What was initially seen as sage advice from one of the greatest women’s basketball players ever has taken on a tinge of redemption for Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever.
It all comes back to comments Diana Taurasi made earlier this year, where she warned fans not to place high expectations on rookies, saying they would have to adjust at the professional level after playing so long in college.
“The reality is setting in, there are levels to all of this,” she told Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter, when asked about rookies — including Clark — making the jump to the pros.
‘And that’s just life, we’ve all been there… You look superhuman when you’re playing against a bunch of 18-year-olds, but you go… [play] with a number of adult women who have been playing professional basketball for a long time,” Taurasi added.
“I’m not saying it won’t translate, because if you’re good at what you do, you’ll just get better,” she continued. “But there’s going to be a transition period where you have to give yourself some grace as a rookie.”
Comments Diana Taurasi made about transitioning to the WNBA have come back to haunt her after Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever defeated the Phoenix Mercury on Friday night
Some believe Taurasi’s initial comments were intended as an insult to Clark
Many saw that as an insult to Clark, who has done well in her debut season after a period of adjustment to her Indiana Fever career.
The final chapter of that adjustment came Friday night, when Clark and the Fever defeated Taurasi’s Phoenix Mercury for the third time this year in a single season.
Phoenix came back inspired, but could not make up the deficit on the Fever and lost 98-89.
Clark was a big reason for that, scoring 29 points and dishing out ten assists on 8 of 16 shooting, including 4 of 11 three-pointers.
It was a strong performance for a Fever team, which was to be expected as they had just returned from a long break. They were up against a Mercury team that had three Olympians on their roster and had played the night before.
Still, many were quick to criticize Taurasi (16 points, four rebounds, three assists) after the loss to Mercury.
It was led by the main Barstool Sports account, which wrote: ‘Diana Taurasi hasn’t beaten Caitlin Clark yet this year with Team USA [in the All-Star Game] or the Phoenix Mercury. Reality is harsh.’
“@DianaTaurasi how do you like reality?”, someone wrote.
Social media resurfaced Taurasi’s quotes and Twitter reactions were mixed
Another wrote: ‘I love how poorly this has aged for DT (no pun intended).’
But many others reacted more positively to Taurasi’s comments, saying she was right and praising Clark for her transformation into a high-quality professional player for her age.
“I’ll be honest. I didn’t see a season win in the cards. I didn’t think DT was wrong in what she said. Maybe Clark is more talented than we all initially thought,” one tweet quoted him as saying.
“Generally speaking, this is usually a factual statement. There are ‘levels’ and usually leveling up means a difficult transition period. But Caitlin Clark is just different. You can’t blame Taurasi for what she said, it would be true 99% of the time. Caitlin Clark is just different,” said another.
Another wrote: ‘She (Taurasi) was not wrong and we saw [what] Just happened that [Clark] transition period was like a flash. So fast!!’