Sue Bird, Elena Delle Donne, Nneka Ogwumike, Candace Parker and Lisa Leslie describe what Clark should expect from her peers during her rookie season.
Scott Van Pelt laughed out loud and clapped. Sue Bird’s face lit up with bemusement. Because Diana Taurasi didn’t just answer the question that was on his mind as an ESPN „SportsCenter“ anchor. She answered the question every player and coach who has been following the rise of Iowa Hawkeyes superstar guard Caitlin Clark has been talking about this spring:
„What will the league have in store for [her] when she gets there?“ Van Pelt asked, lightly goading Taurasi.
„Look, SVP. Reality is coming,“ Taurasi said. „We all went through it. That happens on the NBA side, and you’re going to see it on this side. You look superhuman playing against 18-year-olds, but you’re going to come with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time.“
It was classic Taurasi. Brash. Competitive. Unapologetic. And it seemed to turbocharge the conversation among WNBA stars past and present who’d made the journey to Cleveland to watch the women’s Final Four as well as text chains around the world with current players overseas.
Just how good will Clark be as a rookie? Can she possibly live up to the hype she has generated for the women’s game as a collegiate athlete? How will veterans who’ve fought for decades to earn more money and benefits from the league respond to a player who has been bringing in seven figures in NIL money as a college student for the past two years? Which veteran will lay the first shoulder into her chest to see how she responds?
The answer to the last one was unanimous: Taurasi.
„Diana’s like Kobe [Bryant],“ two-time WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne told ESPN. „She’s going to test you, so you have to be ready. That’s her, her personality. I love her from being on Team USA. She’s Kobe. I mean, Kobe plowed his own teammate [Pau Gasol] in the Olympics, so no one’s safe.“
Sure enough, Delle Donne said Taurasi did the same thing to her as a rookie.
„Dee did that thing where she tried to plow me when I was making a cut,“ she said. „But after I went back at her, it didn’t happen again.“
For 2012 No. 1 pick Nneka Ogwumike, Tamika Catchings was the vet who gave her the „welcome to the league“ treatment as a rookie.
„Tamika is such a sweetheart, so I don’t know if it was necessarily outwardly like, ‚Hey, I’m trying to school you,'“ Ogwumike said. „But it’s like, ‚OK, they’re going to put the rookie on me. Let me go to work.‘
„She didn’t have to say it for me to know that was what was going on.“
Bird was the No. 1 pick in 2002. She came into the league after winning two national championships at UConn, and like Clark, having captured the hearts of America with ponytailed swagger.
„There was a couple comments along the way from different players, but the story that tells it the best is when we played against the L.A. Sparks,“ Bird told ESPN. “ At the time they had a point guard named Nicky McCrimmon, and she was tough on defense. She could pick you up full court, that kind of a thing.
„But I noticed that it was a little more than normal. She was really picking me up full court, really pressuring me, and I was like, what the f—? Then she actually stripped me in the backcourt two times, which as point guard, is a nightmare. You never want to have that happen. Well, I heard later that [former Sparks coach] Michael Cooper had essentially put, not literally a bounty on my head, but basically before the game was like, ‚Yo, Nicky, every time you strip Sue, I’m going to give you whatever, whatever.'“
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert talks about how Caitlin Clark can help grow the league globally with her platform.
Three-time WNBA MVP Lisa Leslie, who played for the Sparks from 1997 to 2009, said it’s heartening to hear this kind of competitiveness discussed so openly.
