A fiery halftime message, a 19-0 run, and Caitlin Clark at the center of it all. How the Fever flipped the script on the league’s last unbeaten team! So, the spell has been broken. No team in the WNBA is undefeated anymore. 20% of the season is already behind us, and up until this week, two teams – New York Liberty & Minnesota Lynx- were just floating above the rest like they had cheat codes. But that’s not the case anymore. After Storm took down Lynx on Wednesday, the reigning champs tripped up on their way out of Indy.

And of course, it had to be the one game where Clark finally made her way back onto the court. We missed Clark hoops for the past three weeks, and she reminded us exactly why. Late in the first quarter, she casually took an outlet pass from Sydney Colson and walked into a 33-foot heave that dropped straight through. No rim, no doubt. She turned and screamed as the crowd went wild.

Now you probably didn’t even have time to sit back down before she buried two more. One from 27 feet, another from 31. Just a ridiculous stretch of shooting that flipped the game on its head. It was one of the most electric stretches of Caitlin’s pro career so far. She finished with 32 points, eight rebounds, and nine assists. Oh, and she tied everything with seven 3-pointers. Three of those were from at least 30 feet, and the total distance on her seven triples was a jaw-dropping 199 feet.

Basically, her return had all the classic CC ingredients – deep daggers, impossible passes, and even her first technical foul of the season. But when she was asked what really stuck with her after the game, Caitlin didn’t talk about the points or the crowd. She talked about a moment that happened in the locker room. “Our coaches told us at the start when we’re in the locker room at halftime like we already use too many timeouts. We don’t really have timeouts to use so don’t let them go on a run and then we let them go on a run,” she shared during the postgame conference. “We knew like Steph [coach Stephanie White] wasn’t calling one there, we had to figure out how to play through it and go on a run of our own.” 

The Fever had already burned through three of their five allowed timeouts by halftime. So when New York came out firing with a 9-0 run to open the third, the Fever had to figure it out with no coaching cushion. Well, they didn’t just figure it out, they answered with a 19-0 run of their own and closed the third quarter up 80-71. From that point on, they never looked back. They shut the door on the Liberty and walked out with a huge 102-88 win.

“That’s kind of where we grew today. In the past that’s kind of where we would crumble,” the 2024 RoTY said. Remember that game vs the Dream? It was tied at 33–33. Even without Clark, the Fever had held strong until Atlanta blew it open in the third with a 23–9 quarter and turned a tight contest into a blowout. “But today we really stuck together. We went on our own run just proud of everybody,” she said.

Well, they should be. After all, they just handed the last undefeated team in the league their first loss. New York came into this one 9-0, clinging to that perfect record after Minnesota’s fall. Not anymore. Also, this win also puts Indiana in a pretty juicy spot. They’re now tied with both Atlanta and New York at the top of the Commissioner’s Cup standings, each with just one loss in Cup play. And the Fever still have a shot at representing the East in the Commissioner’s Cup Final, but it comes with a few conditions.

First up, Indiana has to beat Connecticut. Then, they need Atlanta to lose one of their two remaining Cup games – either against the Mystics or the Liberty. If both Indiana and Atlanta finish 4-1? Atlanta advances, thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker. But if it’s Indiana and New York at 4-1, Indiana gets the nod. So the path’s still tricky, but for now, they’ve got to be soaking in the madness of that game.

And you know, we already said CC’s return had all the makings of a classic, right? Well, turns out, it came with the perfect emotional punch too.

Caitlin Clark’s stellar performance was powered by ‘Bella’

If you were wondering what sparked Caitlin Clark’s electric return against the New York Liberty, well, turns out, it wasn’t just the arena energy of playing at home. It was her dog. Clark paid tribute to her beloved pup Bella in the sweetest way possible – by dropping a near triple-double in custom Kobe sneakers named “The Bellas.”

Ahead of tipoff, the Indiana Fever gave fans a sneak peek at Clark’s latest kicks: a custom Nike Kobe 6 Protro PE titled after Bella. The sneakers even feature Bella’s actual face on the insole. So naturally, Caitlin went out and played one of the best all-around games of her WNBA career. The Fever shared a full 360° look at the shoes, and it’s honestly a dream for sneakerheads, dog lovers, and CC fans. The colorway, the detail, the connection- it’s one of the most personal sneaker drops we’ve seen all season.

We know that Clark has already become the unofficial face of the Kobe basketball line in the W. She’s been rocking retros with meaning since college. But this one hits differently.  And this isn’t all. Two of Caitlin’s player-exclusive Kobes are also expected to hit shelves in the coming months – the Nike Kobe 5 “Indiana Fever” and the Nike Kobe 6 “Light Armory Blue.”

So while we still wait for the full signature line, fans will still have more Caitlin Clark heat to look forward to soon.