How Caitlin Clark's game has grown -- and where it still needs to improve - ESPN

It was the kind of game Caitlin Clark never wants to play. She had missed the past two contests with a back issue, and while she had been given the green light to return, she was on a minutes restriction.

The Indiana Fever coaches and medical staff were looking out for her, but the limitation made the guard grimace.

«It's just really hard when you're playing three minutes [then] out three minutes,» Clark said after the Fever's 106-92 loss in Los Angeles to the Sparks on July 8. She struggled to find a rhythm, hitting 4 of 12 shots, including 1-for-6 on 3-pointers, to finish with nine points in 16 minutes, her second-lowest scoring total of the season.

«I didn't get to have a feel for the game like I usually do.»

But the irritation lifted as she walked toward the team bus after treatment on her back.

«My body feels great, so that's the positive you take from today,» Clark said.

She sat out the Fever's game the next night at Phoenix as planned. But Clark has played every game since, dropping a career-high 45 points against the Seattle — the first 40-point, 10-assist performance in WNBA history — nine days after that defeat to the Sparks. She has had four double-doubles over the past three weeks and has helped lift the Fever in the process. They are 7-3 since that loss at Crypto.com Arena and are in the hunt for one of the top four seeds in the WNBA playoffs.

As ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo put it just after the All-Star break, «We're once again feeling sort of the power and presence of Caitlin Clark when she's playing at full speed.»

Clark, 24, is in her third year in the WNBA. She played just 13 games last season because of injuries. Now, she seeks to continue her pace as the Fever head into the last 13 contests of this