Aliyah Boston is still adjusting to Caitlin Clark and the Fever's new normal

Caitlin Clark's struggles — with turnovers and shooting efficiency — have been the biggest talking point around the Indiana Fever's 1-7 start, but she isn't the only one undergoing an adjustment period.

Last season's WNBA Rookie of the Year, Aliyah Boston, has also had a rough go through the first eight games. She's playing slightly fewer minutes but, even per minute, her points and rebounds are way down from last season despite the fact that she's taking a lot more shots. The obvious issue is her 2-point field goal percentage which has plummeted — from 58.3 percent last season, to 44.4 percent so far this season.

Her shot selection hasn't changed a ton but there are some interrelated variables. A meaningfully lower percentage of her shots are coming in the 3-10 ft. range as opposed to the restricted area. She's still drawing a lot of contact but hasn't necessarily been getting the same whistles, averaging 2.0 free throw attempts per 36 minutes, down from 4.2 last season. She's also been getting blocked, a lot — on 14.0 percent of her shots so far this season, up from 10.2 percent last season.

The block here isn't all that noteworthy, in and of itself, but the lead up to it is.

The Indiana Fever are using Aliyah Boston in a very different way this season

Per Synergy Sports, nearly 40 percent of Boston's finished possessions last season came out of post-ups. That worked out to about 5.5 post-up possessions per game, resulting in either a shot attempt, a turnover or a trip to the free throw line. She scored 1.04 points per possession out of those post-ups, a very strong number, making it one of the Fever's most reliable methods for manufacturing a quality scoring opportunity last season.

This year, with Clark handling the ball, just over 25 percent of Boston's possessions have been used on post-ups and she's really struggled, putting up just 0.59 points per possession. The percent of her possessions that have been used as the screener in the pick-and-roll have nearly doubled, from 11.3 percent last year to 20.9 this year. She's also been struggling with efficiency on these plays but we can attribute at least some of that to the discomfort of a new balance — last year she had about 3.5 post-ups for every possession finished as a pick-and-roll screener, this season that ratio is 1.2.

It's not just that this is a season-to-season shift, Boston just hadn't spent a ton of time working in the pick-and-roll during her time at South Carolina either, as ESPN's Kevin Pelton noted in a pre-draft scouting report last April:

"While Boston should have more room to post up in the WNBA, inevitably more of her offense will come out of the pick-and-roll than at South Carolina. It would be hard for that rate to get much lower. Per Synergy Sports, Boston attempted just nine shots after screening for a pick-and-roll all season, going 3-of-9 on those attempts."

Clark is going to draw a lot of doubles and hedges in the pick-and-roll and Boston should have plenty of chances to play 4-on-3. She has the skills — the quickness, handle, passing and finishing touch — to be a beast in these short-roll situations but she's still figuring out how best to deploy them. Like on this play where she seems to make up her mind to drive on A'ja Wilson from the 3-point line, allowing Wilson to effectively guard two players and turn an advantage into an off-balance layup contested by a former Defensive Player of the Year.

Slowing that down could have given Boston a wide-open elbow jumper or pulled Wilson away from the basket and created a passing lane to get NaLyssa Smith a layup. Boston has been best in the pick-and-roll when the best decision is clear — a wide lane to the basket, a jumper that's too open to pass up or a teammate that's too open to ignore.

But she's also shown flashes of what it looks like when she processes quickly, identifies the right option and makes the most of it.

But even here, you can see her first instinct is to call for the ball at the elbow so she can go to work in the high post and it takes her a second to recognize that Clark is waiting for the screen. It's somewhat apt then that is the Fever's very first offensive possession of the entire season.

Boston is going to get better. She's too strong and too skilled to continue finishing so poorly around the basket. Eventually more shots are going to fall and more foul calls are going to come. But she's also going to get used to finding her shots in different areas of the floor, at different times in the shot clock and while moving in different directions. Offensively, she is outside her comfort zone right now. But that's going to change, she's going to adapt and she and Clark still have the makings of one of the most unguardable offensive tandems in the league.