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Caitlin Clark Wanted to Avoid Getting a Technical for Comical Fan-Friendly Reason
Caitlin Clark has been playing on fire and with fire in the final stretch of the WNBA season, as she entered Sunday’s game against the Dallas Wings one technical foul away from being suspended for a game.
The Indiana Fever rookie had accumulated six technicals throughout the year, and one more would have caused her to miss the Fever’s regular-season finale against the Washington Mystics this week. But Clark had no plans to get slapped with a tech on Sunday, telling reporters after the game that she didn't want to upset Mystics fans.
“I didn’t think they were going to give me a technical at any point tonight,” Clark said in a postgame presser. “I would have been really sad for people in Washington D.C., I didn’t want to do that. I tried my best. My teammates do a really good job in [preventing technicals], they think I’m funny, they think it’s funny.”
Asked Caitlin Clark about when her teammates pulled her away from refs: “Well, I didn’t think they were gonna give me a technical at any point tonight. I would’ve been really sad for people in Washington DC (next game Thursday).”
— Matthew Byrne (@MatthewByrne1) September 15, 2024
Full: pic.twitter.com/JTuSnTEde9
Clark, who finished with 35 points and eight assists in Sunday’s 110-109 win over the Wings, received her most recent technical last week for letting out her frustrations on a stanchion. The rookie guard walked herself into a few tense arguments with the WNBA refs on Sunday, and her teammates weren’t the only ones worried about her future playing status. Cameras caught one Fever fan appearing to tell Clark to “shut up, don’t get a tech” during the game.
Thankfully for Clark as well as for WNBA viewership numbers, players’ technicals are wiped clean for the postseason. Even if Clark were to receive her seventh technical foul in Thursday’s game against the Mystics, she wouldn’t be suspended for the first game of the playoffs.
The Fever (20-19) clinched the No. 6 seed and will end the regular season with a winning record for the first time since 2015. Indiana won’t know who their first-round playoff opponent is until Tuesday with several other postseason spots still undecided, though at the moment the Fever would take on the No. 3-seeded Connecticut Sun.
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Kristen Wong is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. She has been a sports journalist since 2020. Before joining SI in November 2023, Wong covered four NFL teams as an associate editor with the FanSided NFL Network and worked as a staff writer for the brand’s flagship site. Outside of work, she has dreams of running her own sporty dive bar.