From shaky start to playoff bound, how Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever revived their season

During a hellacious stretch to begin the regular season, as Indiana played 11 games in 20 days — six of them against semifinalists in the 2023 postseason — Fever coach Christie Sides tried to find the silver linings. Even before Indiana had broken through to win one game, Sides took the long view, believing the struggles early would bear fruit later.

“We’ve gotten punched, and we’ve had to grow up really fast,” Sides said in May. “We’re having a good time trying to get to that point, and when we do, these guys are going to start clicking, and that’s when it’s going to be fun.”

Sides’ sentiments were prescient, as the Fever have swiftly put the troubles of May in the rearview. To say that Indiana is now clicking would be an understatement — this is one of the best teams in the WNBA since the Olympic break with no signs of slowing down as the playoffs near. The Fever are 8-3 in their last 11 games with two losses to the Minnesota Lynx and another to the Las Vegas Aces, who they play again Friday. They entered Wednesday night’s game with the third-best offensive rating in the league behind New York and Las Vegas and the best (110.4 points per 100 possessions) during the second half of the season.

WE’RE IN.

we have officially clinched a spot in the 2024 @WNBA playoffs 🔥

📝 https://t.co/lmq97tihkJ pic.twitter.com/xK8Tg9izY4

— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 4, 2024

The easing of the schedule has played a part in Indiana’s success, as did the month off when 11 of the team’s 12 players were in market to finally develop some chemistry after the shortest preseason training camp in league history. But a lot more has gone into the Fever rocketing up the WNBA standings and becoming the team no one wants to face in the postseason.

Here are four ways (with stats entering Wednesday’s games) that the Fever have pulled it off.

Let’s start with the obvious change from May to September: Clark is a significantly improved player. The numbers tell a powerful story: She’s averaging 24.7 points, 5.8 rebounds and 9.3 assists since the break, compared to 17.1/5.8/8.2 prior. But there is more to it. She has become more patient with traps and isn’t turning the ball over as frequently on blitzes, which has neutralized the effectiveness of that defensive strategy against Indiana. She can string out the defense and make passes over the top rather than playing herself into a corner.

Clark has become physically stronger as the year has worn on. That enables her to drive to the basket and finish through traffic when defenders shade her to one side, and she’s making 3.5 percent more of her shot attempts in the restricted area. The added strength also means her jumper has become more consistent. No team was ever willingly surrendering 3-pointers to Clark at any point, but that’s become an especially bad proposition when she’s shooting 39 percent from distance since the start of August.

Multiple adjustments were made up and down the roster, but nothing as significant as Clark morphing into one of the best players in basketball.

“She plays with great pace, she plays with a great tempo, she is an elite passer,” Los Angeles coach Curt Miller said after the Sparks were the latest team the Fever avenged an earlier loss against. “Everyone talks about the logo 3s. To me, what that does is — she’s got incredible range — but it just opens up the floor for everybody else. That logo range opens up the floor. So you always, always have to be guarding her and you always have to be giving her attention. She’s really special.”

The fulcrum of the Fever offense entering 2024 was thought to be the pick-and-roll between Clark and Boston. But to start the year, most of Clark’s passes led to post-ups, and it felt like the two No. 1 picks were operating at different paces.

Credit to Boston, as the reigning rookie of the year adapted her style of play to favor Clark. In 2023, 39.2 percent of Boston’s offensive possessions came on post-ups and 11.3 percent as a roller. Now those figures are 29.1 and 19.1 (leading into Wednesday’s game) as she shifts toward Clark’s bread and butter of pick-and-roll. With her new point guard, that means setting screens high and catching the ball at the free-throw line on the roll. From there, Boston has become a more adept decision-maker, able to survey the court for the next open player and knowing when to play the ball back to Clark or take her defender off the bounce.

“I’m feeling pretty comfortable (in the short roll),” Boston said. “Being able to take that shot, that’s going to be important versus continuously going down and banging all the time.”

Boston has shifted her offensive game in other subtle ways. She has added more cuts to her repertoire as she’s moving off the ball to capitalize on the attention paid to the Fever point guard, rather than just setting up shop with her back to the basket, even though she’s the recipient of some of the best entry passes in the league. Boston has also upped her individual pace by about 3.5 possessions per 40 minutes. Playing with Clark means running the floor, and Boston has to play in transition more if they’re going to share the court.

3. Healthy Kelsey Mitchell pairs perfectly with Clark

An ankle injury forced Mitchell to miss the preseason and come off the bench during the first two games of the season, which limited the amount of time she spent with Clark on the court. In May, the backcourt duo played together for 23.9 minutes per game. That figure rose to 27.7 in June, then 33.6 in July and 36.6 shared minutes in September. For all of the talk about Clark succeeding with a frontcourt pick-and-roll partner or a rim-running threat like NaLyssa Smith, Mitchell has been the rookie’s true offensive soulmate.

Whether it’s Mitchell sprinting the floor on fast breaks, or even after made baskets, or faking her defenders with strongside baseline cuts, she is always creating openings for Clark with her speed — that simply wasn’t possible with a balky ankle. Now the Fever can unleash Mitchell in space, and they’re putting her in various screening actions in the half court as well. Mitchell often screens for Clark on the perimeter before a big comes to initiate a pick-and-roll, which scrambles the defensive assignments. Indiana will also run Mitchell off of staggers and pindowns, the constant motion allowing Clark to find openings in the defense.

“She’s one of those players where her IQ is going to take us a lot of places,” Mitchell said about Clark, “so you’ve got to figure out where you fit in, knowing how to read and adjust off of her.”

Given the amount of time they spend together on the court, the statistics Mitchell has accumulated when she plays without Clark are negligible. But compared to 2023, when Mitchell was playing with largely the same roster except for Clark, the two-time All-Star is averaging more points in fewer minutes and a higher true-shooting percentage. Since the Olympic break, she’s the second-leading scorer in the league behind A’ja Wilson with 24.9 points per game while shooting 49.7 percent from the field. Maximizing their minutes together has optimized the Fever’s offensive potential.

4. Settling on a rotation

One of Indiana’s main problems at the start of the season was the wrong players were on the court. During May, Kristy Wallace and Katie Lou Samuelson each averaged about 20 minutes while Lexie Hull saw the floor for fewer than 10 minutes per night. By August, Hull climbed up to 26.4 minutes per game, then 33 in September, fitting for the player who has the best on-off differential (plus-13.7 points per 100 possessions) on the team.

Clark’s initial struggles led Sides and her staff to over-index on ballhandling, with Wallace and Erica Wheeler getting more minutes to help Clark run the offense. But that was the wrong approach. Clark needed to find a rhythm, and that would come only with the ball in her hands. As her usage has increased throughout the season, she has become more effective, so Indiana switched to putting play-finishers around her. Mitchell is creating less and shooting more, as is Smith, and Hull either shoots off the catch or drives immediately. The bulk of the decision-making comes from Clark and Boston, simplifying the responsibilities of their teammates.

The Fever were blessed with generational star power in back-to-back drafts. It was only a matter of time until they figured out how to work together despite some initial discomfort. By clarifying the roles of the supporting cast, concentrating Boston on the short roll and letting Clark go full Iowa, they’ve supercharged their offense and turned around their season.

(Photo: Chet White / Getty Images)