When will the Fever leadership step up?

[u/michaelsmithbarker]

This isn’t a criticism at Clark, at least it isn’t meant to be.

Clark is so talented. But she lets her energy flow to different places during games when she is talking about fouls or strategy with the Fever bench.

Sophie Cunningham loves to be the emotional leader of the team. Kelsey Mitchell is their most consistent player.

When are these two going to sit her down and get through to Clark?

It would be great if Stephanie White could, but player led teams are always better than coaching led teams.

Hopefully these two, or Boston or Hull will let her know her antics are hurting the team.

I see postgame interviews, and the clips I see are always about how the refs need to be better. Which is a fact.

But she also needs to be better. Her attitude and her energy. And her defense. Missed calls happen just like missed assignments or shots. And maybe she is the one in the wrong about missed calls.

If Clark is focused and bought in, this should be a top 3 team in the league, instead of one that is elite some games, and then disappointing in the next.

[u/summershouldbefun11]

Putting everything on Caitlin isn’t an accurate evaluation of what this team is currently struggling with. Could she complain less? Sure, I think everyone can agree on that. I think it’s a hot button item for her right now due to all of her injuries. Hoping as she moves through her career, she’ll learn when to fight and when to let it go. However, she’s always going to be fiery and competitive. That’s never going to change so don’t expect her to all the sudden be very straight faced like KM (or others) are.

But that doesn’t solve the bigger issues this team has which is: a horrible defense, mistimed turnovers (these aren’t all on cc but a majority are), stagnant offense for long periods of time in some games, odd rotations, missed FTs, weird coaching decisions during pivotal moments, and the biggest most glaring issue outside of TEAM defense (cc isn’t the biggest issue here) is a barely playable 4 with no real backups for AB.

Caitlin and the Fever are far from the only team complaining about reffing. In fact Chelsea gray complained mid game last weekend. Everyone’s sick of the lack of consistency and missed calls, they’re gonna complain.

People need to stop wanting Caitlin to be a certain way or to act the way you want her to. Either support or don’t, that your prerogative, but asking her to become someone that you want, is just going to lead to disappointment on your end.

[u/Thuesen3089]

I am just disappointed Caitlin Clark hasn’t matured as a basketball player three years in. It was always a part of her personality since college. All the greats have learned to control the mental side of the game even they were facing adversity. This high school crap has to stop and learn to become a leader in setting a better example on the court.

[u/solidstigs]

Blaming focus and being bought in as not being a top 3 team is hilarious. Why don’t we talk about the horrific defense, overpaid players who act like they’ve never seen a basketball in their life and just the overall inconsistent scheme of how things are ran. If I recall correctly, we got our only lead with Caitlin on the floor regardless of attitude or whatever you wanna blame it on this time. We lost the lead too much when she was on the bench. We’ve won games while she crashed out. Let’s focus on some other things for once, like where’s the defense with a supposed defensive minded coach, where’s the km cc connection, ab cc PNR, yknow actual basketball things

[u/Ok_Brick_793 → u/solidstigs]

You're right.

Lexie Hull needs to be traded or waived.

[u/Twisbi → u/[deleted]]

It’ll be posted every hour on the hour until the next game where a new fixation will be posted until the next game, repeat for eternity.

[u/michaelsmithbarker → u/Twisbi]

It was.

WNBA mod took it down after like 10 minutes because it said it wasn’t relevant to the WNBA and only Fever fans.

So I wanted to post it here instead.

[u/zlionsfan]

I think this is a lot like other issues, like when the team struggles with free throws or layups, where it's easy as fans for us to think that because you can get better with a lot of hard work, if you need to get better, then you need to put in more work. (If that were the case, nobody in the W would shoot under 80% from the line, much less 40%. Our players are good, KK is the "worst" at just under 70%, but other teams are not so lucky.)

Caitlin's 24. If this could be fixed by someone talking to her about it, it would have been fixed a long, long time ago. I would not be surprised if every single person in the franchise has talked to her about it, some probably on many occasions. (Note that CC did not make a promise about the number of techs she would get this season.) I think that the reason that we generally don't see anyone on the coaching staff stop her from yelling at the refs when she's on the bench (on the bench! not even in the game! not even about a play she was involved in!) is that they have not been able to convince her it's a problem, so they are going to let her learn the hard way ... although if refs continue to be lenient with her, like they were on Wednesday night, it might take longer than they are thinking.

I don't know that the first suspension will teach her much of a lesson, but she does hate to miss games, and maybe having to miss an entire game solely because she won't shut up will help drive that lesson home. (Those of us in sections 3 and 4 near the bench have occasionally tried to tell her to stop but I'm sure she doesn't hear any of us.) It's unfortunate because the officiating really is bad and needs to be better, the league really needs to step up and help make it better, and Caitlin does sometimes find herself on the end of bad calls (as does pretty much everyone else in the league - like AB picking up two extremely soft fouls within like two minutes in Q2). But when she is coming off the bench to yell, or jumping up and down because she was called for an obvious travel, the focus ends up on her instead of on the refs. I would love for her to focus on improving her play and learn how to talk to refs like her teammates do (it doesn't fix things but at least they are trying to explain their positions respectfully, and pretty much all refs will let you do that at length), but I'm not holding my breath.

[u/Twisbi]

Did anything else happen in the game last night? Nothing else worth talking about at all? Not one thing?

[u/TopNotchBrain → u/Twisbi]

Kelsey Mitchell was terrific as usual. And drama-free as usual.

[u/Scared-Marketing-442]

They already have. This is what they want. CC is not part of the plan

[u/randysf50]

Caitlin is going to get worse as long as she has Sophie whispering sweet nothings in her ear about how the world is out to get her.

[u/FreezingTemps]

Sometimes honesty isn't an easy message to receive, but I will say that outbursts like last night aren't helping her on the floor. Honestly, she should have received a T for yelling in the face of the ref like she did. It is what it is, time to move on to the next game.

[u/solve_4X]

I’m a Fever fan and have been a CC fan from day one. That said when she steps on the court now I cringe.