Caitlin Clark eased open the side door of an old-school training facility on the outskirts of her hometown. It was a place she’d once avoided, back when sleek, state-of-the-art gyms clamored for her endorsement deals and appearances. Now, six a.m. sharp, she pulled her hood tighter over her head, content to work under the radar. The air smelled of chalk dust and rubber mats, and for the next two hours, she’d push herself through a regiment that was as punishing as it was secret.
Most fans remembered Caitlin as the slender, swift-shooting phenomenon who dazzled in her rookie season, piling up highlight-reel three-pointers and half-court bombs. But they also remembered how defenders targeted her physically—bumping her off screens, bodying her in the lane, and challenging her stamina with relentless traps. Though her skill and shooting range never wavered, the physical toll was obvious. By the final stretch of the year, her arms and shoulders bore the bruises of players determined to show she wasn’t invincible.
That’s what brought her to this dusty, half-forgotten gym. She wanted a transformation: physically, mentally, and strategically. An old friend from her AAU days had recommended the place—“No cameras, no big crowds, just real work,” he’d said. And so she signed the lease on a small apartment nearby, determined to hunker down for the offseason.
Initially, Caitlin’s plan was to keep it small. She told only a few close friends and family about her whereabouts. The gym’s owner, a retired trainer named Jake “Stacks” Peterson, promised complete discretion. He’d seen a string of top athletes over the years, but something about Caitlin’s relentless drive impressed him. “I can’t promise it’ll be easy,” Stacks said, flipping a circuit plan across a bench. “But I can promise you’ll be unrecognizable by the end.”
Her early sessions nearly broke her. She was no stranger to hard work—after all, she’d been playing top-level ball for years. But this was different. Heavy deadlifts, medicine-ball slams, balance drills with weights strapped to her waist, and endless core workouts that tested every fiber of her being. The routine battered her muscles, left her arms trembling as she tried to steady the barbell, and forced her to push deeper than she thought possible.
Yet each morning she woke up with fresh determination. She replayed the memories of her rookie year—moments when she’d get swatted aside, or hammered on a drive, then glance at a referee who’d just shrug in response. She refused to remain that vulnerable. So she pressed on.
Stacks believed in an old-fashioned code: you keep training private until you’re ready to unveil the results. But one day, a friend visiting the gym for a pick-up session took a short video of Caitlin curling 40-pound dumbbells with an intensity that startled even him. The friend posted it on a private social media account, raving about the new muscle definition in Caitlin’s shoulders and arms. Within hours, the clip leaked beyond the friend’s circle.
In the video, Caitlin wore a sleeveless tee drenched in sweat, each rep revealing a level of power the league had never seen from her. She looked bigger, surer of herself—her core braced, biceps flexed in a way that showcased her newfound strength. The camera panned around her workout station, capturing a glimpse of the punishing environment: battered walls, mismatched weights, the old scoreboard overhead stuck at 0:00.
Someone recognized her instantly, and the short clip started to go viral among WNBA fan accounts, then bigger basketball platforms. Within a day, headlines cropped up across social media: “Caitlin Clark’s Shock Offseason Bulk Up!” “Rookie Sharpshooter Goes Beast Mode!” and “Is Caitlin Clark the Next Physical Force in the WNBA?”
She had hoped to keep it all under wraps—at least until the preseason. But the cat was out of the bag.
Once the clip reached the WNBA sphere, players and coaches noticed quickly. Some veterans shook their heads, refusing to believe the hype. “It’s easy to look big in a quick gym video,” one anonymous forward remarked. “I’ll believe it when she’s out on the court.” Others took it more seriously. “If she’s truly bulked up,” said a seasoned coach, “that jump shot isn’t going anywhere, but now she might be a real problem in the paint.”
A few younger players, especially those who had tried to bully her in her rookie season, started to talk. Some worried. “She was already unstoppable from the perimeter,” said a guard from the Eastern Conference. “If she’s adding strength, how do we handle that? Usually, you push her around or double her. But if she can shrug that off, there’s no limit to what she can do.”
Social media thrived on the speculation. Fans dissected every angle of the leaked video, pointing out the definition in her deltoids, or how her calves looked noticeably bigger than last season. Skeptics called it “posturing,” or claimed it must be a filter. Supporters insisted it was real, praising Caitlin for not just relying on referees to help her.
While the rest of the world speculated, Caitlin pressed on with her routine. The video leak complicated her plans, but it also emboldened her. She realized that any illusions of a low-profile training regimen were gone. The spotlight was back, shining on her every move. Rather than shy away, she embraced it—she had done the work, after all, so why hide?
In the downtime between workouts, she refined her mental game. She studied film of her rookie year—particularly those sequences where defenders overplayed her physically. She saw how often she’d let them force her further from the basket or off-balance her when she rose for a shot. She noted how she’d look to the official for a foul that never came. Not this time, she told herself.
Stacks, never one to waste time, challenged her further. “Next season, your biggest test isn’t just being bigger,” he said one afternoon. “It’s how you use that bulk to your advantage without sacrificing speed.” So the final month of training balanced weights with agility drills. She ran sprints with a weighted vest, practiced pull-ups until her arms quivered, and sharpened her footwork in the half-court, pivoting around invisible defenders.
Eventually, Caitlin invited a few close basketball friends to scrimmage in the dingy gym. Among them was an established WNBA center who remembered knocking Caitlin to the ground more than once last season. “So, this is the new you?” the center teased, eyeing Caitlin’s shoulders.
Caitlin offered a half-smile. “Guess you’ll find out.”
