INDIANAPOLIS — It seemed like every time new Indiana Fever general manager Amber Cox checked her phone this offseason, she’d find franchise superstar Caitlin Clark on another bucket-list adventure, living the life of the A-list celebrity she’d become. An Eras Tour concert in the VIP tent in November. A Kansas City Chiefs game in Taylor Swift’s suite in January. NFL annual league meetings alongside Serena Williams in March. The Masters in April.
But what impressed Cox the most was what came next.
Regardless of where Clark was or what event she was attending, she was almost always back in the gym at Gainbridge Fieldhouse by 8 a.m. the next day.
“I kind of marveled at it,” Cox told ESPN.
Sarah Kessler, the Fever’s head athletic performance coach, also noticed. “I’d be like, you can sleep in if you want,” she told Clark. “I’ll still be here.”
When Fever president Kelly Krauskopf was surprised Clark was back so soon from a trip, Clark’s response was simple: “I couldn’t miss a workout,” she told Krauskopf.
This winter, while most of her peers played overseas or in the new domestic 3-on-3 league Unrivaled, Clark didn’t play competitive basketball. Other than her occasional star moments that popped up on TV or social media, she mostly stayed out of the spotlight. It was her first real break since summer 2023, before her senior year at Iowa.
But she didn’t step away from basketball entirely. Day after day, in Indianapolis or wherever else her not-so-normal life took her, she honed her game on the court and in the weight room — championing her routine above all.
“That’s where I’m going to find my confidence coming into this next season,” she told ESPN, “is just knowing I’ve been consistent, and whether it’s been the weight room, whether it’s been my skill development, my shooting.”
As a rookie, Clark finished fourth in MVP voting and catapulted Indiana back to the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Now she enters the 2025 campaign rested and recharged, stronger than ever, and looking to benefit from a full offseason in which she worked on the nuances of her game.
“She’s far beyond her years in terms of her understanding of how to work,” Fever coach Stephanie White told ESPN. “Oftentimes you see rookies, even the great ones, where it usually takes three years for them to figure it out. She’s got it figured out.”
Added Krauskopf, who previously led the Fever from 2000 to 2018: “I didn’t think I’d find anyone that’d worked as hard as Tamika Catchings did in the offseason. Caitlin Clark is every bit as much and more.”
The idea of her leveling up in Year 2, with a much-improved roster aspiring to win the organization’s first championship since 2012? That’s nothing short of terrifying for the league as Clark — ESPN BET’s MVP favorite for 2025 — and the Fever open their season Saturday, hosting the Chicago Sky (ABC, 3 p.m. ET).
“[This year] there is this different aura about it,” teammate Lexie Hull told ESPN, “that she’s here and she’s ready to take care of business.”
TWENTY-SIX DAYS separated Clark’s final game at Iowa and her first WNBA preseason contest. She then launched her pro career with 11 games in 20 days, almost all against top-echelon teams. She reflected recently on how the magnitude of it all had finally struck her: There was a lot coming at her — and coming at her fast — as she transitioned to the W and to soaring worldwide fame.
Clark is “pretty good at the whirlwind,” as Iowa coach Jan Jensen put it, go-go-going and not thinking much at all about any of it until a respite finally comes. Once the Fever season concluded — White’s Connecticut Sun swept Indiana in the first round — Clark could finally slow down and assess everything that had happened the past couple of years because, as Jensen said, “Man, that was a lot.”
As Clark planned her offseason, she prioritized her work on the court and in the weight room. While Clark would take short trips for off-court obligations and opportunities, she found comfort in routine — “I’m completely fine with doing the same thing every single day,” she said. “That almost is soothing to me.” Staying in Indianapolis presented a “huge advantage,” White said, as Clark prepared for her sophomore season.
Of course, because she’s still Caitlin Clark, life isn’t like those of many other 23-year-olds — or professional athletes, for that matter. She played golf with world No. 1 Nelly Korda and legend Annika Sorenstam at The Annika pro-am in November; was prominently featured in Nike’s first Super Bowl ad in 27 years; appeared on David Letterman’s Netflix show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction”; and spoke at the NFL league meetings with Williams and Eli Manning.
