For anyone following basketball over the last year, the name Caitlin Clark is among the most recognizable across the sport.

Since staking her claim as one of the greatest women’s college basketball players of all time as part of the Iowa Hawkeyes, Clark was selected by the Indiana Fever as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft. Since joining the roster, she’s not only performed as one of the league’s best rookies but an All-Star level player.

It’s not often NBA and WNBA teams draw comparisons between each other, but when a talent like Clark emerges, those comparisons have started to come through more often.

During Indiana’s win over the Dallas Wings, commentator and Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman compared it and Clark to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

“I believe they’re going to win a championship somewhere in the near future,” Lieberman said. “They’re young, they’re the second-youngest team in the WNBA. They remind me a little bit of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are the second-youngest team in the NBA.”

Although the Thunder don’t currently have a rookie reaching that status, the comparison does make some sense. Both are two of the youngest teams in their individual leagues, both have found success over the last year. Oklahoma City jumped from the Play-In Tournament to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, while the Fever have jumped to the No. 6 seed in the league after a 1-8 start.

The catalysts to Oklahoma City’s massive shift were the trio of MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, ROTY contender Chet Holmgren and the ever-improving Jalen Williams. Ironically, Indiana’s All-Star duo of Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell paired with Clark make for a similar enough trio.

It’s a bit of a stretch to compare both the Thunder and Fever at the same level for the current season considering their difference in seeding, but claiming they could both win a championship in the next few years is not out of the question. Each team has a young roster, high potential and a franchise cornerstone good enough to lead them to the mountaintop, it just make take them different lengths to get there.

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On a recent episode of the Come And Talk 2 Me podcast, former Indiana Pacers guards Reggie Miller and Mark Jackson discussed some of their experiences together with the Pacers franchise.

Jackson and Miller shared a backcourt in Indianapolis from 1995-2000. They teamed up on some of the best Pacers teams ever — they were one game from the NBA Finals in 1998 and made it in 2000.

Their coach in the 1998-2000 seasons was Larry Bird, the legendary player who turned into a coach, then an executive. Bird won coach of the year in 1998 and was largely successful guiding the Pacers with his unique style.

Miller and Jackson recalled a game in which the two had a memorable interaction with Bird. “We were in the layup line, and Reg and I, as captains of the team, we had to go back and talk to Larry Bird before the game,” Jackson began. He couldn’t remember what they needed to bother the coach about, but the two jogged off the court and into the back of the arena.

From there, Miller took over the story. “Jack and I, we go back to the locker room and we’re like, ‘where’s coach Bird?’. The pair was told that their coach was in his office, so they went to check and he wasn’t there. Slick Leonard, a former coach for the Pacers who was a broadcaster at the time, suggested to the players that Bird might be in the area where the showers are.

“We head back to the shower because we had to ask him this question,” Miller continued. “Before we got out there, go around the corner. Larry Legend is sitting in a chair, he’s got a pack of Newports. He’s just smoking away.”

“What do you guys need?” Bird said, per Miller’s recollection.

The two former players never explained where the story went from there, only saying that the sight affected their play that night in the game. Neither Jackson or Miller ever brought it up to Bird. The entire podcast episode can be found here, with this story coming late in the episode.

GARY, Ind. (WISH) — An Indiana Silver Alert was issued Thursday night for a 13-year-old missing from Gary since Aug. 11.

Ja’Niyah McMichael was believed to be in extreme danger and may require medical aid.

The Gary Police Department described the girl as 4 feet , 3 inches tall and 101 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen at 11 p.m. Aug. 11 while wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt; black pajamas; and black and red shoes.

Gary police had first issued an alert about the girl on Facebook on Aug. 16. In that post, she’d been described as a “missing person/runway juvenile” who’d last been seen in the 1900 block of Malcomb X Drive in Gary. Police had believed she could be in East Chicago, Indiana.

Anyone with information was asked to contact the Gary Police Department at 219-881-1201 or 911.