The Comparable Careers of Caitlin Clark and Luka Doncic

Ok, I’m going to get ahead of this with caveats and context galore.

I typically don’t like comparing WNBA players to NBA players. I don’t hold it against others when they do, I just think there’s a rich history of WNBA players who often get overlooked when it comes to comparison points for modern players.

I also think that most same-race comps are often, to a degree, lazy. They usually rely on racial tropes (Black players relying on athleticism, white players being strictly shooters) that box players in far too narrowly.

I also (also) am aware how much media attention Caitlin Clark is getting right now, and how another long article about her is only feeding into that. And to circle back to the last paragraph, it’s in no small part because she is white. If you’re going to try to argue that, just look at who had shoe deals in the WNBA before A’ja Wilson finally got her shoe this spring. 

Despite all that, I think there is really something here in the Caitlin Clark-Luka Doncic comparison.

Play Style

In some ways, Caitlin and Luka do differ.

When I brought this idea up to some fellow WNBA heads, Owen Pence of the Pull Up with Myles and Owen Podcast was wise to point out how Luka uses his size a bit more to leverage his way into the midrange, a skill that would be a far better third outcome for Christie Sides to be working on with Caitlin than telling her to pull up for long twos.

But this is an article about their similarities.

And for a long time, my biggest qualm with Luka’s game was that for as much as he stuffed the stat sheet, and for as much as he had amazing highlight passes, he just didn’t really have all that much seeming impact on his team when we take a look at his surface level stats throughout his first four seasons.

However, here were his on-off impact stats, via Cleaning the Glass:

But the last two years have looked a lot different impact wise:

The stats we had always seen from him finally started translating into actual impact.

These on-off metrics to start his career confused many an analyst and led to debates galore. There were plenty of folks who didn’t buy the lack of impact and plenty of others who thought there was some truth to it.

I was very much in the latter camp. I was always a skeptic, in part because I have been skeptical of the heliocentric offensive player.

Which brings us to Caitlin. In college, Clark had a 37.8 percent usage rate for her career, peaking with a senior season in which she led the country in both points per game (31.6) and assists per game (8.9) and made it to the national championship.

However, read any story about Clark’s time at Iowa, and you will read about the transition it took for her to learn to trust her teammates. She is famously hard on her teammates, setting an incredibly high bar for them, while also maintaining a near-40 percent usage rate. That’s a very fine line to walk. Basketball, for as much as it is thought of as the most individual of the team sports, really isn’t a singular sport in any sense of the word. No player has been able to drag a team fully devoid of talent to success once they reach the highest levels, and neither Caitlin nor Luka will change that.

Clark is seeing that now in her rookie season. Her usage is nearly 30 percent yet again, which is truly remarkable for a rookie guard, and her stats look solid on the surface: 15.6 points per game (17th in the league) 5.1 rebounds, 6.4 assists (4th), and 2.3 steals plus blocks per game. An incredibly balanced and impressive stat line, but the Fever are just 2-9.

Aliyah Boston is down from 14.5 points and 8.4 rebounds per game to 10.4 and 6.6, respectively. Kelsey Mitchell is down over three points a game. NaLyssa Smith, their number two overall draft pick in 2022, is struggling the most, seeing her points drop from 15.5 a game to 11.9, with her rebounds down over two a game as well. Now some of this makes sense. If you bring in Caitlin and her 16 points and five rebounds a game so far, people are going to score and rebound less. But the Fever offensive rating as a team is 97.8—down notably from their offensive rating of 103.0 last season. And that’s before looking at the league worst defense, which was always going to be a bit suspect with Caitlin in the lineup.

I don’t say all this to pile on Caitlin. She’s 11 games into her career! I say it instead as hopeful for a path for her, and a faster way to that path than Luka. 

Anyone who has played basketball at any level knows that getting a look, in rhythm, consistently every few possessions is going to lead to better shooting than: standing around, waiting for your heliocentric teammate to kick the ball out to you for an admittedly open look, but one that feels entirely out of the flow of a normal offense. Watch Caitlin when she doesn’t have the ball. She is a far cry from Steph Curry (the other player she is often compared to, for her logo threes), who moves well and gets through screens and allows his teammates time with the ball. Instead, she hovers awkwardly near the ball handler, limiting their space and clogging up any sort of rhythm the offense could have. Not always, but enough that it is noticeable watching the Fever.

And again, she’s seven games into playing with a new team. Several people I know and respect are laying this at the feet of head coach Christie Sides and a not creative enough offense. But Caitlin needs to do some of this on her own. The movement has to be consistent and it has to be not strictly with the goal to get the ball back every time. She needs to use her gravity to open up space as well.

Watching Luka on this run, it’s clear that a heliocentric player, if in the right circumstances, with the right teammates, coaches, and attitude (hold that thought), really can have success at the highest levels. But that last point, the attitude, brings me to my next part of the comparison.

Ref Complaints

Anyone who watches either of these players knows that they are in the top tier of complainers in all of basketball. Luka’s non-stop complaining has been meme’d into oblivion, but Caitlin is no slouch here either. She often will trail a defensive play because she is still on the other side of the court complaining to a ref. Or on offense, after she kicks to a teammate, she might turn to a ref to continue to dialogue about a missed hand check instead of engaging off-ball—another shared trait with Doncic.

Again, I don’t want to come across as berating Clark—lots of basketball stars are big complainers. BUT with Luka and Caitlin it seems to: A) take up a greater amount of continual mental space and B) actively harm their attention to defense and off-ball offense at times.

During this run, the announcers have noted that, at times, Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki has been court-side seemingly refocusing Luka when he starts to lose focus and complain to a ref. We are dealing in non-statistical waters now, but it has indeed seemed like the least distracted Luka has been with the refs at any point in recent memory. Now, whether that’s the chicken or the egg with him also having the most playoff success of his career is difficult to disentangle, but I think it’s more hand in hand rather than chicken or egg. The focus leads to winning leads to focus, etcetera, etcetera.

Takeaway

The biggest takeaway to me here is that a player like Luka can win at the highest level in professional basketball. But that player needs to be more willing to truly be a teammate. I now sound like a distorted Ron Swanson-esque basketball coach from the 1950s, but it’s true. There’s a reason MVPs so infrequently actually win the title the year they are MVP, as Brandon Anderson has pointed out. Only four NBA MVPs have won the Finals the year they won that award. Turns out this team sport is indeed a team sport!

A heliocentric offense can work if the “sun” at its center is able to actually keep the planets engaged. Whether this be by top tier passing (check for both), engaging off-ball movement (the trickier part for both), or an ability to stay at least focused on both ends without giving in to distractions that are outside what one can control (arguably the tipping point for both). This last point, in particular, is what has catapulted Luka to the highest level this season, and it’s what Caitlin will need to do to reach those same levels eventually.

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