Caitlin Clark's Pregame Interaction With Former Fever Coach is Turning Heads
The Indiana Fever are set to tip off the 2025 WNBA preseason with a battle against the Washington Mystics on Saturday. And they could be without All-WNBA guard Caitlin Clark, who was ruled questionable with a left leg injury.
This also marks the first game for Fever coach Stephanie White since she replaced Christie Sides during the offseason. White had coached Indiana for two seasons (2015-16) and won a WNBA Coach of the Year award with her most recent team, the Connecticut Sun.
Advertisement
Another coaching casualty following Sides' departure was assistant Jessie Miller. She joined Sides' staff in 2023 and, like Sides, also spent two seasons with the Fever before her departure after the 2024 season.
In March, Miller was added to the Mystics coaching staff to work under new head coach Sydney Johnson.
Before the preseason game on Saturday, Clark and Miller can be seen embracing each other with a big hug and a lengthy conversation. Miller coached Clark during her rookie season, and they both certainly appeared excited about the reunion.
WNBA fans appreciated the interaction between Clark and her former coach, taking to social media to leave their thoughts.
Advertisement
"Love her for what she did to hep cc during her first year. . Glad she land with a team," one fan said.
"I love how she wanted to see Caitlin's arm to see if she was as chiseled as online had her looking like!" wrote a second.
"Jessie a real one - always good to CC - happy she found a good spot w the Mystics," added another.
"Caitlin former assistant coach checking out her guns IRL," commented a fourth.
"they never gon stop talking bout her arms," posted a fifth.
"Awwwww😍🥰❤️," added a sixth.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) talks with assistant coach Jessie MillerWendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
Following the Mystics game, the Fever will continue their preseason with the second part of a back-to-back on Sunday, facing the Brazil national team at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, home of the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Related: Caitlin Clark's First Post After Injury Announcement
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Padres' Machado is on the verge of 2,000 hits. Could he be the last player to reach 3,000?
One night in April, after another line drive moved him closer to a rare milestone, Manny Machado heard a fellow member of the San Diego Padres raise a theory. Machado, the team's franchise third baseman, professes to have forgotten who said it. But the idea has stuck in his head. Maybe it was the fact that the club had just faced the Houston Astros and Jose Altuve, who reached 2,300 career hits Wednesday. Maybe it was Machado's proximity to hit No. 2,000. Maybe, more than anything, it was the audacity of it all. If Machado were to eventually reach 3,000 hits, could he be the last to ever do it? 'It does sound crazy,' Machado said, 'but at the same time, you kind of see how the game is going right now.' Machado, who turns 33 next month, finds himself on the doorstep of an increasingly exclusive club. There are four active players -- Freddie Freeman, Altuve, Andrew McCutchen and Paul Goldschmidt -- with at least 2,000 hits. Machado, with only 19 more hits, will make it five. Yet as recently as two decades ago, there were 27 such players. This downward trend might only be accelerating. Pitchers are pairing unparalleled velocity with a greater understanding of how to manipulate spin and ball flight. The contact hitter is not extinct, but home runs and uppercut swings still drive team success and nine-figure contracts. While extreme shifts are now outlawed, defenses continue to pursue optimal positioning. 'It's hard to hit the ball,' said Luis Arraez, the Padres' first baseman and a three-time batting champion. In 2025, the leaguewide batting average remains under .250 for a sixth consecutive year. If the season were to end today, the average on balls in play would mark a 33-year low. Arraez, 28, who has 915 career hits, secured the National League batting title last year with a mere .314 average. As players in their late 30s, McCutchen and Goldschmidt are long shots to even come close to 3,000 hits. Altuve was once considered a leading candidate, but he is showing signs of decline. Freeman is hitting as well as ever, but, like Altuve, is racing against time. Machado, meanwhile, has a chance to achieve something none of those decorated veterans did: become the 55th player to record 2,000 hits before age 33. He also has a $350 million contract that runs through 2033 and came with the understanding that he would provide the bulk of his production on the front end. So far, Machado, a six-time All-Star, has delivered few indications of offensive slippage. He spent much of the last three years playing through tennis elbow and then the lingering effects of reparative surgery. He still completed 2024 as the only active big leaguer to have hit at least 28 home runs in nine consecutive full seasons. Now, he is batting .320 with a seemingly healthy elbow and some of the best underlying numbers of his career. In a recent 3-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants, he lined an opposite-field single and pulled a two-run drive to become the 33rd player with 350 home runs by age 32. He was 3 for 5 with five runs batted in an 11-1 win against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday. 