They ran a full-court game with a handful of college standouts and ex-pros. Early in the scrimmage, the center tried her usual tactic—pin Caitlin on a screen to slow her down. But this time, Caitlin exploded off the pick, stepping through contact. The center stumbled, momentarily off-balance. Caitlin took advantage, hitting a pull-up jumper from twenty feet.
Possessions later, a smaller defender tried to body-check Caitlin at the perimeter. She held her ground, powered forward, and flicked a floater over the contest. Even the flick of her wrist looked more forceful than before.
By the end of the hour, Caitlin was soaked in sweat, and her friends were shaking their heads in awe. “You’re a different beast,” the center said, wincing while rubbing a sore forearm. Caitlin only nodded, a quiet satisfaction lighting up her eyes.
As training camps approached, the talk around the league grew louder. Interviews with other star players showed they were aware: “Yeah, I’ve seen the clips,” one All-Star guard admitted. “She looks ready to handle anything. She’s going to change the game if she keeps that shot and adds power.”
WNBA analysts predicted she would break even more scoring records, given her unstoppable range now complemented by an interior game that defenders couldn’t out-muscle. When asked about it, Caitlin remained politely confident. “I’m just excited to get back on the court and show what I’ve been working on,” she’d say in press conferences. “The league is incredibly tough, and I respect every opponent. But yeah, I want to hold my own physically this year.”
Fans, of course, turned it into a countdown. They wrote threads detailing the changes in her physique, matching pictures of her rookie year to leaked training shots. They marveled at her thicker arms and more pronounced shoulders. Every day, social media lit up with fresh speculation about how unstoppable she might be.
On opening night of the new WNBA season, the crowd buzzed as Caitlin stepped onto the hardwood for her team’s warmups. Gone was the typically baggy warmup shirt—she wore a sleeveless top that showcased every hour of sweat equity. Fans greeted her with an uproar, some chanting her name, others waiting to see if the hype was real.
She started the game with a simple move: a catch just beyond the arc, a quick jab step to test the defender’s reaction. The defender lunged, anticipating an easy push-off. Instead, Caitlin maintained her balance, spun through the contact, and sank a step-back three. The arena thundered with applause; the broadcast replays highlighted her new strength.
Moments later, she drove baseline, colliding with a forward who tried to muscle her out of bounds. Caitlin absorbed the contact, remained upright, and tossed in a left-handed scoop shot. The roar that followed was deafening—this was indeed a new Caitlin Clark.
Her stat line that night was stellar, but beyond the numbers, it was clear she had claimed her place in the physical side of the game. Teammates patted her on the back, the crowd rose to its feet, and even the opposing players had to nod in recognition of what she’d become.
When the final buzzer sounded, Caitlin walked to center court, sweat glistening on her arms, and waved to the fans. She wasn’t just the slender sharpshooter anymore—she was stronger, more confident, and fully prepared for whatever the WNBA threw at her. The transformation video had foreshadowed it, and now she’d proven it under the bright lights.
In the post-game interview, a reporter asked, “How does it feel to show off this new aspect of your game?” Caitlin smiled. “It feels good. I realized last year that if I wanted to reach my full potential, I had to evolve. I’m just grateful for the people who helped me along the way. And I’m not done yet.”
That final line reverberated across social media within minutes. The league had best brace itself, fans concluded, because Caitlin Clark was now a force in more ways than one—her shot deadlier, her body stronger, and her mindset fiercer than ever before.
Fact Check: No, Caitlin Clark Didn’t Turn Down $1M Offer from ABC to Be on ‘The View’
WNBA player Caitlin Clark turned down a $1 million offer to appear on an episode of “The View.”
In mid-July 2024, an iFunny.co user shared a screenshot of a Facebook post that claimed basketball player Caitlin Clark turned down a $1 million offer from broadcasting company ABC to appear on an episode of the talk show, ‘The View.’
The post was published by the Facebook account America – Love It Or Leave It (ALIOLI). Although the end of the caption was cut off, it read: “ABC offered Caitlin Clark a million dollars to sit in on an episode of ‘The View.’ She turned them down….”
A meme added to the post also included an alleged quote attributed to the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player, which read: “”Have you seen The View? All they do is yell. I can’t figure out why they’re on TV.”
(iFunny.co/ALLOD)
Variations of the rumor appeared elsewhere on social media, such as X and Facebook.
Some readers seemed to interpret the claim as a factual recounting of real-life events. One X user said: “Smart move. There is no winning on that show,” while another added: “Awesome. God bless her.”
However, there was no credible evidence ABC ever made such a proposal to the athlete.
Rather, the rumor about ABC, Clark and The View originated with America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLOD), a website that described its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. The badge in the bottom-right corner of the meme in the Facebook post contained ALLOD’s name and a “Satire” label.
A disclaimer on ALLOD’s website, which also goes by the name of the ‘The Dunning-Kruger Times,’ stated:
Dunning-Kruger-Times.com is a subsidiary of the “America’s Last Line of Defense” network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News.
Further, the Facebook post was published by ALIOLI, a page linked to ALLOD, which described itself as “a subsidiary of the America’s Last Line of Defense network of trollery.” Its Facebook Intro also read: “Nothing on this page is real.”
The fictional story spread as Clark’s exclusion from the 2024 Paris Olympics drew the ire of fans.
ALLOD has a history of making up stories for shares and comments. Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims about Clark in the past, including the assertion she turned down a $400 million deal with Nike because of its partnership with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, and a rumor she signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Samsung.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.
