Why Caitlin Clark's WNBA transition won't be all layups and easy passes

The next chapter in Caitlin Clark’s career will no doubt be more demanding, and it’s coming sooner than most college athletes experience in their transition to the professional level.

The Indiana Fever are expected to select Clark with the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA Draft on Monday (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), a short eight days after Iowa lost to South Carolina in the national championship game in Cleveland. The turnaround to the WNBA season is also quick; training camps open April 28 and the season tips May 14.

“Rookies go into the WNBA, which is such a challenging time, at their most exhausted time,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said ahead of the national championship game. “That's a little bit kind of unfair for them.”

Clark played 39 games in five months during her senior run to the national title game after making the championship game as a junior. After about a month break in game action, the two-time Naismith winner will play 26 games with the Fever over nine weeks leading into the Olympic break, which begins July 21. The Fever play 14 games over the final five weeks from Aug. 16-Sept. 19. Indiana should be in playoff contention, which would extend Clark’s season further.

By the time Indiana’s season is done, she will have played almost non-stop for a calendar year. That’s not unusual in women’s basketball because players historically played domestically in the WNBA and overseas in the offseason to supplement their incomes.

But it does make for a long stretch as younger players adjust to the talent at the professional level. Clark will face stronger, more physical defensive pressure than she did most of her college career. UConn point guard Nika Mühl's full-court defense, South Carolina's frontcourt height and West Virginia's team effort gave her a taste of that in the tournament.

“I just know that Caitlin has stepped up to every challenge that we've posed to her,” Bluder said. “And I expect the same thing at the next level, although I know it's going to be … she's going to have to pay her rookie dues.”

Those rookie dues were highlighted during the Final Four, when Diana Taurasi, the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, said of all incoming rookies that “reality is coming.”

"There's levels to this thing and that's just life," Taurasi said on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt. "We all went through it. You see it on the NBA side, and you're going to see it on this side where you look superhuman playing against 18-year-olds, but you're going to come with some grown women who have been playing professional basketball for a long time."

Taurasi is entering her 20th season and came into the league as a national superstar from UConn with three national championships, two Most Outstanding Player awards and two Naismith trophies.

The three-time WNBA champion has been in the league long enough to see decades of rookies learn to adjust to higher, more concentrated competition levels. Her comments were never solely about Clark. WNBA players often cite Taurasi in their "welcome to the league" stories. She famously made this point about rookies in May 2020 on the "A Touch More" Instagram Live series with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe.

"Everytime you play rookies, you just want to f***ing kill them," Taurasi said. "It's just physically punking them. It's this mental bullying that's taking place right before the ball goes up. And it happens in different ways. It happens in like, 'Oh, you had such a great senior year, I'm about to bust your ass right now.'"

Clark, who led DI in scoring and assists three times each at Iowa, isn’t likely to average 30 points a game like she did in college, but she could be one of the game’s best passers as a rookie with Aliyah Boston in the paint. Turnovers might be a bigger problem. Her situation is similar to that of Sabrina Ionescu, who also took time to adjust to the WNBA game, although Ionescu also dealt with a nagging ankle injury her first two seasons.

“Not saying it’s not going to translate, because when you’re great at what you do, you’re just going to get better,” Taurasi said. “But there is going to be a transition period where you're going to have to give yourself some grace as a rookie, and it might take a little bit longer for some people.”

Clark never seemed bothered much by the constant attention as she skyrocketed to national fame over the last year. She will continue to carry the load as the face of a league, at least to the millions who tuned into women's college basketball for the first time and plan to follow her to the WNBA. That attention, which led to endorsement deals, kept her on the go last summer and will keep her busy throughout the year. Hundreds of media members are expected at the draft, which will host fans for the first time since 2016. The crown remains heavy.