Caitlin Clark had even joked about it in June, after picking up her fifth technical against Phoenix. If clapping could get her into trouble, she said, perhaps the team should just start picking which game she would miss. Stephanie White later joked that if Clark wanted to be strategic about the suspension, she could “let ’er fly.”
Watch What’s Trending Now!
The joke started looking less funny as the technicals kept piling up. On July 18, she picked up her sixth after protesting a no-call involving a hard screen from Jonquel Jones. Then on July 22, she got her seventh after a confrontation with Connecticut’s Saniya Rivers. And suddenly the number wasn’t abstract anymore. One more technical. One game. And this time, there would be no choosing when to serve it. It would have been Tuesday against the New York Liberty, to be specific, with the Fever facing one of the more consequential games of their remaining schedule. But then the WNBA stepped in.
Indiana reporter Scott Agness posted on X about the foul being rescinded, focusing specifically on the time it took the league to respond. “2hrs and 20mins after it happened has to be a record.”
Saturday against the Chicago Sky was when that countdown finally seemed to catch up with her. With 1:06 left in the third quarter, Clark drove along the baseline when Natasha Cloud made contact with her underneath the basket. Clark appeared to lose control of the ball, was sent toward the baseline and stumbled into a nearby official. Cloud was not called for a foul on the play, but Clark was assessed a technical for making contact with the official. There it was. Eight technicals.
Clark immediately reacted with confusion, raising her hands and appearing to ask, “For what?” The Fever also moved quickly to appeal the call, with a team spokesperson later telling The Athletic that the appeal was made almost immediately. The stakes were straightforward: if the technical stood, the eighth regular-season technical would trigger an automatic one-game suspension under WNBA rules. But now, with the technical rescinded, Agness followed it up with another post, this time taking a sarcastic jab at the league’s “efficiency.”
“News: WNBA has rescinded the technical foul on Caitlin Clark, which would’ve been her eighth of the season — and an automatic one-game suspension, keeping her out of Fever-Liberty on Tuesday. That was fast. Kudos to the league for handling it so quickly.”
For Clark, though, there was a much simpler version of what had happened.
“She said I ran into her,” Clark said of the referee in the post-game press conference. “I have already watched it on the tape. So, we’ll let the league decide. But it wasn’t anything intentional or anything. So, I hope it gets rescinded. And nothing was said.”
By the time she spoke after the game, Clark had already watched the replay, and her interpretation of the sequence was clear: whatever the contact looked like to the official in real time, she did not believe she had deliberately sought out the referee.
There was no love lost between Indiana coach Stephanie White and the officials, and she certainly did not mince any words about the incident during the game or even afterwards in the press conference, as she herself got a technical for protesting the call live in-game.
White said officials told her that Clark had “intentionally sought out the official and threw the forearm.” To White, the contact looked very different.
“She intentionally seeked out the official,” White said ironically while smirking during the post-game press conference. “That’s what I was told. My tech was for saying that’s b*******. Even though I heard the F-bomb the whole f****** game. That’s a bad call… Officials have to have some awareness in those moments, and it didn’t happen.”
White had already been involved in the technical-foul conversation surrounding Clark for weeks, but this time she was on the receiving end of a technical herself after objecting to the call. That made the sequence particularly charged: Clark was suddenly at the suspension threshold, while her coach was being penalized for arguing that the contact was incidental.
The foul, if not reviewed, would have kept Clark out of the crucial game against the New York Liberty. Instead, the rescission left Clark eligible for Tuesday’s matchup, with the eighth technical removed from her season total. Under WNBA rules, a player or coach is automatically suspended for one game upon receiving an eighth regular-season technical; additional technicals can bring a $1,500 fine and further suspensions.
It would have been a big blow for the Fever considering the form Clark is in at the moment, as she dropped 26 points and 11 assists against the Sky. This was the eighth time Clark has scored at least 25 points, 10 assists and five 3-pointers in her career. This feat has been accomplished just four other times in WNBA history, as per the Associated Press.
It was a historic night for the other half of Fever’s backcourt, as Kelsey Mitchell scored 27 points to set a WNBA single-season record with her 16th straight game of 20-plus points.
That combination mattered beyond the technical-foul drama. Clark and Mitchell accounted for 53 of Indiana’s 90 points, with the backcourt producing the kind of offensive night the Fever will need as the regular season moves toward its final stretch.
Indiana’s top two scorers are hitting their peak form at the right time, as with just 12 games remaining in the regular season, there is no room for slip-ups. This win against the Sky takes the Fever to fourth in the standings, at 20-12. And Clark, after spending weeks counting down to the technical that could force her to sit, will now be available when Indiana hosts New York on Tuesday.