Caitlin Clark said Kelsey Mitchell is the best scorer in the league, hands down, not even close. Direct quote, the Fever posted it themselves. So if you want to argue Caitlin Clark or Kelsey Mitchell for Fever MVP, one of them already voted.
Then two days later Aliyah Boston says basically the same thing and people started calling for her to get traded. Traded! For agreeing with Caitlin Clark.
So the woman you’re defending already agrees with the woman you’re mad at.. can we sit with that?
Alright, fine. Let’s actually do it. No dodging, no “they’re both great” garbage at the bottom. I don’t think a single person in this fight has actually watched a Fever game anyway.
Kelsey Mitchell is doing something nobody has ever done
18 straight games of 20 or more points, and that’s the record. Nobody in the history of this league has done that in one season, and she’s 30 years old in year nine of her career.
And it’s not empty volume either. Over that run she’s shooting better than 50 percent from the floor and better than 50 from three. From THREE. For a month and a half. I keep pulling it back up cause I keep assuming I read it wrong.
The best part of the whole thing is she didn’t even know. Sophie Cunningham asked her about the streak at practice and she kind of just sat there, cause she wasn’t counting. She said she found out off the TV.
Now I gotta put my hand up here. Mitchell’s an Ohio State kid out of Cincinnati and I’ve been in the bag for her since college, so take my opinion on her for whatever that’s worth to you. But I’m not the one who called her the best scorer alive. That was Caitlin Clark, on camera, in front of everybody.
So Caitlin Clark or Kelsey Mitchell? It’s Clark
Cause buckets aren’t the whole job.
Clark’s averaging 21 and 8. If she finishes there she’s the first player in WNBA history to average 20 and 8 in a season, and I don’t mean the first Fever player, I mean nobody has ever done it.
She’s also got more career 20 point 10 assist games than anybody who has ever played this sport. And back in July she put 45 and 10 on Seattle, which nobody in the history of this league had ever done. That happened this season by the way. People already forgot.
And look, I know exactly what’s coming back at me, cause it’s a good argument. Mitchell scores more, she’s way more efficient doing it, and she doesn’t cough the ball up the way Clark does. That last one actually bugs me. Clark’s turnovers are a real problem and I’m not gonna act like they aren’t, she’ll throw one into the third row and then two minutes later make a pass nobody else on the planet makes. So if MVP just means best player to you, take Mitchell. I’m not calling you an idiot for it.
But here’s what I keep landing on. Look at her scoring year by year. 18, then 19, then 20, and now 24.
She was already good, she’s the one putting the ball in the hole, nobody’s taking a thing away from her. That jump just happened to show up right around the time she started playing next to the assist leader of the entire league. Indiana has the best offense in the WNBA right now and Clark’s the one running it. You can drop a great scorer into that thing and it keeps humming. Take Clark out and who’s running it? Boston? I don’t know what that team even is without her, and I don’t think anybody else does either.
Now here’s the part nobody got mad about
Forget Aliyah Boston for a second. You can argue Caitlin Clark or Kelsey Mitchell all day and that’s a fun argument. This one isn’t.
ESPN has Kelsey Mitchell listed as a longshot for league MVP.
A longshot? She’s second in the entire WNBA in scoring, she’s holding a record no player has ever held, and she’s doing it on the best team in the East. And the national list has her sitting down there as a maybe.
Everybody spent three straight days furious that a teammate called her the MVP. Nobody spent five minutes furious that the people who actually vote can barely find her.
