Caitlin Clark reached a WNBA milestone in her lead in the Indiana Fever’s 92-75 victory over the Seattle Storm on Sunday, breaking the rookie single-season assist record set by Ticha Penicheiro in 1998.
But the game featured an incident that would overshadow the 12 remaining games of the regular season: Clark received a technical foul midway through the third quarter after he slammed the backstop behind the basket in frustration after missing a 3-point shot.
The call itself is questionable — Clark was emotional and abusive, but not toward other players or the officials — but players have been whistled for things like slamming the basketball or kicking the scorer’s table, so this wasn’t a bizarre call.
However, the technical foul was significant because it was Clark’s fifth of the season, which put him closer to an automatic suspension.
In the WNBA, a player receives a one-game suspension after accumulating seven technical fouls in a season, and then each additional technical foul they receive from there (i.e. the 9th, 11th, 13th, etc.) results in another suspension.
Clark told reporters after Sunday’s game that the referee told her her heated comments were “disrespectful to the game of basketball.”
“It reminded me of the technical fouls I got in college and I was like, ‘Damn it,'” Clark said. “It was just a personal frustration and nothing to do with my team, the refs or the other team. I just felt like I should have made more shots because I’m a competitor.”
Caitlin Clark says the official called her for a technical foul for hitting the backboard with her hand, and told her it was “disrespectful to the game of basketball.” pic.twitter.com/rN3cWU2Usf
— Sporting News (@sportingnews) August 18, 2024
“But I think he just motivated me to keep playing harder and harder,” she added. “I think we’re a lot better because of him doing that, so I want to thank him for that.”
Seattle pulled within one point by the end of the third quarter, and in Clark’s view, the Fever probably would have fallen behind during that period had they not been upset by a technical foul. Indiana finally started to catch up with six minutes left in the game, winning by 14 points.
Sunday’s win improved the Fever to 13-15, good for seventh in the WNBA. With eight teams advancing to the playoffs, Indiana is currently in position to make the postseason, but its chances could be in jeopardy if Clark misses one (or more) of the team’s remaining 12 games.
Clark is currently the Fever’s leading scorer (17.8 per game), leads the WNBA in assists (8.3 per game), leads the team in steals (1.4) and is the team’s third-leading rebounder (5.8). That’s a huge amount of work to remove from the lineup for one game, especially considering they’ll likely all be counted as the regular season draws to a close.
