Caitlin Clark shot 2-for-9 from three-point range — 22 percent — in Indiana's 107-104 season-opening home loss to the Dallas Wings on May 9. She scored 20 points on 7-for-18 shooting overall, added seven assists and five rebounds, and missed a tying three-pointer with 1.6 seconds remaining. The Fever lost at home in their first game of 2026. [1]

The paper's Tuesday piece on Clark hitting a milestone while the Fever still lose established the pattern: individual arc, team deficit, same result. The three-point line is where that pattern becomes a scheme problem. Indiana's offensive design places Clark at the center of three-point volume — she attempted nine from range in 31 minutes. When she runs cold, the architecture has no bypass. No secondary creator bent the Dallas defense in the moments Clark couldn't. [1][2]

The back issue adds a layer the box score doesn't capture. Clark left the game twice for adjustment and said after that she had needed her back treated during the game itself. A lingering back issue in a player who shot 9 three-point attempts while managing pain is not simply an injury note — it is a load-management question the Fever have not answered publicly. Clark between 2024 and 2025 shot 32.9 percent from three across nearly 460 attempts, ninth most in the WNBA during that span. The 22 percent opener is a single game. What makes it a story is the miss with 1.6 seconds left, which turned it from a cold night into the margin of a loss. That shot does not look different in May. It looks different in a playoff series.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos