Caitlin Clark's College Teammates Had Much Different Reactions To Playing With Her Than WNBA Players

Caitlin Clark’s WNBA teammates, and opponents, have made it clear that playing alongside her comes with problems.

Indiana Fever star guard Kelsey Mitchell said on Saturday that Clark’s teammates get a lot of flak for playing alongside her.

“Showing up every day to compete for fans that may or may not like you is hard. I don’t think people understand that,” Mitchell said Saturday at the team’s end-of-season press conference.

“I think having to show up for people that don’t look at you and have, you know, the star eyes when they see me. But playing with CC and having the eyes that she got, we get a lot of flak just for being on her team. So I think that comes with a lot too, and I think that people gotta give us grace. I think that this organization is unbelievable, man, but I think that when it comes to really trying to be yourself, it hasn’t always been easy. That’s all I’ll say.”

Clark’s former teammate, Brianna Turner, has said that the Fever’s fan base is different than the others.

“This is an unequivocally false statement,” Turner said, in response to Fever GM Amber Cox saying attacks on the Fever’s fan base are unfair. “Players inside and outside the organization have repeatedly issued complaints with the Fever fanbase. While it’s not all Indy fans, it’s certainly a trend. To say the attacks have ‘no basis in reality’ is disingenuous.”

Interestingly, when Clark was in college at the University of Iowa, you didn’t hear these kind of things being said about her teammates.

Clark’s teammates, like Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall and others, made it clear that playing with her was a great privilege. They didn’t seem to mind the attention, either.

“She was in the gym constantly, and the way she approached everything was with a sort of excellence. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to go through the motions.’ It was like, ‘No, I’m here to kick your butt in every single drill, every single practice,'” Martin said.

“If you’re across from me, you’re my enemy, you know? And I think that’s just kind of how you have to approach things to get better. She had that next-level mindset, and it really just raised us all up with her.”

It’s certainly interesting that things have changed in such a drastic way, at least in terms of the public perception, to what it’s like playing with and against Clark in the WNBA.