Caitlin Clark added another line to her résumé on Friday. The WNBA named her Eastern Conference Player of the Month for June, the second time in her career she’s won the award, and only the second Indiana Fever player ever to do it. The first was Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings, who won it three times.
The numbers behind it are absurd. Over 10 games in June, Caitlin Clark averaged 21.9 points, 8.2 assists and 4.0 rebounds, shooting 45.6 percent from the field and 35.1 percent from three. She ranked fourth in the league in scoring and second in assists. Indiana went 7-4 and ran the WNBA’s best offense over that stretch, averaging a league-leading 95.5 points a game.
On June 11 against Chicago, Clark dropped 32 points and 10 assists. She and Aliyah Boston became the first teammates in WNBA history to each post a 30-point double-double in the same game. Five nights later, against Toronto, she went for 21 points and a season-high 14 assists.
From June 11 to June 22, Caitlin Clark hit at least 20 points and five assists in six straight games. Nobody had ever done that in WNBA history. She’s now done it in five or more consecutive games three separate times in her career. Every other player in league history has combined to do it three times, total.
That streak should have run longer. It ended on June 24 against Phoenix, and not because Caitlin Clark cooled off. She already had 19 points and eight assists when she left the game in the third quarter with a back injury, sustained on the same night Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas made fist-to-throat contact with her during a scramble for a loose ball.
Officials didn’t call a foul in the moment. The league reviewed it the next day, upgraded it to a Flagrant 2, and suspended Thomas for one game with a $1,000 fine. For a lot of people watching, that didn’t feel like enough.
This is the part that doesn’t get said often enough. Clark is not just putting up numbers nobody else has touched. She’s doing it while absorbing a level of hostility that has nothing to do with basketball.
Fever coach Stephanie White didn’t dance around it this week. She called out what she described as a rising tide of toxicity aimed at players across the league, online abuse that’s gotten uglier as the WNBA’s audience has exploded.
“It’s not hard to not be a jerk. Caitlin Clark has rewritten the record book every month she’s been healthy this season, and she’s still having to publicly ask people to stop harassing her own teammates and her opponents. That should embarrass everyone doing it, not her.” – JustPlainJay
Clark herself addressed it directly, and it’s worth sitting with what she said instead of skating past it. She talked about the harassment and hate aimed not just at her, but at her teammates, her coaches, and the players lined up against her. She was clear that none of it is acceptable, for anyone, on any side.
What stood out most was how human she sounded doing it. She’s spoken about being seen as some kind of robot, unaffected by any of it. She isn’t. She’s 24 years old, carrying more scrutiny than most athletes will face in a career, and she said plainly that it gets to her more than she lets on.
That’s the humility that keeps getting lost in the noise around her. A player putting up historic numbers every month could easily lean into the spotlight, feed the narrative, play the villain or the victim. Caitlin Clark hasn’t done either. She’s kept the focus on basketball, kept crediting teammates, and when she has spoken up, it’s been to defend the people around her rather than to complain about what’s aimed at her.
None of this happens in a vacuum, either. LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke used words like “oafish” and “spoiled” to describe her in a lengthy column this season. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert issued a statement condemning hate directed at players, and even that drew criticism from fans who felt it should have paired more directly with a stronger stance on the Thomas incident itself.
Caitlin Clark just keeps playing. She enters July needing nine assists to reach 600 for her career and five three-pointers to become the fastest player in league history to 200 made threes. Both are milestones she’ll likely reach faster than anyone who’s come before her.
The records will keep coming. So, by every indication, will the noise around her. What’s remarkable is that neither one has slowed the other down.
Images via Caitlin Clark / Indiana Fever / WNBA
