Caitlin Clark made her first three-pointer at 4:51 of the fourth quarter Wednesday night in Los Angeles, on her seventh attempt of the game. It extended Indiana's lead to fifteen and effectively settled the Sparks. The Fever won 87-78. They are 1-1. [1]

Across two games, Clark is three of sixteen from beyond the arc — 18.75%. The paper's May 13 brief on her home opener reported 22%, a figure that is now the trend rather than the data point. Clark finished Wednesday with twenty-four points and nine assists on nine-of-seventeen shooting overall; Kelsey Mitchell added twenty-three on the same line. [1] Indiana led by fourteen at halftime, by sixteen entering the fourth, and held on through a late 11-3 Sparks run capped by a Kelsey Plum drive. Clark found Mitchell on an inbounds pass for a layup with 33.2 seconds left to put the game effectively away. [1]

The line that defines the early season, though, is not 24 and 9. It is 1-of-7 — six straight misses before the fourth-quarter triple, in a game her team won by nine points it never really needed her three-point shot to win. Aliyah Boston fouled out with 3:32 left. Mitchell was the team's high scorer in the second quarter (seventeen of the Fever's forty-eight first-half points). Sophie Cunningham added twelve. Monique Billings, in her regular-season debut for Indiana, contributed nine points and eight rebounds, including some of the late minutes Boston could not play. [1] Indiana shot 56% from the field. The Fever did not need Clark to be Clark on Wednesday; they needed her teammates to be the team the front office assembled, and they were.

That is itself the story for now. The fastest player to 1,000 points, 250 rebounds, and 250 assists in WNBA history — Clark reached the threshold in fifty-four games, ahead of Diana Taurasi's sixty-two — is opening her third professional season with the worst three-point shooting of her career, and the team is winning anyway. [2] The injury history matters. Clark missed thirty-three games last season with left quad and groin strains and a right groin strain, the third of which ended her year on July 15. The shooting numbers may simply be rust; head coach Stephanie White and Clark both told the broadcast team after Saturday's home opener that mid-game departures were for back adjustments, not flare-ups of last year's injuries. [2] The first six attempts of Wednesday's game looked like a player who is finding rather than has found her rhythm.

The Sparks ended Wednesday 0-2 to start their season under second-year head coach Lynne Roberts, with Plum scoring twenty-five and Dearica Hamby adding sixteen. [1] Cameron Brink had eleven points and three blocks in nineteen minutes off the bench. Ariel Atkins, the Sparks' starting guard, left with a head injury after sixteen minutes and was monitored for concussion symptoms; her availability for Friday's road trip to Toronto is uncertain. [1]

The Fever host Washington on Friday before the league swings to Toronto for a back-to-back the Sparks will also play, against the Tempo's million-dollar backcourt. The architecture the WNBA built this winter has Indiana at one node and Toronto at another, with Clark's individual demand curve plotted against Toronto's institutional supply. For one night in Los Angeles, the demand curve made one three-pointer in seven attempts, and the supply on her own roster covered the gap.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos