Ranked: Caitlin Clark’s worst moments in 2024

It's tough to be overly critical of Caitlin Clark after the year she just had, but like all of us, she's not perfect, so here are some moments from 2024 that she probably wants back! All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference.

Despite Caitlin Clark entering the WNBA like a comet, her performances weren't enough to get her selected for the US Olympic team, a decision that drew criticism from many quarters.

This became a hot topic for discussion throughout the summer, as it was hard for fans to understand how a player who was ushering women’s basketball into a new era could be left off of the team. Basketball Hall of Famer Reggie Miller said on the Dan Patrick show at the time that Clark simply wasn’t one of the 12 best women’s basketball players at the time of selection.

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There’s a case to be made that Clark had not yet earned her stripes in order to be legitimately considered for the Olympic team. With that said, it still had to be massively disappointing, considering that she won’t get her next chance to play in the Olympics until 2028.

Perhaps no player was more thankful for the WNBA offseason than Clark. She had gone from a March Madness run at the University of Iowa, to being drafted into the WNBA in mid-April, to training for the WNBA season that started in mid-May. While Clark had the Olympic break to unwind, she still was looking forward to getting away from basketball. In November, she decided to play a little golf.

Clark participated at The Annika, a tournament hosted by women’s golf luminary Annika Sorenstam. It was an event that featured many celebrities and non-golf athletes, many of whom may not be the best golfers. Clark took a mighty swing on the first shot of a hole, and the ball jettisoned towards nearby fans, who were sent scrambling.

Thankfully, no one was hit by the hard-hit line drive, but things could have been a lot worse had things broken a different way. According to Outkick, Clark said before the tournament, “I just don’t want to hit anyone with a golf ball. That is my number one priority.”

Back on the basketball court, Clark and her Indiana Fever made a strong second half of the season push to qualify for the WNBA postseason. While that surge deserves to be commended, things went downhill in a hurry almost immediately for Clark and the Fever in the playoffs.

Expectations for Clark in her first playoff game were high, but she had one of the worst games of the season. In Game 1 against the Connecticut Sun, she only scored 11 points on 4 for 17 shooting, which included a putrid 2 of 13 from three-point land. Clark told Yahoo Sports, “I felt like we just played a crappy game. Like the flow of the game was really bad.”

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At the outset of Game 1, Clark was poked in the eye by Connecticut’s DiJonai Carrington. The Fever guard went down to the floor holding her face, and the blow doled out by Carrington left Clark with a black eye. That play seemed to set the stage for what was to come for the rest of the game.

For as exemplary of a passer as Clark is, she also had a bad tendency of giving up the ball. She set the WNBA single-season turnover record in 2024, and didn’t even need the entire complement of games to do it.

Granted, players like Clark who have the ball in their hands all the time are going to rack up turnovers, but she was committing them at a rate not seen before in WNBA history. Marca wrote in June about Clark’s predisposition to take chances that often resulted in giving the ball away. Her aggressiveness both helped and hindered her as a rookie.

Sports columnist Jason Whitlock didn’t hold back when shining a light on this problem. He wrote on social media, “For his career, LeBron averages 3.5 turnovers. His worst season is 4.2. The NBA is a 48-minute game. The WNBA is a 40-minute game. Caitlin averages 5.6 turnovers. We’ve never seen a superstar basketball player turn the ball over at this rate. It’s unprecedented.”

Perhaps the worst moments of Caitlin Clark’s year centered around her demonstrated inability to keep her emotions in check at times. This dates back to her college days, as Outkick covered former NCAA coach Dan Dakich’s comments about how he was tired of seeing Clark complain to referees.

This behavior continued into the WNBA, where Clark has confronted officials about what she perceives to be a lack of calls. She teetered on the brink of an automatic one-game suspension for the second half of the season. Clark received six technical fouls during the WNBA campaign, and a seventh would’ve automatically forced her to sit for a contest.

Clark’s zero to sixty flareups were so apparent that it prompted the Fever to create a “de-escalation committee” to keep the star’s emotions in check. Sports Illustrated pointed this out in jest, but the fact she needed multiple teammates to restrain her from boiling over isn’t the best look. Teammate Aliyah Boston said that the committee works overtime to ensure Clark stays level-headed.

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