Caitlin Clark and Michael Jordan have had one too many parallels not to drop comparisons. The Nike signature shoe deals. Their impact on league viewership. Dominant rookie seasons that brought their teams into the spotlight. Not to forget, former Iowa HC Lisa Bluder also revealed that Clark, much like the NBA legend, needed to be taught to trust her teammates. The paths have been eerily similar for Fever faithful not to seek some hope in history. But one notable moment has eluded the Indiana sensation.

The popular narrative in Clark-Jordan parallels this season has been the injuries they incurred. In the third game of his sophomore season, the Bulls icon landed flatfooted to fracture the navicular bone in his left foot. It would force him to miss 64 games, meaning only 18 in the ‘games played’ column. 40 years later, Clark would incur 4 soft tissue injuries that limited her to only 13 of the Fever’s 44 games. There’s an exciting foreshadowing to this situation if we believe history repeats itself.

“The next year, fully healthy, I think, he returned and was second in the MVP voting. He averaged more than 30 points per game, and obviously, the rest is history,” Ben Pickman laid out on the latest episode of No Offseason: The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show. Indeed. The 6x champion had returned to put up an average of 37.1 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.6 assists, leading the league in scoring. With the way things have played out, there’s little reason not to bank on that.

Any fears about Clark’s groin injury lingering for long were cleared when Indiana Fever COO, Amber Cox, revealed, “ultimately, time is not our side.” Meaning, had there been a few more games on Indiana’s schedule, we would have seen Clark suit up. So the team is confident that their star player will be in her best form for the 2026 season. However, the only part missing in this story is that Jordan wasn’t ruled out for the rest of the season, making a comeback during the playoffs. And that was one to remember.

On April 20, 1986, Bulls’ No.23 put up a 63-point performance– the highest points scored by a player in a single NBA Playoffs game. So Pickman’s co-host, Sabrina Merchant, couldn’t help but bring up the iconic moment during their conversation on the podcast. “I mean, Michael Jordan came back and set the NBA post-season, single game scoring record in his sophomore year with 63 points, so that’s something Caitlin Clark’s not going to be doing if we are going to be making that comparison,” she added. No arguments there.

The performance had Larry Bird admitting, “God disguised as Michael Jordan,” eventually making the season one of the big ‘what ifs’ of the league. Now Clark may not have had the same scorecard, but she did leave the audience in awe back in June. Against the New York Liberty, she dropped career-high 7 threes for 32 points, and the best part? Three were from beyond 30 feet and the rest from at least 26 feet. Regardless, all that matters for Indiana right now is that Clark is getting back in rhythm and the management is ensuring she returns to full health.

Just a few hours after Caitlin Clark broke the news of her not joining the team, the Indiana Fever GM Amber Cox took to social media to pen a few words. “Caitlin has worked so hard throughout this time, doing everything possible to recover and return to the court, but ultimately, time is not on our side,” Cox said.

“While we will continue working with Caitlin and provide her with every resource we have available, there is not enough time left in our season for her to safely return, and her long-term health and well-being remains our top priority. We are looking forward to having her back at full strength to start the 2026 season,” she added.

Before being ruled out for the season, the 23-year-old had returned to individual practice and shoot around. She also went through warmups and some non-contact drills, as recent as late August. The only reason she wasn’t included on the roster was Stephanie White awaited her to handle contact 94 feet. Now Clark has eight months before she returns to the court, and opportunities to play in competitive leagues like Unrivaled to not lose touch. Maybe when she returns, we might even see the Clark-Jordan parallels still on.