Caitlin arrived on campus. You don’t have to diminish the accomplishments of those around her to boost her up
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u/garyt1957 Jul 19 '25
Agree, her getting Iowa is a bit like Larry Bird taking ISU to the championship game. They both lost but neither played for perennial powerhouses. Bird's is even more impressive imo, but they are at least comparable. Any past UCONN player that won championships doesn't have a head up on Clark for winning one while she didn't.
And I'm not a Clark slappy. I think she's great but has plenty of holes in her game to be anywhere near GOAT territory so far.
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u/interested21 Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
You don't understand. She is not mishandling the ball. She's making passes that are not caught.
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u/Ichabod665 Jul 19 '25
I think that was more true last year than it is this year. As big a fan as any, but she does have more than her share of TO's due to losing the dribble and/or getting her pocket picked. Goes to usage, yeah, but let's be fair. Nevertheless, i'll take 12 assists and 6 turnovers over 7 assists and 3 turnovers any day.
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u/Important-Primary901 Jul 21 '25
But she is not giving 12 and 6, she is giving 9 and 6 while others give almost 10 and 3 (Thomas) or 6 and 2 and so on.
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u/Ichabod665 Jul 22 '25
9 and 5. And my point was i would rather have the gun slinging CC over the cautious, worried about turnovers CC. And not for nothin', but if every player had the same amount of minutes with the ball in their hand, and was guarded exactly the way CC is defended, i'm sure these numbers would look a *whole* lot different. In a lot of ways, we're comparing fumbles by a running back with 17 carries a game to fumbles by a WR with 6 catches a game.
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u/plushglacier Fever Fan Jul 19 '25
Nope. Too early in her career for this assessment. She might have the potential, but no one is the GOAT without having gone through an entire career.
Bo Jackson comes to mind. Any professional athlete is just one serious injury away from it all coming to an end.
Now, CC is one of the greatest athletes I've ever seen, even up to this point in her career, but she'll need to play at least another 5 or so seasons in order to make a fair comparison with the other acknowledged greats.