But for Clark, few offseason endeavors could beat going to the Masters with her family, where she enjoyed the absence of phones around the green, the Georgia peach ice cream sandwich and one of the most thrilling finishes the event has ever seen.
“Sitting on the 18th green Sunday at the Masters is one of the coolest things ever,” Clark said.
0:49
Caitlin Clark’s busy offseason, from visiting Taylor Swift to Nelly Korda
Check out how Caitlin Clark has traveled the country on a variety of side quests during her first WNBA offseason.
As a Swiftie and longtime Chiefs fan, Clark also reveled in attending an NFL playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium with Swift. Between meeting Swift, seeing star tight end Travis Kelce score a touchdown and enjoying a Chiefs win, it was the “perfect game,” Clark said.
“When I saw her sitting as a guest in the Taylor Swift-Kelce box,” Jensen said, “I was like, ‘What world, man? This is so awesome.'”
“I think what people don’t always realize about people with a certain spotlight, whether it’s her, whether it’s me, whether it’s another professional athlete or a pop star, we’re real people,” Clark said of Swift. “We’re just having normal conversations as any other person in Arrowhead Stadium that night. She loves the Chiefs just as much as I do. I’m talking football with her. She loved it, and just like her passion, and honestly, probably one of the sweetest people I’ve ever been around. And everybody says that when you meet her, but it’s really true. She just treats everybody with the same amount of kindness, and her family was great.”
Cox, also a die-hard Chiefs fan, said Clark was humble about the entire experience: “I’m like, ‘OK, well, how was the suite with Taylor?’ She’s like, ‘It was really cool, she was really cool.’ And then she’s just off to her workout. And you’re just like, ‘Tell me more!’ I love that about her.”
0:56
Caitlin Clark: ‘The vibes are really good’ with the new coach and teammates
Caitlin Clark says it has been a learning process with her new coach and teammates, but she highlights the team’s strong physicality and pace heading into the season.
For most of the offseason, away from all the eyeballs and cameras, Clark finally took a beat — getting some time off “the constant treadmill she had been on,” as former Iowa coach Lisa Bluder put it. “I think [the break] was great for her body, her mind, her soul, probably,” White added.
“It was nice to get away from everything and just kind of be able to live my life as a normal person … to just be Caitlin,” Clark said. “Don’t get me wrong, I love basketball and having the spotlight and playing with my teammates … but eventually getting away from that was really healthy for me.”
Just being Caitlin entailed cooking and baking; spending time outside and with family; and a couple of trips back to Iowa City, including for her jersey retirement. There were dinner parties and game nights with Hull and their significant others, when they’d play Gang of Four, Settlers of Catan, Monopoly Deal or card games — and things would turn competitive.
“You see her and her boyfriend going at it, her and I going at it,” Hull said. “I don’t know if she and her boyfriend talk on the ride home because it gets so competitive, but it’s fun.”
Being away from organized basketball was an adjustment after Clark had played nonstop for the past year. But she was never far from it. When Hull, who spent much of the offseason with Clark in Indianapolis, left for Unrivaled, Clark texted her “every day asking everything about it,” Hull said. Unrivaled made appeals to get Clark to join its inaugural season in Miami, and though she declined, Clark left the door open for future participation.
“You watch people playing in a league that you’re not playing in, and you’ve been itching to play for months on end, there’s like, ‘Oh, that looks so fun,'” Hull said. “For her this year, it was really important to just sit back and watch. … I think it was the best thing for her.”
IN EARLY MARCH, an unexpected talking point came up during the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament in Indianapolis: Caitlin Clark’s arms.
A photo from the event of Clark cheering from the sideline for her Iowa Hawkeyes, arms flexed, went viral. Fans took notice of her clearly improved strength.
“There’s been much ado about her guns,” said Cox, who is also Indiana’s chief operating officer.
“She was obviously very proud of it,” Kessler said of the photo. “We did have a chuckle about it, though, because it garnered more attention than we realized it would.”
Well someone’s been in the weight room 👀😮💨 @CaitlinClark22 pic.twitter.com/yBU8p7tp31
— Bri Lewerke (@brilewerke) March 8, 2025
The photo was a peek into what Clark had been up to in the offseason behind closed doors, where she and the “army” of people around her, as Clark put it, had been hard at work in her first extended opportunity to fine-tune her game and body as a pro.
“I don’t know the last time I’ve had an athlete in the W, or even on the men’s side, really, where you have a consistent four- to five-month period where you get to just work together,” Kessler said.
Added Jensen: “She didn’t know what she didn’t know until she knew it. And [then] it was like, ‘OK, now I’m going to dial in here, I’m going to fine-tune this, I need to increase that.’ That’s what’s been fun about her always, is she really loves the challenge.”
Clark’s biggest offseason focus was to hit the weight room. The physicality of the WNBA was a considerable adjustment for her last year, and she has said she thought it was opponents’ go-to method of slowing her down. Building strength is difficult to do during the season, but in October, Clark approached Kessler about adding muscle mass.
“I’ve had athletes who have said that, and then maybe when the work component shows up to actually achieve those goals, that’s where there’s maybe a disconnect,” Kessler told ESPN. “But with Caitlin, she set those goals and from the jump, I was seeing her in the weight room four to five times a week.”
0:24
Caitlin Clark ‘overwhelmed’ following Iowa jersey retirement
Caitlin Clark thanks her teammates after the Iowa Hawkeyes retire her No. 22 jersey.
Kessler focuses on a lot of single-leg work to build explosiveness with guards, and Clark was no exception. Kessler incorporated isometrics to help Clark improve her time under tension and keep a low center of gravity. She tends to play upright, White said, which makes it easier to get knocked off balance.
Single-arm exercises — Clark acknowledged her left arm previously was a bit too weak to throw certain passes — helped ensure each limb was strong individually. To provide an additional boost of energy to her muscles, Clark added the supplement creatine to her routine.
If Clark went on the road, Kessler gave her lifts to do — and if she needed to stay an extra day, Kessler would wake up to a text from Clark asking for another assignment. The two met monthly to assess whether the data showed Clark was on track to hit her goals.
Clark paired work with Kessler with her on-court training, where she worked with player development coach Keith Porter five to six days per week after he moved to Indianapolis in January. Porter and Kessler also spoke daily to ensure Clark’s on-court and weight room work aligned.
Porter’s aim, he told ESPN, was to complement Clark’s game. They homed in on different footwork to get to her shots, while also adding floaters to her repertoire, building out her midrange game and working on more creative finishes around the rim.
But it was a collaborative process: One of the first questions Clark asked White after she was hired was if she could see the scouting report the Sun compiled against her last season. Soon after White and Porter arrived in Indiana, they sat in the film room with Clark, breaking down areas for improvement and showing her analytics that crystallized what she already felt: When she goes right, for example, she tends to finish at the rim more than when she drives left, or when she likes to pass or step back and shoot.
“It’s just subtleties. It’s nuance,” White said. “Just little different things that we wanted to not change, but tweak, add to, emphasize that can help her be just a little bit more efficient and just a little bit more difficult to guard.”
Early in their training together, Porter tagged along as Clark took an extended trip out west — “I was gone for a week,” she said, “and I’m like, I can’t do a week of nothing, I literally would have a panic attack. I would hate that.” They’d get in the gym before or in between Clark’s off-court obligations. When she attended Nike’s annual meetings for a couple of days, the pair worked out in the LeBron James Innovation Center.
“It’s amazing how she could balance doing events, going to work out, having meetings at Nike, then going back to work out,” Porter said. “I’m just like, ‘You’re 23. I know you’re young, but you shouldn’t have this much energy. She just keeps going and going and going.'”
