Caitlin Clark is going to have to embrace her role as an icon

Earlier this month, Caitlin Clark was up late doing what any normal hoops head would do on a Tuesday night. She was watching basketball.

Throughout her tremendous and tumultuous rookie season in the WNBA, Clark has tried to maintain that simplicity. She says that she’s still the girl from Iowa who remembers begging her parents to take her to see live games. She still gets fired up about those organic moments that happen on a basketball court when she and teammate Kelsey Mitchell lock eyes and backdoor beauty follows. She still enjoys pulling up for deep threes and drawing whistles with a touch of acting panache. She is still just a baller.

But of course, Clark is more than that. Everyone else has made her more.

For fans around the WNBA, she’s the ignition to the Indiana Fever’s renaissance and the raging fire behind the league’s swell in attendance this season. For media outlets, she’s the clickbait cash cow, and for her adoring fans, she’s Taylor Swift in basketball shorts. She makes respected legends walk themselves in the crosshairs of criticism and emboldens idiots on the internet to send lewd or racially motivated harassment to her rivals.

Caitlin Clark is …

And that’s where everyone else fills in the blank. Inside the sold-out arenas and on social media. She represents anything we desire her to be, the good and the bad.

Now she’s on the eve of her first playoff appearance, after helping her franchise snap a postseason drought that lasted eight seasons. Game 1 against the Connecticut Sun will surely feature unprecedented ratings, even against the backdrop of an NFL Sunday. As long as Clark’s team keeps on playing, the attention will mount. She will be whatever the day’s narrative needs her to be: the reason “everyone watches women’s sports” or the reason this WNBA season was so taxing and draining for those who like their basketball without Fox News weighing in.

Though she may not be able to control how others view her, she’s learning to grow. Being an icon in sports and culture while still being herself - just a baller.

“I feel very lucky and fortunate to be able to play basketball at the highest level,” Clark said Thursday night in Washington. “The things that I’m most proud of is definitely my mentality and my approach every single day, and I think that can take you a long way. You don’t get caught up in what everybody else thinks about you. It’s how you feel about yourself and the people in your locker room that really matter.”

I witnessed the bookend to Clark’s season, watching her rookie debut (coincidentally, against the same Sun team the Fever will face in the best-of-three series), as well as in the regular-season finale. By Thursday night, long gone was the shaky first-year player who committed 10 turnovers at Mohegan Sun Arena. Instead, the player in Capital One Arena resembled the one who emerged after the Olympic break much more in sync with her teammates and in control of the game.

And turnovers? Clark finished with 3 against the Washington Mystics to go along with 8 assists, but she looked like an old pro while forcing a turnover against an eight-year WNBA veteran. In the second quarter, when Shatori Walker-Kimbrough tried to use a slender arm to push Clark out of her way, Clark absorbed the contact by flailing back. Then to really sell it, Clark threw an extra and unnecessary flinch. Savvy move; Clark forced the official to call the offensive foul.

The stretch between her debut and finale, that’s when the evolution happened. Like all growth, it came uncomfortably. Clark needed to veer away from her position that she was just a really good basketball player.

In college, she showed herself to be relaxed and confident while representing the women’s game and heralding those who came before. But as a pro, she had to make a statement against the racial vitriol from some of her so-called supporters.

After weeks of divisive commentary that benefited Clark but vilified her colleagues, the league office could have done something to silence the nastiness. Instead, the situation mushroomed to the point that the 22-year-old player was forced to step out of her comfort zone. In June, veteran reporter Jim Trotter asked her pointed questions about how she felt about her name being used in culture wars, and, frankly, Clark’s answer was lacking.

“Basketball’s my job,” Clark said in part. “Everything on the outside, I can’t control that, so I’m not going to spend time thinking about that.”

Trotter pressed on, asking whether she was “bothered” by the weaponization of her name. Clark sounded like an athlete who was frustrated by the continued line of non-basketball related questions and simply said: “No. No, I don’t see it. That’s not where my focus is.”

It wasn’t until later that same day when Clark attempted to clean up her comments; she appeared better prepared for a similar question from a different reporter: “Yeah, I think it’s disappointing. I think everybody in our world deserves the same amount of respect. The women in our league deserve the same amount of respect. People should not be using my name to push those agendas. It’s disappointing. It’s not acceptable.”

Someone who sees herself as just an athlete would shun the culture wars. In Clark’s response, however, she tried to align herself with her progressive peers rather than those trying to separate her as their superior.

By July and August, Clark was back doing what she does best: reimagining the game. She became the first rookie in the WNBA to record a triple-double. She played on the all-star team that defeated Team USA before its send-off to the Paris Olympics. She kept recording more and more assists and became the league’s single-season leader, then broke the rookie record for 3s and points. She was growing as a baller, and then the biggest pop star in the world decided to endorse Kamala Harris.

On Instagram, Clark liked Swift’s post that was in favor of Harris for president, and she suddenly found herself back in the swirl of noise and attention. Her own page came under siege by disappointed Clarkies (“just threw away my jersey #TRUMP2024,” one commenter posted). Though Clark did not reveal whether she intended her like to be an endorsement of Harris, she echoed messaging from the league and players union on the importance of voting.

“I have this amazing platform, so I think the biggest thing would be just to encourage people to register to vote,” she said earlier in September. “That’s the biggest thing I can do with the platform that I have, and that’s the same thing Taylor did.”

This same month, when she didn’t have to answer questions from a dais before games or scroll through the cesspool that became her comment section, she was content at home. Just being someone who enjoys late-night basketball on television. She had rooting interest in the matchups between the Chicago Sky and two-time reigning champion Las Vegas Aces, and the Atlanta Dream and Phoenix Mercury. With the Sky and Dream falling, her Fever clinched a playoff spot.

“I remember the game, and honestly, like, I didn’t have much of a reaction,” Clark recalled. “Came to work the next day, and everybody was definitely happy, but we still had … this whole month still to play.”

Even as her fame explodes, Clark tries to stay as normal as possible. She says she still shops for her own groceries. She buys scented candles like anybody else. (“The fall spice candles,” Clark said, sharing with reporters her favorites for the season.) She still goes to work after reaching milestones, looking to improve. For Caitlin Clark, being a hooper is natural, but being an icon is tough. And in that role, she will need to improve more than just her game on the court.