Derek Schultz: Despite a raft of unexpected setbacks, the Fever have lived off grit, spirit

Entering this season, the Indiana Fever clearly were contenders for a WNBA championship.

Coming off a smashing debut for 2024’s No.1 overall pick—Caitlin Clark, the league’s most transcendent star—Indiana’s front office made a bevy of moves to put the team over the top. They handed the reins of the franchise back to coach Stephanie White, re-signed big-ticket All-Star Kelsey Mitchell and acquired a swath of seasoned vets like Sophie Cunningham, Natasha Howard and DeWanna Bonner to add to a young nucleus of Clark and fellow former top pick Aliyah Boston.

On paper, they looked like contenders, but, on the court, they rarely were dominant. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Although the team secured the sixth seed in the playoffs, a cakewalk to the postseason didn’t materialize.

As of the time of this writing, the team was headed into a deciding Game 3 against the Atlanta Dream in the first round of the playoffs. The squad’s dominating performance in Game 2 on Tuesday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse displayed the qualities of cohesiveness and perseverance that have endeared the Fever to fans who initially expected to see Clark dropping dimes and launching logo bombs for 40 minutes a game.

True, the Fever didn’t live up to the preseason hype, which would seem to make the 2025 season a failure. Yet, because Indiana was forced to withstand an avalanche of adversity, it does not feel like one.

Some will meet those rationalizations with skepticism—after all, excuses are like … well, you know the old saying. But while every team deals with adversity in one way or another, what the Fever went through during the 2025 campaign was not some run-of-the-mill misfortune. They dealt with an avalanche of injuries, with the biggest befalling their most important player. Family health concerns off the court kept White away from her team two separate times and were likely weighing on her mind even when she was present on the bench. And Bonner, one of the marquee free agent signees, was a poor fit and forced her way out immediately, leaving the Fever without one of their prized acquisitions.

Despite all of that, Indiana still gutted out a 24-20 regular-season record in a super-competitive league and hosted a postseason game for the first time in nearly a decade. A core group gelled, even though its superstar was on the shelf.

Hobbled by injuries

What happened to the Indiana Fever from a health standpoint this season wasn’t a simple bite from the injury bug—it was more like an injury bomb falling on their heads.

You likely could field a playoff-caliber starting five simply with the pieces that Indiana lost to season-ending ailments.

Clark, who hadn’t missed a single game as a collegian or pro entering this year, was limited to just 13 games with leg, quad and groin injuries. Even in those games where she was on the floor, her scoring and shooting stats tumbled from her rookie campaign. The nagging and numerous injuries punctuating a season where Clark never seemed to feel or look right.

Cunningham, acquired from Phoenix in the team’s biggest trade of the offseason, was leading the WNBA in 3-point field goal percentage when she suffered a brutal season-ending knee injury in August. Two of Indiana’s medical hardship acquisitions, Sydney Colson and Aari McDonald, also suffered season-ending injuries. Same for Chloe Bibby, who was picked up at the end of July and didn’t last a month before getting sucked into the Fever’s hospital vortex.

That’s five season-ending injuries if you’re counting at home.

Adding further insult: Keith Porter, the team’s player development coach, ruptured his Achilles, forcing him into a different role because he could no longer be on the court. A coach with a season-ending injury? You can’t make this stuff up.

In all, 18 different players have suited up for the Fever this season, an abnormal number when you consider the WNBA has a maximum of just 12 roster spots. They had to use an emergency hardship waiver—a league-approved exception that is allowed only under extreme availability circumstances—three times just to have enough bodies on the floor to compete.

“The most telling moment of the season to me was on picture day, when there were 16 players involved in that photo and you realize two others were needed at points to kind of piecemeal this [season] together,” said Scott Agness, who covers the Fever for Fieldhouse Files. “[The injuries] haven’t just hit the Fever, but they have taken bigger hits and more hits than any team in the WNBA.”

Coming together

The whole “next player up” thing has become cliche, but we did see several Fever starters step up to fill the injury void. Mitchell earned every penny of her supermax deal this season, turning in a career year while earning All-WNBA First Team honors. Boston continued to cement herself as a franchise pillar, earning a third straight trip to the All-Star Game and appearing once again in every contest. (She has yet to miss a game in her pro career, knock on wood.)

Lexie Hull leapt over Bonner early, morphing from reliable reserve to critical starter, logging a career high in minutes while further endearing herself to the Fever fan base with her toughness on both ends. Three-time champion Natasha Howard, returning to the team that drafted her, battled some inconsistency offensively but brought the defensive leadership she’s been known for her entire career to the table. Off-the-couch acquisitions like Sydney Colson and Odyssey Sims answered the call, filling whatever role was necessary.

Coined by Mitchell, the mantra “We All We Got, We All We Need” carried the Fever down the stretch, and it was easy to see the buy-in from everyone involved.

“My first observation of this team was how connected and communicative they were, but I think these battle wounds have made [this group] even tighter and united them through the worst of situations,” Agness said.

“I really do think this is a really unique and special team,” Cunningham said following a comeback win over Atlanta in mid-July. “And the locker room, we really do love each other. I have never felt like this in the W, and I’ve been in it for seven years.”

Making the best of it

Even without home-court advantage in the playoffs, the 2025 Fever compiled several meaningful accomplishments.

They hosted their first home playoff game since 2016 and made the postseason in back-to-back years for the first time in nearly a decade. They took home their first-ever Commissioner’s Cup, which is not the same as a title, but to do it in front of a record crowd for the event (12,000-plus) and in front of a national streaming audience, all while pulling off an upset of the heavily favored Lynx, made it feel significant.

There is undoubtedly disappointment in not having Clark on the floor to electrify fans. If the team doesn’t pull off a run to the championship in the next few weeks, the sinking feeling of “what could have been” will always be attached to this season. But this group deserves credit for never sinking under the weight of near-impossible circumstances. They stayed afloat and squeezed some juice out of a campaign that felt cursed from the start.

Despite everything, the Fever have showed a lot of fight. No, the 2025 season might not be viewed as a success for Indiana. But given what the franchise had to endure these past four months, you couldn’t ever call it a failure.•

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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting. You can follow him on X @Schultz975.