INDIANAPOLIS — The fury at the refs and opposing WNBA players was misplaced. You want to be mad at someone for jeopardizing Caitlin Clark’s health?
Point the finger at her own team: the Indiana Fever.
Clark was forced to withdraw from this weekend’s All-Star Game here because of a groin injury. A groin injury that’s different than the one from which she’d returned from on July 9. It’s also a different injury than the quad strain that cost her five games earlier in the season.
Different, too, from the “tightness” in her quad that kept Clark out of a preseason game.
“I am incredibly sad and disappointed to say I can’t participate in the 3-point Contest or the All-Star Game,” Clark, selected as an All-Star captain along with Napheesa Collier, said in a statement released by the Fever. “I have to rest my body.”
It’s clear she should have done so long before now.
After not missing a single game in her four years at Iowa and first year in the WNBA, Clark has already missed 11 games this season. Someone needs to explain how a player who has been durable until now keeps getting similar injuries, and that starts with the Fever.
Is it possible that Clark’s quad injury didn’t contribute to her groin injury and the first groin injury didn’t contribute to the second groin injury? Sure. But that’s an awful lot of coincidences. More likely? Clark came back too soon and, whether consciously or not, was compensating for one injury, thereby making her susceptible to the next.
And that’s on the Fever.
Clark is, as everyone knows, hyper competitive. She was no doubt lobbying the Fever’s medical staff and coach Stephanie White to let her back on the court as soon as possible. Younger athletes — heck, all young people — also often think they’re invincible, and the 23-year-old Clark might have believed she was ready to return.
But injured athletes often need to be saved from themselves, particularly with injuries that can seem healed when they’re not.
Anyone who’s watched Clark play since the quad injury could see something was off. She played well in the first two games back and then began struggling. Her scoring is down, as is her completion rate.
Most notably, she’s just 7 of 49 from 3-point range in her last seven games, including two oh-fers. After a career of being the human version of a Pop-a-Shot, she suddenly became … average. That’s not just somebody who’s trying to get their timing back. Something was off, and someone should have stepped in to get her off the floor.
Again, Clark no doubt wants to play and probably feels as if she’s invincible. We’ve all been there! Clark also knows people often pay a lot of money to watch her play, not sit the bench, and her presence on the floor translates into ratings. She can see every day just how much hosting the All-Star game means to both the Fever and Indianapolis.
But that’s where Fever officials needed to be the adults in the room. The only consideration these last two months needed to be Clark’s health and well-being, and if that means disappointing fans or broadcast partners or sponsors or even Clark herself, so be it.
Clark is the biggest star the WNBA has — not its only one, but its biggest one — and everyone needs to be thinking about the long game here. Getting Clark back for a couple of games only to have her miss twice as many more because she’s aggravated an injury or gotten a new one is counterproductive. For everyone.
White has had no problem calling out refs who she believes aren’t doing enough to protect Clark. But the Fever need to be protecting her, too, and they’ve been falling short.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.