'It feels good to just be somewhat normal and be able to get some good swings out and not really be on the training room table every single day,' Machado said. Mike Shildt, the Padres' second-year manager, said he was seeing more 'consistency and clarity' from Machado. 'I just see a guy that's really comfortable where he's at, trusting the guys around him and not making the situation bigger than it is,' Shildt said. 'Just putting a good stroke on it, which is one of the best right-handed swings I've seen.' The team's hitting coach, Victor Rodriguez, added: 'He's healthy. He's not searching. He's not trying to feel how he can be comfortable. He's comfortable. And you see Manny sometimes get out of it, but the next day he's really focusing on getting back to the big part of the field and being himself.' Machado has been that guy from the beginning. On Aug. 9, 2012, when he was 20, he skipped over Triple-A and landed in a playoff chase with the Baltimore Orioles. In his second at-bat, he tripled into the right-center gap for his first career hit. In time, Machado turned consistent doubles power into 30-homer seasons. He won a Platinum Glove in 2013, given to the best overall defensive player in each league, and settled in as one of the finest defenders of his generation. After two knee operations cost him time early in his career, he demonstrated what would become another defining quality. Since 2015, Machado has started more major league games than anyone else. His only trip to the injured list over the last decade came in 2023, when a fractured hand forced him to miss two weeks. His durability reminds Los Angeles Angels Manager Ron Washington of Adrián Beltré, the third-base contemporary Machado most admired until Beltré retired in 2018. 'Injuries never stopped Adrián Beltré from playing,' said Washington, who managed Beltré for four seasons with the Texas Rangers. 'Adrián Beltré made other people want to be everyday players. There's a lot of guys that couldn't play every day, but because they were around Adrián Beltré, they'd think they could play every day. 'That's the kind of player that Manny Machado is. He makes everybody else want to come on the field and play.' As the games have piled up, so have the hits. Machado reached 1,500 hits in 2022, becoming the sixth third baseman to cross that threshold by age 29 -- and the first since Beltré in 2008. He has batted at least .275 in every season since his rookie campaign, and his gap-to-gap approach holds up in offense-suppressing venues. Given their continuing performances, Machado and Freeman, the Dodgers' metronome of a first baseman, appear to be the safest current picks to eclipse 3,000 hits. Both have supplied all-fields production in eerily similar fashion. Since the Statcast era began in 2015, Machado's batted-ball profile breaks down as follows: 37% to the pull side, 37% up the middle and 25% to the opposite field. The same goes for Freeman, who at 35 is leading the NL in batting average. 'Manny and Freddie, they came from a different era with a different philosophy and a different skill set on how to approach hitting, and they've been able to survive,' Shildt said. 'And yeah, their talent's extraordinary, but it's not so extraordinary that other people can't follow it. But the industry, including the amateur level, is tripled up where you're just devaluing the hit. It's not valued as highly.' A little more than three years have passed since Miguel Cabrera, an all-fields slugger Machado studied closely, became the 33rd and most recent player to enter the 3,000-hit club. Freeman and Altuve, with perhaps a handful more seasons, could approach elite territory around their 40th birthdays. Even Machado is far from a guarantee. Of the 10 players this century to reach 2,000 hits by age 32, five -- Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Beltré, Albert Pujols and Cabrera -- went on to attain 3,000. Victor Rodriguez, who worked as Cleveland's assistant hitting coach before the Padres hired him, suggested that 2,500 hits would be enough to earn Guardians third baseman José Ramírez entry into the Hall of Fame. (Ramírez, 32, has 1,581.) Washington, whose career in professional baseball began in 1970, said he could envision a world in which Machado winds up being the final player to amass 3,000 hits. 