Liberty Star Sends Message to Caitlin Clark
BROOKLYN — New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu, the WNBA's re-established three-point queen, offered encouragement for one of her most prominent, and absent, pursuers following a major win on Tuesday night.
The newly-reinstalled champion of the WNBA's 3-Point Contest overcame fatigue brought about by a busy All-Star weekend and early shooting woes to post a fantastic fourth in the Liberty's 98-84 win over the Indiana Fever. The point guard missed eight of her first nine tries from the field but swiftly recovered to hit 4-of-6 in the last 10.
Tuesday's game, as well's the Fever's prior visit to Brooklyn last Wednesday, was staged without Caitlin Clark, the widely-accepted face of the WNBA who has dealt with numerous lower-body injuries in her anticipated sophomore season. A groin issue kept her out of both the metropolitan pair and the All-Star festivities hosted in her professional home of Indianapolis, where she captained and curated one of the two squads that partook in Saturday's main event.
Ionescu imparted some inspiration to Clark before and after Tuesday's triumph, believing that the setbacks endured now will give rise to glory later.
"I told her, although it sucks now, it's going to be a blessing in disguise," Ionescu said. "You just have to stay positive about it, knowing you're going to become a better player and better person from it."
If anyone knows about literal growing pains, it's Ionescu, the touted top pick of the 2020 WNBA Draft before Clark took on a matching role four years later.
Having avoided medical misfortune in four years at Oregon, her first WNBA days weren't kind: she endured a season-ending ankle sprain in just her third showing in the W's Bradenton bubble. Her official second season began on a high note, sinking a game-winner in the Liberty's first game as full-time tenants of Barclays Center, but further ailments hindered her from making the leaps she envisioned and intended: in her first full season, Ionescu averaged 11.8 points on just over 37 percent from the field.
All the while, Ionescu was tasked with getting the then-downtrodden Liberty franchise back on track. She managed to succeed in that regard: amidst the "hybrid rebuild" championed overseen by general manager Jonathan Kolb, the ailing Ionescu managed to push the Liberty back into the postseason, where they gave the eventual finalists, a Phoenix Mercury group coached by future New York boss Sandy Brondello, a run for their money before a respectful departure.
Clark, also healthy over four years at Iowa, has endured a similar struggle: she put up a triple-double in this season's opener against Chicago (joining Ionescu, Alyssa Thomas and Candace Parker as the only WNBAers to have three in her career) but missed just about three weeks after enduring a quad injury.
Clark returned against the Liberty on June 14 and tallied 32 points, dealing New York the first loss of its ongoing championship defense. That win also allowed Indiana to sneak by the Liberty in race for the Eastern Conference's slot in the Commissioner's Cup in-season competition. The Fever wound up defeating league-leading Minnesota in the championship game, securing their first hardware of the Clark era.
Alas, Clark was unable to partake in that game and has struggled to maintain the scorching paces she established in a memorable rookie year. She's still averaging a respectable 16.5 points and 8.8 assists (second in the W behind Thomas in the latter category) but that and other numerical entries are far from meeting the standards both she and her observers hold herself to.
Ionescu has been a guiding light of sorts on the journey back: the two were seen mingling during down periods of the Indiana doubleheader and Clark made Ionescu her first pick during the All-Star draft after adding her own teammate Aliyah Boston.
The All-Star showing allowed Ionescu to offer perspective and insight on the road ahead: despite those earlier struggles, Ionescu now has an effective field goal percentage (which places a larger value on threes) of 49.7 percent and has become a perennial All-Star and contributor amidst the Liberty's continued rise.
"[In 2021], I had four soft tissue injuries that next year that a lot of people didn't know about," Ionescu recalled. "I played through two calves and two hamstrings, and kind of just tried to play through it and didn't say anything. It's kind of similar."
"When you don't go through any injury early on in your career, you have no idea how to maneuver it. That's something I was able to talk to her about at All-Star, is that you almost sometimes have to go through it to be able to understand, like what your body needs, and you're able to tell what you can play through and what you can't, and just set yourself up with the right team of trainers and training and knowing the offseason is long."
Nominal advising of Clark is the latest example of Ionescu's rising leadership as she becomes more of a metropolitan staple. The continued cause is hardly a surprise to teammate Isabelle Harrison, who said that Ionescu reached out to her amidst her own injury woes even before she donned a New York uniform.
"She would ask me how I was doing during my injuries, and, like, even when I was not playing in the league at all, I didn't know she even knew me. So she would check in on me during her big moments," Harrison said. "Being here already, I was already, like a fan of Sab, but her competitiveness, it just doesn't let us get lax. It makes us play even harder ... She's over everything. I love her passion and her will to win on every single play, and I can't speak highly enough of Sabrina."
Geoff Magliocchetti is a veteran sportswriter who contributes to a variety of sites on the "On SI" network. In addition to the Yankees/Mets, Geoff also covers the New York Knicks, New York Liberty, and New York Giants and has previously written about the New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Staten Island Yankees, and NASCAR.