She’s really been all over the place. I wanna do a proper post about her season so far, but it seems to me like a few things are happening:
The advanced metrics value efficiency, and she is among the bottom players in the league in offensive efficiency (between an OK true shooting percentage and a horrible turnover rate): bkref.com/pi/shareit/vl…
The metrics can be really tough on young players who get their shot at will but miss a lot, too. It reminds me of this story I wrote about Andrew Wiggins — another touted prospect who averaged a lot of points inefficiently in his first few years: fivethirtyeight.com/fea…
The metrics also track defense, to the extent they can. And by all indications, she is not a positive there yet. (My RAPTOR uses plus-minus, in which the worst defense in the league by a mile gets worse with her on the court: basketball-reference.co…)
As alluded to in his note (substack.com/@purpleins…), WNBA guards seem to have a LOT of trouble adjusting to the pros at first. We saw this with Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu, too: neilpaine.substack.com/…
Caitlin Clark makes people go a little crazy (in all directions, those who love her and those who hate her). Outside of places like this, it seems impossible to have a rational conversation about her on objective terms. So of course people are going to cherry pick things to feed arguments around her.