CHICAGO — More than 20 minutes into her All-Star practice media availability on Friday, Caitlin Clark looked around at the mass of reporters still crowded around her podium in half-joking disbelief.
“Man, how long is this scrum?” Clark said. “Holy smokes, I’m not gonna be able to talk the rest of the day.”
The scrum ended up lasting nearly half an hour, and Clark rarely stopped talking the rest of the weekend. To former President Barack Obama, to Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman on the StudBudz stream, to fans, to sponsors, to the general media again after Saturday’s All-Star Game.
Such is the life of one of the most famous athletes alive. Everyone wants something from Clark. A quote, a photo, a pair of her new Caitlin 1s, a solution to the country’s societal woes, and it was never more obvious than in Chicago, with the entire WNBA world assembled.
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But what does Clark want?
Fair and accurate coverage that’s focused on the actual game and not contrived controversies. To put on a show for the fans. And, most of all, a championship.
“When I walk out of the locker room, I shouldn’t be fearful of what the conversation is gonna be. It’s emotionally exhausting, it’s draining, it makes your shoulders tense because you know people don’t want to talk about the basketball. They just want to stir it up and make it something else,” Clark told ESPN in an interview that aired Friday.
“The reason I play (basketball) is when I step in between the lines, I love it. That’s what’s so fun about it for me. I get to compete. This was always my dream and nobody should ever try to take that away from me, like the love and the joy that I have from the game. They haven’t and they won’t because it’s my goal to win — win championships — and I know that I can help this team do that, and that’s always what I remind myself in the moments that things go downhill.”
That’s why the most important quotes of the weekend didn’t come from Clark, but her Fever teammate Kelsey Mitchell, who was lined up opposite Clark and Aliyah Boston during the All-Star Game.
“This is the longest tenure me, CC and AB have been playing (together) since 2024. I don’t think people really recognize the chemistry that can be built when you do that,” Mitchell said Saturday. “Hopefully we’ve reached a point where now we won’t have to talk about chemistry no more. We’re at that point now where — you gotta tap in, you gotta turn it up a little bit more.”
The Fever entered 2026 with championship expectations after falling five minutes short of the Finals in 2025 without Clark, but the first half of their season was disrupted by injuries, embarrassing defeats and both on- and off-court drama.
Over the last month, however, they’ve started to round into form. They’re 7-2 in their last nine games, have destroyed the Las Vegas Aces twice and the New York Liberty — the reigning champions and the pre-season title favorites — once. They entered the All-Star break on a three-game winning streak that has them in fifth place at 17-10.
The Fever’s 114.2 offensive rating not only ranks first but would be the best mark in league history if they keep it up for the rest of the season, and they’re second in net rating at +7.2. Mitchell (23.3 points per game, second in the league) and Clark (21 points, fourth) are the highest-scoring duo in the league. Add in Boston (17.3 points) and the Fever have three of the top 12 scorers; the last team to pull off that feat was the 2023 Aces, when they won the second of their three titles.
Clark, Mitchell and Boston were limited to 13 games together last season when Clark dealt with an array of injuries in Stephanie White’s first campaign. Even amid some more injury issues this season, they’ve already hit 20 games — 21, if you want to include the All-Star Game.
“I think it’s just really special for our organization for all three of us to be here,” Clark said during Saturday’s game. “Two really special people in my life and two people I care about way more as people than as teammates. The love that we have for one another, I think that shows on the court.
“We’ve kinda been able to find our groove. We really haven’t played a lot of games together since 2024, so we’ve been a little bit rusty, but when we’re flowing together, we’re a hard trio to stop. Just really thankful for them and hopefully we keep it going.”
There’s more than enough talent and scoring in Indiana to win a title for the first time since 2012, but whether or not they can be consistent enough on defense to do so remains to be seen. For both Clark and the Fever, it will be for the best if that’s the biggest conversation they have the rest of the way.
