Caitlin Clark sets WNBA single-season assists record

The records keep on coming for Indiana Fever rookie guard Caitlin Clark.

Having already broken the record for most assists in a single game and assists by a rookie in their debut season, Clark set the WNBA single-season assists record Friday against the Las Vegas Aces.

Clark needed four assists to tie the prior record (316), which Connecticut Sun forward Alyssa Thomas set last season. Clark broke the record in the second quarter when she found Kelsey Mitchell, who drained a 3 pointer. Clark finished with nine assists as the Fever lost 78-74 to the Aces, bringing her total to 321 on the season.

That another single-season record fell on Friday night was fitting. On Wednesday night, when the Fever and Aces matched up for the first time this week, Las Vegas star A’ja Wilson set a new single-season points mark. Countless other WNBA records have been reset over the last two seasons since the regular season expanded to 40 games.

“You’re just going to continue to see records be taken down, but also I think really good basketball, and that’s why it’s been so fun to watch,” Clark said postgame when asked about the records broken in the WNBA this season.

When the WNBA began in 1997, the season was 28 games long. The next year it was 30 games, then the year after that, 32, which lasted through 2002. The regular season had 34 games from 2003 to 2019. Courtney Vandersloot tallied 300 assists in 2019 and had a record of 258 in 2018, but before those two standout seasons, a player hadn’t recorded more than 250 assists since 2000. Ticha Penicheiro, who had the prior single-season rookie assist record, recorded 236 assists in 2000.

Clark has set countless other records this season. She recorded the first triple-double for a rookie in WNBA history in early July against the New York Liberty. In late August, she set the rookie 3-point single-season record against the Atlanta Dream. Clark became the first rookie in WNBA history to record 400 points, 100 rebounds and 150 assists in a season, and she has recorded the most 15-point 5-assist games in a season.

She could make more history, too, including the rookie scoring record for points in a season, a mark set by Seimone Augustus in 2006 when she scored 744 points — albeit in 34 games.

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As notable as any individual statistics, Indiana entered Friday night’s contest having won eight of its last 11 games, with the best offensive rating of any team in the league since the All-Star break. After a 2-9 start, the Fever have also climbed to the No. 6 seed in the playoffs. They have already clinched a playoff berth — their first since 2016 — and could finish with their first winning season since 2015, when they made the WNBA Finals.

“It’s definitely a big moment for this place, but at the same time, I came in with the expectation this was going to happen,” Clark said of guiding Indiana back to the postseason. “For me, this isn’t a party. It’s great, I feel like it’s a great accomplishment, but there’s much more left to be done.”

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(Photo: Justin Casterline / NBAE via Getty Images)