The Caitlin Clark story can have only one acceptable finale

So here we are, back at the beginning. For the second time.

But this time is much different than before. Stakes is high. Higher than any buhloon mind state she put us in this time last year, when it seemed to all begin. When Caitlin Clark was hidden in front of us all, in plain sight. When we knew who she was but not who . . . she . . . was. Hell of a way to become an effect.

Yes, we are all living in The Caitlin Clark Effect. Where one of the best ‘‘artists’’ we’ve seen work with a basketball raises the standards on how an artist has the ability to art. And with this newly reached level of artistry comes the weight of replacing promise with prominence. All because of her elevation to a single-name mania, that an almost-inhumane demand on her to win a national championship will validate her moment.

Last March, before she carried (along with Monika Czinano) her Iowa Hawkeyes band of sisters to the Final Four in Dallas, Clark was receiving the Big Ten Player of the Year award (which weeks later was followed by the Naismith and AP player of the year awards, acknowledging her as the best player in the country) and earning the MVP of the Big Ten tournament before entering into the true madness of March as a No. 2 seed for the first time in school history. At that point, there were many thinking Villanova’s Maddy Seigrist could score better and UConn’s Paige Bueckers (even with two years of being injured) had more upside and potential. That was so last year ago.

Now everything’s flipped. She’s her, and anything less than walking off the basketball court drenched in confetti next month, with Luther Vandross singing as her theme music, would be a failure of inescapable proportions that will troll Clark for the rest of her basketball career. As she now enters the thankless sports universe, where the meaning of being No. 1 on the all-time list of scorers (men and women) and No. 6 on the all-time list in assists (women only) in Division I college basketball — a collective feat and point total that may never, ever be achieved again by a single player — things will be inexcusably weighted against Clark’s team’s ability to win the same game they lost last year. It’s the final, shining moment or nothing.

With Clark’s final Big Ten tournament underway, this weekend will be the last time ‘‘win or lose’’ won’t have true meaning to how her stature and status in the history of college sports will be judged. After this, there is no ‘‘or lose’’; it’s ‘‘or else.’’ Or else all of the accolades bestowed upon her lately as arguably the greatest the college game has ever seen will be reduced to footnotes. Making Clark, fairly or unfairly, the first post-LeBron basketball GOAT for whom the current dominating theory ‘‘rings or nothing’’ will pivot the conversation for which direction her legacy is discussed. And cemented.

Yes, Slam recently crowned her ‘‘the greatest scorer college basketball has ever known,’’ and Dana O’Neil of The Athletic referred to her as the embodiment of hoops hysteria and female empowerment. It is true that soccer legend Thierry Henry shouted her out during a Champions League broadcast in Europe; that a musher during the opening ceremony of Alaska’s Iditarod showed up wearing a black Iowa No. 22 shirt instead of an authorized corporate-sponsored bib; that her NIL valuation currently sits at just over $3 million and that last week she became only the second female athlete to sign an exclusive trading-card and autographed-memorabilia deal with Panini America, the world’s largest sports-and-entertainment collectible company; that Lynette Woodard, whose all-time AIAW scoring crown (major college) Clark recently eclipsed, thanked Clark for ‘‘lifting [the game] to a place it’s never been before,’’ saying what Clark has done is beyond women’s basketball and has ‘‘touched the world’’; that Maya Moore, Jake From State Farm and Travis Scott are showing up at her games; that she has become sport’s Taylor Swift. All dope and historic, but all converging on the edge of worthlessness unless . . . that happens.

And as the final dance will broaden the conversation beyond Clark and reintroduce many to Angel Reese and defending champ LSU and South Carolina coach Dawn Staley and her unbeatable rebuild, while introducing more to JuJu Watkins, Hannah Hidalgo, Kiki Rice, Mikaylah Williams and MiLaysia Fulwiley (all freshwomen), it will still be the final platform on which No. 22’s entire college heirship stands. Making the cruelty of what Clark is about to face unlike anything anyone’s ever had to face in the history of NCAA basketball.

It was last year, after the dance, after Iowa’s loss in the national-championship game, with tears rolling down her face while sitting at the podium in front of the media, when Clark said these words: ‘‘I want my legacy to be the impact I can have on young kids and the people in the state of Iowa.’’ Wish it was all that simple. That was before all of this happened to her, before The Caitlin Clark Effect went into effect.

It’s the difference between being the GOAT and doing something that has never been done before or accomplishing something that will never be accomplished again. Right now, Caitlin Clark sits in between the two. Unbalanced. One heavier than the other. You almost feel bad for her. Almost. A helluva place to be before someone’s immortality is determined. Hella place to begin a second beginning.