At this point of the 2024 WNBA regular season, it is safe to say that Indiana Fever rookie guard Caitlin Clark is living up to the hype. She's arguably already exceeded expectations even, as Clark continues to prove why Indiana was right in selecting her first overall at the 2024 WNBA draft.
On Sunday, Clark added to her ever-growing legend as a rookie in the WNBA, as she finally broke a Ticha Penicheiro record that was set in 1998. Clark set a new single-season record for a rookie in the league, as she helped the Fever score a 92-75 win at home over the visiting Seattle Storm.
The former Iowa Hawkeyes star had 23 points to go with nine assists and five boards. She also had an assist and two blocks while shooting 9/19 from the field through 36 minutes of action on the floor.
Now with 232 assists in her rookie season, Clark has at least an outside shot at setting a new all-time WNBA record for most assists in a single season that is currently held by Connecticut Sun star Alyssa Thomas, who had 316 in the 2023 campaign.
The Fever have 12 more games left in the regular season. If Clark goes by her current average of 8.3 assists for the rest of the campaign, that would get her around 100 more assists — enough to break Thomas' mark and become one of three WNBA players to have at least 300 assists in a season. Apart from Thomas, Courtney Vandersloot is also a member of the 300 assists club, having done it twice in 2023 (314) and in 2019 (300).
Fever star Caitlin Clark gets a shoutout from NBA legend Isiah Thomas
Penicheiro racked up a total of 225 assists during her first season in the WNBA back in 1998 with the Sacramento Monarchs. For nearly three decades, that record went unbroken, and as it turned out, Clark would be the one to surpass that long-standing WNBA mark.
What makes Clark's feat much more amazing is the fact that she's done it while also being a legitimate high-scoring threat, as pointed out by no other than another basketball legend in the form of former Detroit Pistons court general Isiah Thomas, who won two NBA titles to go with an NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award.
“Let it be known that only a special few in our game's history can score while assisting teammates,” Thomas wrote on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter).
During her WNBA rookie season, Penicheiro averaged 7.5 assists per game but just 6.3 points per outing. Clark, on the other hand, is dishing out 8.3 dimes per game so far in the 2024 season while also generating 17.8 points per contest.
Thomas highlighting Clark's immense capability to score and assist at a high rate underscores her impact on the Fever's offense at a deeper level.
Thomas, of course, knows a thing or two about running a team's offense as a table-setter and bucket-getter. For one, he was the NBA's assist leader during the 1984-85 season where he collected 13.9 assists per contest while scoring 21.2 points per outing. During his memorable career in the NBA which he spent entirely with the Pistons, Thomas averaged 19.2 points and 9.3 assists.
Clark can continue adding to her rookie assists record when she and the Fever play the Minnesota Lynx on the road this coming Saturday.
The Fever are seventh in the WNBA standings with a 13-15 record.
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