How Time Separates Caitlin Clark

The Iowa Hawkeyes are on the brink of a National Championship game appearance, their second in school history, and just their third appearance in the Final Four. Heroics from Kate Martin as a shotmaker, Sydney Affolter with timely rebounds, Gabbie Marshall with pesky defense, and Hannah Stuelke playing up against larger posts have been pivotal in the Hawkeyes reaching this point. Star guard Caitlin Clarks is the straw that stirs the drink for Iowa. She’s a top flight playmaker, the leading scorer in NCAA Division 1 history, and a certainty to be the number one pick in the upcoming WNBA Draft.

So much makes Clark a special talent; the shooting from distance is well-noted and a crucial aspect. She has elite court vision and passing acumen. She’s grown greatly in her ability to drive the lane and score through contact, with the ball-handling skill to get where she wants when she wants. 

You can point at so many of those things as what make her a great college player and future pro, but what stands out to me as the most important: Time.

I got asked recently to explain what makes Caitlin so hard to defend, and it really made me think. Again, yes, the shooting and the passing. But, we’ve seen a ton of players who can shoot and pass, of course at varying levels, and Caitlin is near 100th percentile in both aspects. How does that separate out and differentiate?

It made me think of plasma screen TVs. When I was in middle school, my dad was planning on getting a brand new TV for the family room, and I was stoked. I’ve always been obsessed with making the right decision, spending hours pouring over options and the specs of something to truly understand and find out what might be the best. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why prices would climb so drastically as TVs got bigger. I could understand that it would be more expensive for sure, but I was determined that my family should get the 70 inch… until my dad showed me that it was twice as expensive as the one he was eyeing around 60 inches.

Why is the cost so different when it’s a 10 inch difference? I couldn’t wrap my head around that.

“It’s all about the surface area,” said my father.

And that’s what clicked for me in watching Caitlin play. She has a different level of access to the court than most, an extra 7 or 8 feet beyond the line nearly doubles the surface area of which she has to be guarded. That distance shooting and the hair trigger on it forces her to be face-guarded and picked up 94 feet to deny the ball, as we saw from UConn in the Final Four.

We’ve seen great shooters: Nykesha Sales, Kelsey Plum, Diana Taurasi, and Kelsey Mitchell amongst others. All of those players further weaponized their ability to shoot by growing as playmakers, something we saw throughout their college careers and into the pros. You take that routine distance that Caitlin will gun from (and do so effectively) and add the square footage that causes a binding problem for a defense.

This is where time comes back into play, as mentioned earlier. While Caitlin is quick with her feet, it’s her awareness that jumps off the screen. As coined by PD Web, advantage perception is what I would consider Caitlin’s most impactful trait on the hardwood.

I strongly recommend reading anything from PD, and here is his excerpt on advantage perception.

The opposite side of the advantage creation coin, recognizing that there is an advantage and identifying what action, angle, timing and delivery will create the best possible opportunities for the team to score. Advantage perception is about deciding what hurts a defense most at any given time. There are many players who are simply reactive passers, throwing skips and dump offs on advantage creation -  advantage perception is about punishing defenses in a proportional way to what action they have taken. - PD Web

To add my own analysis as well, extrapolating on the time aspect, think back to simple physics. Velocity = Displacement / Time.

Consider Velocity the damage done to a defense, Displacement to be the impact of the player’s own gravity as a scorer (how much attention they demand/draw) and Time to be quite literally time. The less time it takes to make the most impactful decision has higher effects on Velocity, impact done to a defense. With quicker actions and more impactful quicker actions, you are diminishing the time a defense has to react, scramble, and recover.

We’ve already seen an adjustment in the WNBA as the Las Vegas Aces have prioritized and heavily capitalized on the ideas of .5 decision-making. Caitlin Clark is the next embodiment of that concept, something we are only going to see continue to explode in not popularity, but necessity in the W.

Being able to play slowed down and out of one on one situations in the halfcourt is always going to be important, but early offense and creating as many efficient possessions as possible is of the utmost importance, and that isn’t going away. I think the next step throughout the course of Caitlin’s rookie contract will be developing more of that in-between ability, but what she brings as a consistent and constant threat is irreplaceable.

Take this play from the game against LSU in the Elite Eight.

Flau’jae picks up Caitlin with soft pressure fullcourt before stapling to her at halfcourt; that’s the shooting threat. One of the best ways to beat pressure and ball denial is to attack with DHO’s. It mimics a screening action without actually screening, using cutting and shiftiness to get yourself to the ball.

Stuelke flashes to the free throw line as Caitlin cuts right after the pass. Note that Caitlin doesn’t waste a moment, cutting as soon as she releases the ball. It seems very minute, but even just pausing for a half beat can be killer for an offensive possession, especially when you’re trying to pick at the margins of a defense. 

As soon as she has Angel’s full engagement, the ball is hitting the pocket to the rolling Stuelke, again, with no pause, but perfect timing. The second a defense/defender commits, the ball is on the move, and the hair lengths of seconds in decision-making is the difference between good offense and great offense more often than not. Caitlin shaves the milliseconds in a way that matters.

UConn, and particularly Nika Muhl, put on a masterclass in ball denial, off-ball switching, and defensive structure in the Final Four. The Huskies bothered Caitlin and Iowa as a whole, and it was much more about the ability and gameplanning of UConn than shortcomings by the Hawkeyes, in my assessment. It’s one of the best defensive efforts I think a team put forth this season given the assignment and the moment.

All it takes is a momentary lapse or split second of falling off a rotation. It’s worth noting that UConn’s gameplan was to jump switch, as Paige does here. They didn’t want to allow Caitlin any sort of driving lane or downhill traction, and the slip up of not having the secondary rotation here is killer. Caitlin waits for the roller to draw the big then whips to the wide open Feurbach.

Awareness and perception are not part of the “Bigger, faster, stronger” mold of athleticism, but are very much athletic traits. Caitlin Clark succeeds for a multitude of reasons, but her ability to seek out advantages and capitalize on them with a quickness is rare, and a large part of what makes her a transcendent talent.