'It's not the pitching, it's the players,' Washington said, adding, 'You need pure hitters to reach that.' Future applicants will also need the kind of longevity Machado is tracking toward. Twenty-eight of the 33 members of the 3,000-hit club played in at least 20 big league seasons. Only one, Ichiro Suzuki, arrived in the majors after his 23rd birthday. Twenty-six made their debuts before turning 22. Sitting at his locker on a recent afternoon, Machado pointed out that the number of players who have ever reached the major leagues -- now almost 23,500 -- would not quite fill half of Petco Park. He marveled at that fact, as well as his proximity to 297 players who have crossed a lofty threshold. 'It's going to be pretty cool, man,' Machado said. 'Obviously, it always takes you back to that first hit. You kind of reflect on how that was your childhood dream, to get a hit in the big leagues. And now you're pushing 2,000, which is crazy.' He also considered a certain theory. Maybe one day the likes of Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill and Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. will have the opportunity to disprove it. Maybe future legislation will help swing the game back in favor of hitters. Maybe, if Machado does not do it, someone else will. Actually, he sounded certain of it. 'I'm pretty sure it will continue,' Machado said. 'We're going to be seeing a lot of great players come through the minor leagues and be really good baseball players and break a lot of records.' Still, as Machado marches toward his 2,000th hit and an even greater milestone, his career already puts him in rare territory. He could end up among the last -- if not the very last -- of his kind. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Has the WNBA become a brutal league, or are we just paying more attention now?
Last July, Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson took a shot to the face from Seattle's Nneka Ogwumike that left her nose gushing. Wilson later said she'd never seen so much of her own blood. It didn't affect her game too much though: she finished with 24 points and 20 rebounds, telling reporters of the jab, 'I think it made me great.' When Caitlin Clark entered the league in the same season and was almost immediately swatted around like a fruit fly by veterans with years of experience and plenty of size on her, she didn't complain (though many of her fans sure did). Clark came back this season bigger and better, delivering her own message to the veterans who knocked her around as a rookie. Advertisement Related: WNBA: No 1 pick Paige Bueckers scores career-high 35 on return from injury Wilson and Clark's stories came to mind after Kelsey Plum lit into the refs after the Los Angeles Sparks' loss to the Golden State Valkyries on Monday night. 'I got scratches on my face, I got scratches on my body, and these guards on the other team get these ticky-tack fouls, and I'm sick of it. I get fouled like that on every possession,' she said. Plum likely had a point – the Valkyries had few other ways to slow her – but her frustration tapped into a broader narrative. This season is young and has already been dogged by complaints that the league is too physical (whatever that means), complaints that boggle the mind when one considers the way the WNBA has always been played. 'Physicality has always been a WNBA thing,' says Jordan Robinson, who hosts The Women's Hoop Show alongside Sheryl Swoopes, and is writing a book on the history of women's basketball. 'It's a sports thing! It's been a women's basketball thing since the beginning.' The first recorded women's basketball game was in 1892 – and by all accounts, it was tough. Advertisement People in 1892 were 'surprised at women playing basketball in general', she says, 'and later in the 1920s were appalled that women were playing a physical sport – and then! – on top of that, they were aggressive.' At various points in history, women's courts were divided into sections. The thinking was that it would keep players from sweating too much or using too much energy, Robinson says. The women's game didn't even include unlimited dribbling until the 1960s, out of a head-scratching belief that the players would get too tired. The idea that the women's game isn't, or shouldn't be, physical confounds the mind, longtime WNBA reporter and author of Becoming Caitlin Clark, Howard Megdal, says. 'This is a league of skill and strength and speed – it's amazing – and to me, that is a great thing. This is something I enjoy.' In other words, a WNBA without physical confrontation is a WNBA that far fewer fans would actually want to watch. Robinson agrees. 