Former No. 1 pick: Caitlin Clark's rough WNBA welcome may last

Only six games into her pro career, Caitlin Clark has already been on the receiving end of several "welcome to the WNBA" moments. However, according to former No. 1 overall pick and Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum, the NCAA's all-time leading scorer better buckle up. 

Plum stressed that any rookie with expectations as high as Clark's can expect a hard foul or two, sharing that she dealt with the same treatment for "at least three years." 

“I got picked up full court, trapped — basically I was in a UFC fight every night," Plum told Callie Lawson-Freeman of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  "Ask anyone that has hype coming into the league; this is no different.”

Plum admitted that Clark is in a "different spot" than most entering the league. But she doesn't believe players are targeting the ex-Iowa star in a hostile way. 

Clark faces enormous expectations, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that her every move on the floor is exhaustedly analyzed and scrutinized. However, that can be a blessing and a curse, especially because many of the loudest opinions on her are coming from a group tuning into the WNBA for the first time. 

“I don’t think (new fans and critics) fully had a grasp on the league, how good it is, how physical it is, how different it is in college, how differently officiated it is,” Plum said. “Also, just being real, everyone’s competitive. It’s a big game, there’s a lot of eyes on it. No one’s gonna give anyone anything ever.”

It's a given that Clark's arrival has drawn more attention to the WNBA product. Meanwhile, she also carries the weight of women's sports, which are entering a critical era as they receive more and more mainstream attention.

But it's easy to conclude that under different circumstances, another player wouldn't be receiving cries of "foul" from throngs of supporters. Instead, the focus would probably be on something else entirely, like her recent expletive-filled outburst that led to a technical foul late in a Fever loss against the Connecticut Sun.