After a debut season in which she averaged 19 points and eight assists per game while winning WNBA Rookie of the Year honors, Caitlin Clark is poised to go a step further in 2025. There was disappointment for her Indiana Fever in 2024, despite the team’s rally from a 3-10 start to qualify for the playoffs, and a new-look team with Clark at its center seems primed to challenge The W‘s best teams this coming season.
A busy offseason made it clear that the Clark-Aliyah Boston partnership is what Indiana will build around for the next several years. The two top overall picks were not always on the same page in 2024 under former head coach Christie Sides, but with a new staff in town, optimism is high that the Fever offense could be close to unstoppable in Clark’s second professional campaign.
Clark hits the weight room
In her first WNBA season, Clark struggled to come to grips with the league’s intense physicality; her first months in the league were defined by flagrant foul controversies with Chennedy Carter and Angel Reese. To that end, Fever head coach Stephanie White revealed in a new interview that Clark has spent much of her offseason in the gym, trying to get physically stronger amid the championship aspirations that are following her into year two.
“She is stronger, first and foremost,” White told The Athletic. “She’s got a lot of self-awareness. She figured out right away that I need to get stronger, I can’t get knocked around as much. She’s done a great job of getting in the weight room and focusing on her strength, in terms of low center of gravity, time under tension, all of those things.”
The arrivals of White and star forward DeWanna Bonner, who both came over from the rebuilding Connecticut Sun, signal the Fever’s elevation into legitimate WNBA title contenders. With Clark enjoying her first full WNBA offseason — and now in possession of the tools to succeed — the 23-year-old has been touted as a preseason MVP candidate, though White believes there is more to Clark’s game for her to unlock.
“I think the next step is efficiency. Not so many turnovers, higher field goal percentages,” White said. “We will be creative as a staff in how we utilize her and how we utilize her talents.”
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