David Dennis Jr. believes some Caitlin Clark fans should stop sounding the alarm bells amid the Indiana Fever’s 0-4 start in her rookie year in the WNBA.
During an appearance Tuesday on ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” the senior writer at Andscape — an ESPN vertical — expressed how rookies, particularly those drafted in lofty positions, are likely to experience losing upon landing with a struggling team, and that “babying” the prized Fever star over her current reality is doing more harm than good.
“What is most harmful to Caitlin Clark is the way that so many people are babying her and acting like this is some national nightmare that she’s losing games. This happens,” Dennis said of Clark, whose Fever dropped their fourth straight game Monday with an 88-84 loss to the Connecticut Sun.
He then cited online vitriol aimed at Clark’s Fever teammate, Aliyah Boston, as the losses pile up.
“It’s four games, you don’t become a No. 1 pick for a team that has two years straight of No. 1 picks without going to a bad team, who has played the [4-0] New York Liberty twice,” Dennis said of Indiana, which drafted Boston No. 1 overall out of South Carolina last year.
“Of course 0-4 is expected, they’ve got the Seattle Storm (1-3) next. This team is not going to win a lot of games, that has never really been the metric for No. 1 draft picks. Most times they come to bad teams, they lose a lot of games.”
Clark, 22, arrived at Indiana with much fanfare following a prolific career at Iowa, where she became the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer and made two back-to-back national championship appearances.
During Tuesday’s discussion, Dennis also referenced another first-overall pick, NBA Rookie of the Year Victor Wembanyama, who experienced a 22-60 campaign with the Spurs in his first season in San Antonio.
“Victor Wembanyama in the NBA just lost 17 games in a row and nobody is talking about that being some sort of bad thing for him, that’s part of the process,” he said.
Through four games, Clark has averaged 17 points per contest, along with four rebounds and 5.5 assists.
With 36 games remaining on the schedule, there’s much that can happen for Clark and the Fever as they navigate their first season together.
The Fever visit the Storm on Wednesday night.