The end result is a player who operates with much more power on the court, Kessler said, and should be much more comfortable and confident with whatever defensive coverage she faces this season, Porter added.
Clark is thankful for both of them.
“They were very accessible to me. They’re in here with me at 8 a.m. helping me get ready for moments like these,” Clark said. “You hope it shows on the court, and I think it certainly will.”
Added Jensen: “She’s always understood what happens in the dark. And I think sometimes people forget that about everybody that’s great. You just don’t wake up and become a generational talent.”
1:50
Caitlin Clark on her 36-foot 3: “I’m always further back than I actually think”
Caitlin Clark tells Holly Rowe how special it is to play a preseason game at Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena with her Fever teammates and discusses her 36-foot 3-pointer.
WHEN CLARK LAUNCHED a 36-foot 3-pointer at Carver-Hawkeye Arena last week, it was almost as if no time had passed since she hit a basket from nearly the same spot as a senior to set the Division I women’s basketball career scoring record in 2024.
The Fever had traveled to Iowa City for a May 4 preseason exhibition, a chance for Clark to play again in front of Hawkeye faithful. Jensen, Bluder and a few of Clark’s former Iowa teammates watched courtside, her family sitting in the stands. Her mom, Anne, brought homemade sweets to leave in the locker room.
As Clark drilled that shot and provided Hawkeye fans with yet another quintessential Caitlin Clark memory — even some on the Fever bench looked like they couldn’t believe what they just saw — Jensen saw the little kid to whom she’d first offered a scholarship in the seventh grade. The kid who to this day plays basketball with a mixture of fun, risk and joy that has captivated fans worldwide.
But the lightness that comes more easily in the preseason will soon slip away. The spotlight will blare bright once more as Clark faces arguably her highest stakes yet as a pro. When asked at media day how she would define success this summer, Clark responded matter-of-factly: “a championship.”
1:14
Before They Were Next SC: Caitlin Clark’s rise to stardom
Check out Caitlin Clark’s rise to stardom from her early days in Iowa to become the 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year.
That wasn’t in the conversation for her as a rookie, joining a team featuring the longest playoff drought in the W. But looking to change those fortunes, the Fever front office turned heads by acquiring DeWanna Bonner, Natasha Howard and Sophie Cunningham in the offseason.
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Krauskopf said Clark helped the front office recruit free agents in the winter by reaching out with a text or call, and provided input on players Indiana was interested in. Being based in Indianapolis this offseason gave Clark a front-row seat to the franchise’s growth, and Cox and Krauskopf said Clark constantly asks questions about how the organization operates and what goes into running it.
“I never like to really compare at all, because each player is their own player and Diana Taurasi is the GOAT,” said Cox, who previously was a longtime executive with the Phoenix Mercury. “The level of investment that [Taurasi] had in the Mercury, [Clark’s interest in the Fever] reminds me of that.”
That mutual commitment is what Clark and the Fever hope will lead to a championship in the near future. A title remains elusive for Clark after she came up short in two national championship game appearances at Iowa.
“When you’ve accomplished everything that you can accomplish individually, but you don’t have a championship, that’s what it’s about,” said White, who led the Boilermakers to the NCAA title in 1999. “No offense, but we won Big Ten titles at Purdue; she won Big Ten titles at Iowa. It’s the national championship, right? It’s the WNBA championship.”
No matter how sizable her sophomore jump could be, the WNBA is too good for a player to single-handedly lead a team to a title. Clark knows that, and it’s why the Fever assembled the team they did. And it’s why both player and franchise are hoping Clark’s work this offseason is a difference-maker not just throughout the summer but deep into the playoffs in September and October.
“Caitlin wants to win, so she’s going to do whatever it takes to win,” Jensen said. “If that means dish a lot more assists, if that means pull-up middies, she’s worked on it all. And she’ll do whatever it takes for them to get to the top of the ladder.”
ESPN’s Michael Voepel contributed to this report.
