If you're the Indiana Fever, it might feel like the sky is falling right now.
Caitlin Clark missed Wednesday night's game against the New York Liberty, her 10th of the season, with a groin injury. She was out for five games early in the season with a quad injury, and then another four game stretch with a groin injury. It has been confirmed that she'll miss WNBA All-Star Weekend, the first time it's ever been hosted in Indianapolis, and there are no updates about when she might be able to return.
The Fever went big this offseason, adding veterans like Sophie Cunningham and Natasha Howard and re-signing Kelsey Mitchell, to try and make a run at a championship right away. But they're just 4-6 without Clark, 12-11 in total, and will need to battle just to hold onto a playoff spot. With Clark's status up in the air and it becoming increasingly clear that this team is not a contender without here, it does seem like the season is slipping away.
The Indiana Fever and their fans have to be patient
Missing 10 of 22 games, in three separate stints, could certainly give the impression that Clark is injury prone. But remember her full injury history — Clark had never missed a game before this season. She played in every game across four seasons and Iowa, and didn't miss a single game in her rookie season. The first game she'd missed since high school was the Fever's first preseason game this year, which she sat out with leg tightness.
Clark is not injury prone, and these injuries don't guarantee that she's about to become so. Yes, Lisa Leslie recently talked about a groin injury that still bothers her 20 years later. And it seems pretty likely that his latest injury was at least somewhat related to not giving herself enough recovery time after the first groin injury. But Clark is just 23 years old and has her entire career ahead of her — if she and the Fever are careful, they should be able to take care of this.
As Lucas Seehafer, a Kinesiology PhD and former FanSided contributor, pointed out on BlueSky, this is a short-term problem with a pretty clear long-term solution.
The question is whether Clark and the Fever can get on the same page about how much time she needs to rest and recover before returning, to make sure this doesn't become a recurring problem. It may be tough to accept that their championship dreams need to be deferred for a year, but the Fever are in as good a position as anyone else in the league.
They have two more years of team control on Clark's contract before she hits restricted free agency, and one more year for Aliyah Boston. Most of the rest of the roster is entering unrestricted free agency, but that's because a new CBA will be kicking in and everyone was looking to maximize their earning potential. Just because Kelsey Mitchell, Natasha Howard and Sophie Cunningham are hitting free agency doesn't mean the Fever won't be able to re-sign them. And even if they can't, plenty of other players are going to line up for the opportunity to chase a ring with Clark.
The bottom line is, we're not talking about Joel Embiid or Derrick Rose here. Clark is not working through catastrophic ligament or tendon tears that require surgery. She's not working through structural physical injuries that have stacked up and taken their toll over the years. She's had the relative bad luck of having two injuries in a relatively short period of time, the second of which she may have pushed through to return earlier than she should.
The Fever need to be willing to sacrifice games and maybe even the rest of this season to get her fully healthy. But there's no reason they can't do that and regain what was, until recently, the brightest future in the WNBA.