What was initially believed to be sage advice from one of the greatest to ever play the game of women’s basketball has taken on a tinge of redemption for Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever.

It all centers around comments made by Diana Taurasi earlier this year, where she cautioned fans to not push high expectations onto rookies because of the adjustments they’d have to make at the pro level after playing in college for so long.

‘Reality is coming, there’s levels to this thing,’ she told Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter, when asked about rookies – including Clark – jumping to the pros.

‘And that’s just life, we all went through it… You look superhuman playing against some 18-year-olds but you’re going to come [play] with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time,’ Taurasi added.

‘Not saying it’s not gonna translate, because when you’re great at what you do, you’re just gonna get better,’ she continued. ‘But there is gonna be a transition period, where you’re gonna have to give yourself some grace as a rookie.’

Many took that as some form of a slight against Clark, who has gone on to transition well in her rookie season after some period of adjustment to start her Indiana Fever career.

The latest chapter of that adjustment came on Friday night – where Clark and the Fever beat Taurasi’s Phoenix Mercury for the third time this year in a season sweep.

Phoenix put up an inspired comeback, but just couldn’t break their deficit to the Fever as they lost 98-89.

Clark was a major reason for that – dropping 29 points and ten assists on an 8-of-16 shooting line, including going 4-11 from 3-point range.

It was a strong performance for a Fever team – which should have been expected, considering they were coming back from a lengthy break as they took on a Mercury team who had three Olympians on their roster and had just played the night before.

Still, many were quick to throw the comments back at Taurasi (16 points, four rebounds, three assists) after the Mercury loss.

It was led by Barstool Sports’ main account, which wrote, ‘Diana Taurasi hasn’t beaten Caitlin Clark yet this year with Team USA [in the All-Star Game] or the Phoenix Mercury. Reality is tough.’

‘@DianaTaurasi how’s that reality treating you?,’ wrote one person.

Social media dug up Taurasi's quotes and had a mixed reaction to them on Twitter

Another wrote, ‘I love how poorly this has aged for DT (no age pun intended).’

But many more took a more level approach to Taurasi’s comments – saying that she was right, while praising Clark for her transition to becoming a quality pro player for her age.

‘I’ll be honest. I did not see a season sweep in the cards. Didn’t think DT was off base with what she said. Maybe Clark is more gifted than we all first thought,’ wrote one quote tweet.

‘In general, this is normally a factual statement. There are “levels”, and most of the time leveling up means a difficult transition period. But Caitlin Clark is just different. Can’t fault Taurasi for what she said, it would be accurate 99% of the time. Caitlin Clark is just different,’ said another.

Another wrote, ‘She (Taurasi) wasn’t wrong And we saw [what] happened Just that [Clark] transition period was like a flash. So fast!!’