It takes quite a bit to see Breanna Stewart lose her cool during a game. But during a showdown against Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, she reached a breaking point. Video clips from the game showed a highly passionate and visibly frustrated Stewart on the bench engaged in a heated, animated discussion with head coach Chris DeMarco and player development director Andrew Wade. During an appearance on a podcast this week, the player further addressed the viral outburst.
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As a player, you have these moments where you get mad and you just can’t like hold it in anymore,” Stewart said on the Game Recognize Game w/Stewie & Myles podcast. “And I basically got to that moment. We were down 12 halfway through the third, and I was like, ‘Well, what the are we doing?’ We’re just messing.
“Indiana is obviously a good and very talented team but like we weren’t putting ourselves in the best positions to to be successful. And that’s what was most frustrating to me. We talk about the things that we want to do. We need to know where we want to get the ball. We want to know the matchups that we want to pick on. And there was a level of emphasis and focus that wasn’t happening. So really wanted to get everybody to lock back into that was most important.”
Some fans seem to think that the outburst was not particularly noteworthy, even though it appeared to yield the desired result and was widely portrayed as a positive display of leadership and passion, others have viewed the reaction to it as a double standard. In fact, a number of fans have pointed out that Caitlin Clark has displayed similar visible frustration during games. But in her case, she received heavy criticism for it, rather than praise for being passionate and competitive.
Caitlin Clark Admits Costly Mistakes After Foul Trouble Helps Liberty Make Complete Comeback
Out of the 30 points Breanna Stewart scored, 18 came from the free-throw line. She shot 18-for-21 after drawing nine fouls throughout the game. To put Stewart’s night into perspective, those 21 free-throw attempts made her just the seventh player in WNBA history to attempt 20+ free throws in a single game. And she wasn’t the only one benefiting from trips to the charity stripe. The Fever surrendered a total of 40 free-throw attempts in the contest, with the Liberty converting 33 of them.
That pointed to the high rate of foul calls that the Indiana Fever conceded in that game. And to a large extent, it helped them hand their 12-point lead over to the Liberty. And of course, Caitlin Clark, who has been dealing with foul trouble lately, got caught up in the foul issues as well. She got five personal fouls in total.
Speaking in the postgame press conference, Clark owned up to her mistakes.
“Sometimes, I’m doing my best, keeping my hands out,” she said. “But there were a couple (of fouls) that were just dumb tonight, and that’s on me. I can’t do those.”
It appears there was at least some improvement in the Fever’s next game against the Washington Mystics, which they won 78-76. Clark finished that contest with three personal fouls, a noticeable reduction from the five she picked up against the Liberty.
