Suzy Shuster Weighs In on Caitlin Clark & Fever's Slow Start to WNBA Season

The Indiana Fever's slow start has turned into a full-blown story, and Suzy Shuster joined the show ready to dig into the drama around Caitlin Clark.

Rich set the table with a take he has held for months: this is the most important summer of Clark's career, and so far the Fever have been disappointing. Shuster did not disagree, but she sees opportunity in the chaos. Wins, she argued, often grow out of exactly these kinds of altercations, and she is curious how it plays out.

She also pushed back on the lazy version of the criticism. People point to Clark's defense, Shuster noted, yet she leads her team in steals and makes more happen than the box score of points, assists and rebounds suggests. Rich met her halfway. Clark leads the league in assists, he countered, but also ranks first in turnovers and first in hunting fouls. If he were coaching her, he said, he would tell her to cut the theatrics and stop looking for a whistle after every possession.

The real on-court issue, both agreed, is defense. By one stat cited on the show, Clark gets isolated and driven on at three times the rate of the next-most-targeted player, Olivia Miles. That pulled the conversation toward the draft, and the debate over whether Miles, the most electric offensive player around, should have gone first instead of the more well-rounded A'ja Wilson. The fact that such a debate exists at all, Rich pointed out, is itself proof of the spotlight now trained on the WNBA, the kind of one-or-two draft second-guessing fans usually reserve for the NFL.

Then there was the incident everyone saw. Clark argued with her coach to the point of being pulled from a huddle, with Stephanie White waving a rookie over to take Clark's seat. They have since played it down as routine, but Shuster and Rich were not buying that an hour-and-a-half team conversation was nothing.

Shuster's larger point was about the era. Coaches like White and Jose Fernandez are making visible, scrutinized decisions about star players more than ever, and that is the cost of the attention Clark has brought. The league existed for decades, she said, but never with a player under a 24-hour camera the way Clark is now.

The upside is undeniable. The show planned to break it down with coach Chloe Close, who has coached Clark and knows her well, having already asked Stephanie White about the pressure of the job weeks earlier. And when a season turns into a full-time soap opera, Shuster guaranteed the audience for that night's game would triple.