Team USA Star Learns Caitlin Clark Lesson the Hard Way
While Indiana Fever star guard Caitlin Clark is best known for her extraordinary shooting range, those who have watched and followed Clark's women's basketball career know that shooting isn't even her strongest attribute.
Instead, this would be her passing prowess, which is shown by the fact that Clark set the WNBA record for assists in a game (19) in July of 2024 and the most assists in a single season (337), both of which came when she was a rookie. Statistics aside, Clark has uncanny court vision and an otherworldly knack for getting the ball to her teammates, often before these teammates even realized they were open.
There's certainly a learning curve to playing with Clark, especially when she's passing the ball in transition or finding creative ways to deliver the ball to her post players in the half-court.
Insider Details Team USA Player's Mishap on Caitlin Clark Pass
Caitlin Clark returned to the basketball court after a nearly five-month absence this past weekend, as she and many other WNBA stars participated in a Team USA training camp in North Carolina.
The Athletic's WNBA insider Sabreena Merchant was present for the camp. And during a December 16 episode of No Offseason: The Athletic Women's Basketball Show, Merchant explained that Los Angeles Sparks star Dearica Hamby made a common mistake when playing with Clark for the first time.
When speaking about what she saw from Clark on the court at the Team USA camp this past weekend, Merchant said, "This was [Clark's] first real five-on-five action since that injury with the Fever, and it was a combination of USA players going against USA players, and then also USA players going against the scout team, which was just players from small colleges all across North Carolina.
"She looked like Caitlin, right? The step-back three was there, the passes were there," Merchant continued. "When she was not playing with Aliyah Boston, some of the bigs didn't know what to do with her passes. There was this one time where she passed it to [Dearica] Hamby, and Hamby brought the ball down. It's like, you can't do that! This is not, you have to keep it up, right? [She was] just not expecting where that pass was coming [from]."
One thing Caitlin Clark is always going to do is give the refs shit 😭-
— Krysta 🦜 (@birdology_) December 16, 2025
Sabreena gives more details on the USA training camp 🥹 pic.twitter.com/5Mirnl1rh9
Fever fans can surely recall countless instances of a player being unable to corral a pass from Clark, if only because they had no idea it was coming or otherwise didn't expect the ball to be delivered in such a tight window. And the second half of this is keeping the ball up high after receiving one of Clark's passes so it can be turned into a bucker before the defense can recover.
It seems that Hamby learned this lesson the hard way this past weekend. But she probably won't make that mistake again if she gets to play alongside Clark in the future.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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