Iowa Legend Caitlin Clark’s Durability Questioned After Mounting Injuries

Iowa Hawkeye legend Caitlin Clark is still nursing a groin injury that prevented her from competing for the WNBA’s Commissioner's Cup. While the Indiana Fever beat the Minnesota Lynx without their superstar, Clark’s one-week absence has brought her total missed games this season up to eight, half of the Fever's season.

Sports analyst and former NFL player Emmanuel Acho said on his show, The Facility, that he’s now concerned about Clark’s ability to endure a WNBA season going forward.

"She's had two injuries now, both are soft tissue injuries; she didn't turn on somebody's ankle, she didn't get elbowed into a rib," Acho said. "They're soft tissue injuries. I am now becoming worried about Caitlin Clark being able to sustain the pro rigors of the game."

While his comments did come under fire from fans, Acho did acknowledge that Clark only missed one game in roughly 100 starts in high school and zero games at Iowa across 139 games. Last year, she played in all 42 games for the Fever, including the postseason. Because of the league structure, she went from a 39-game season for the Hawkeyes that ended as late as possible in the NCAA national championship straight to the Fever, effectively playing 81 games in a row.

Will Blackmon, Acho’s guest during the conversation and another fellow former NFL player, was less alarmed, suggesting that Clark just has to continue to adjust as a professional. He noted he similarly played without injury through college before sustaining his first significant injury early in his NFL career.

Acho rebutted that athletes aren’t injury-prone until they are, suggesting that Clark could be heading down a road that leads to more missed games in the future.

“Sure, she’s not injury-prone,” Acho said. “But how can you say, and do you have to start to say now at this junction in time, she might actually be becoming injury-prone?”

This most recent offseason was Clark’s first normal offseason as a professional. It’s certainly possible that Clark’s offseason training was more intense than needed, putting her body in a position to be more susceptible to soft-tissue injuries. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t adjust her offseason approach in the future.

Clark’s popularity will always draw further analysis than what may actually be relevant. Injuries happen in basketball, especially soft tissue injuries. Clark is still a young player in the WNBA, but there’s little reason to believe she won’t make the necessary adjustments to her training regimen to keep them from becoming a career-defining issue.