Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever made it look easy in their season opener. The Atlanta Dream provided a reality check on Tuesday.
In their second game of the season, the Fever fell 91-90 to another team that spent the offseason re-tooling around a No. 1 pick. In the Dream’s case, it was Rhyne Howard, who combined with new additions Brittney Griner and Brionna Jones to outwork Indiana inside and outside the paint.
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The game saw the Fever come back from down nine points with 4:09 remaining, but one final possession saw one shot from Natasha Howard blocked by Nia Coffey and the other one clank away.
Clark finished with 27 points, 11 assists and 5 rebounds. While it was a losing effort, those numbers did make even more history for a player who has been posting unprecedented stats since she stepped foot in the WNBA.
The second-year star is now tied with Courtney Vandersloot for the most 20-point, 10-assist games in league history with 10. That’s not an “on pace for” or “through X games in her career” statistic. It’s the most games in the 29-year history of the WNBA.
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Vandersloot reached that mark across 430 games in a decorated career. Clark, who already has the league’s single-season assist record and sits at third on the all-time triple-double list, did it in 42 games.
Fever’s reinforcements for Caitlin Clark fall short in second game
By most accounts, the Fever aced the offseason.
Indiana had some major needs after a 2024 campaign that saw them break the WNBA’s longest active playoff drought, but get swept by the Connecticut Sun. They already had a league-shaking talent in Clark, a. stellar two-way big in Aliyah Boston and a steady veteran scorer in Kelsey Mitchell, but they opted to rework their frontcourt with the additions of more veterans in Howard and DeWanna Bonner.
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Howard posted six points on 3-of-9 shooting with nine rebounds and four turnovers. Bonner posted a goose egg on 0-of-1 shooting in 16 minutes.
The Fever also brought in Sydney Colson to provide them a quality facilitator off the bench in their non-Clark minutes. She had 2 points, 0 assists and 2 turnovers in six minutes.
All told, the Fever players outside the Clark-Mitchell-Boston triumvirate scored 15 points on 6-of-20 shooting with eight turnovers.
It’s worth noting the Fever were without another quality wing in new arrival Sophie Cunningham, out with an ankle injury, but the Dream were also missing their starting point guard in Jordin Canada.
Brittney Griner and Brionna Jones win game in the paint
Tuesday was an important reminder that teams other than the Fever got better.
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With Howard and Allisha Gray already in place, the Dream added Griner and Jones to a roster that went 15-25 last season, swapping out aging center Tina Charles with a former Defensive Player of the Year and a former Sixth Player of the Year.
Griner had a team-high 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting and eight rebounds on Tuesday before fouling out in the final minute, while Jones had 19 points, 13 rebounds and three assists. We’d call that an encouraging step after a season-opening loss to the Washington Mystics.
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