Many consider Caitlin Clark the savior of the WNBA, or even women's pro basketball in general. However, there was a time when she nearly ended a hoops career, almost before it even began.
Enter Raven Johnson, a 5'8" guard from Atlanta, Georgia, who once faced Clark in a Final Four matchup. The year was 2023 and Johnson, then a freshman on the South Carolina Gamecocks, could not believe the repercussions of what CC had done to her.
To be clear, Clark did nothing wrong to Johnson. If anything, she was just following a game plan and even did Raven a favor, which ultimately turned out to be the world's greatest confidence buster. If you're a hooper, then you know.
Clark famously disrespected Johnson by giving her the Ben Simmons treatment, refusing to defend the freshman out from the 3-point line. Caitlin, the record-holder for career three-pointers made in the NCAA, turned her back on Johnson with a distance of about 10 feet between them. CC was daring her to shoot, but Raven turned down the chance.
Little did she know that that sequence would almost wreck her career.
"That's the one reason why I hate the Internet now, because of that situation," Johnson said , per Alex Kennedy of Pro Football & Sports Network. "Like, I got bashed, I got bullied. I got called all these things that I wasn't… I wanted to quit basketball at that time. I wanted to just go into this little bubble of isolation and just be by myself."
As Raven said, she leaned on other people's support to stand on her own feet again. To make matters worse, South Carolina lost a close one to Clark's Iowa, 77-73. CC dropped 41 points to end the Gamecocks' perfect season.
Meanwhile, Johnson, who came off the bench in that game, finished with 13. Interestingly, she didn't shoot that badly from deep, connecting on three of her six attempts from rainbow territory. But because of Clark's defense on her (or lack thereof), people forget that Aliyah Boston only managed eight in that matchup on a paltry 2-for-9 shooting for South Carolina.
That said, Johnson got the last laugh when both teams met again in 2024 for the national title. Clark finished with 30, but Johnson was a big reason why she needed 28 shots to get there. Raven basically couldn't throw a rock into the ocean in that game, but her four steals and overall defense on Caitlin made all the difference.
While there is no question what Clark meant to the WNBA, the Indiana Fever has yet to finish better than four games over .500 over the last two seasons. One glaring problem was defense. They finished second-worst in defensive rating in 2024 and only middle of the pack in 2025.
To address the issue, Indiana called on a familiar face for help. They drafted Johnson 10th overall in the recently concluded 2026 WNBA Draft. Raven was the 2026 SEC Defensive Player of the Year, hanging her hat on being one of the peskiest point-of-attack defenders in women's hoops.
As noted by John Davis of Daily Gamecock, opponents shot significantly worse from downtown when Johnson was on the floor. The percentages drop up to 8.3 percent, while they score 10 fewer points per 100 possessions overall.
In the case of Clark and Johnson, it's truly a full-circle moment. Clark once put Johnson in the spotlight for the wrong reasons and now they're tasked with figuring things out together in Indy.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Apr 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the WNBA section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
