Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark has taken both the WNBA and the sports world by storm in her first season. And already, she is receiving comparisons to some of the greatest players to ever pick up a basketball.
Clark also has the numbers to boot with the increasingly impressive highlight reel in her rookie season, averaging 19.5 points per game along with 5.7 rebounds and 8.4 assists.
On top of that, she has helped make the WNBA a significant draw to potential viewers in a way that the league hasn’t quite seen before.
Even throughout NBA history, very few players have had the kind of buzz around them that Clark already seems to have. But one person that has, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, is one player who former NBA star turned ESPN NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins sees Clark most comparable to.
“Here she is right now standing on business,” Perkins said on ESPN’s NBA Today.” “If I had to evaluate her season right now and give a fair evaluation, I would say she has lived up to expectations. I’m looking at her the way I look at LeBron James for the women’s side of things. The hype that she had, the expectation she had to live up to, packing out arenas on a day-to-day basis, a lot of people out there waiting to see her fail and still keeping her composure as a rookie and leading this team has been a beautiful thing to see.”
If anyone knows the kind of star power that James has had in his NBA career, it is Kendrick Perkins. Not only did Perkins compete against LeBron James in countless Eastern Conference battles while he was on the Boston Celtics, but he also ended up playing alongside James for multiple years near the end of his career.
Clark has a lot of career accolades to achieve to rival what LeBron James has done in the NBA. But in terms of star power, the comparison actually does make a ton of sense here from Perkins.