'When I watch the WNBA, when I watch professional athletes at the very top of their craft, I see competitors, point blank, period.' To Plum's point about the fouls called (or not called) during Monday's game, Robinson says, 'What she's saying is, 'I'm going to bulldoze through you if I have to, but, hey, there are actually rules in place so I don't get hurt.'' Advertisement Anyone who believes the WNBA has somehow ramped up the physicality only in recent years needs only look back on the league's history. South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley is known for her fiery sideline responses during crucial games, responses that she certainly displayed when she was in the W. Staley, her former Houston Comets teammate Tina Thompson once said, 'play[ed] with an unbelievable toughness' due to her 5ft 6in size. If anything, the physical nature of the WNBA has decreased in recent years as more player protections and rules have been put into place. In an interview with Sports Seriously this week, Diana Taurasi attributed the increased attention on physicality to 'more eyeballs on the game' but added that players who have been in the league for a decade or more would agree it's 'less physical' than ever before. Swoopes would likely agree. During her 10th season in the league in 2006, the longtime Comets great referenced the very problem that's still being discussed today. 'As far as the physicality of it, I'm glad I'm not a referee because you just never know. Sometimes they're calling every little bitty thing and you've got people complaining about that, 'Because that's not what the fans want to see,'' she said at the time. 'Now, it's very physical and people are complaining about that, 'It's too physical. That's not what the coaches want; that's not what the players want.' So you've gotta give and take. You've got to give a little and take a little.' If hard contact makes some fans uncomfortable, maybe it's time they found another pastime. Of course, one would be hard-pressed to find a professional women's sport that isn't just as physical (or even more physical) than the WNBA; American soccer star Heather O'Reilly once praised Abby Wambach as her 'dream player' after the latter had her head stapled back together while still on the pitch. Even a sport that's often considered 'feminine' can demand a perseverance and grid that would test the hardest NFL player (just ask gymnast Kerri Strug). Or maybe it's time for women's basketball fans to leap into 2025, a moment in space and time in which we recognize professional female athletes go just as hard as their male counterparts – and we can finally stop wringing our hands and enjoy every aspect of the game, even the hits.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Caitlin Clark, Reggie Miller, Oscar Robertson among those in crowd for Game 3 of NBA Finals
NBA Hall of Famers Reggie Miller, left, and Oscar Robertson sit courtside prior to Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) Indian Fever basketball players Caitlin Clark, right, and Aliyah Boston watch during the first half of Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) Indian Fever basketball players Caitlin Clark, right, and Aliyah Boston watch during the first half of Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) NBA Hall of Famers Reggie Miller, left, and Oscar Robertson sit courtside prior to Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) Indian Fever basketball players Caitlin Clark, right, and Aliyah Boston watch during the first half of Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Caitlin Clark wasn't going to miss the NBA Finals, taking a baseline seat to cheer on the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night. The WNBA star — wearing a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the famed 'In 49 other states it's just basketball. But this is Indiana' saying along with a finals logo — was seated with Indiana Fever teammates Aliyah Boston and Natasha Howard for the game, in the same end of the floor as the Pacers' bench. Advertisement The Pacers were taking on the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. It was the first Indiana home game in the NBA's title series since 2000. Among the other Indiana basketball royalty at the game: Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson and Reggie Miller, both seated near the court as well, along with Mark Jackson, Dale Davis and many other former Pacers. Former Indianapolis Colts star Edgerrin James also was among those in the crowd. And plenty of auto racing stars were at the game as well — including Alex Palou, the winner of this year's Indianapolis 500. He arrived for the game in a pace car from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which was lit up in gold for the evening as a Pacers tribute. Clark and the Fever have been regular attendees at Pacers games during this playoff run when their schedule allows. The Fever don't play again until Saturday, at home against the defending WNBA champion New York Liberty. Clark has been sidelined with a thigh injury, but it's possible she returns to the lineup on Saturday. ___ AP NBA:
