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Diana Taurasi is eating her words.
After telling the world that “reality is coming” for Caitlin Clark when she was entering the WNBA after her legendary collegiate career at Iowa, the now-retired Taurasi is walking back those comments.
“Thank you, unfortunately, reality is coming to me now,” Taurasi said in response to Clark congratulating her on retirement on the “Bird & Taurasi Show” broadcast during Sunday’s NCAA national championship game.
Caitlin Clark proved a lot of people wrong in her first WNBA season — and Taurasi was one of them.
“Reality is coming [for Clark]. There’s levels to this thing,” Taurasi said a year ago, before Clark had stepped foot on a WNBA court. “You look superhuman playing against 18-year-olds, but you’re going to [be playing against] some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time.”
Of course, Clark wound up experiencing some growing pains, but she was mostly the same superstar she was in college.
She averaged 19.2 points, 8.4 assists, 5.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game in her rookie season en route to dragging the Fever to the playoffs after being the league’s worst team a year prior.
Clark won Rookie of the Year, made the All-WNBA First Team and the All-Star team, and finished fourth in MVP voting.
Taurasi is widely considered the WNBA’s greatest of all time. The 11-time All-Star played 20 seasons, winning three WNBA championships and an MVP award.
With everything the world has seen of Clark, she looks to be on her way to that same “GOAT” conversation.
So, Taurasi’s comments last year seemed a bit salty that another player may be transcending the ranks to meet her at the top.
But with her comfortability in joking about the situation a year later, and Clark seeming to brush it all off, Taurasi appears to have made right of what was once a major controversy.
