Caitlin Clark and the Fever are in the WNBA playoffs. Can they make a run to the Finals?
It’s safe to say Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides doesn’t want to talk about what's floating to the front of fans’ minds of late.
“We can talk about championships in three or four years,” Sides told Yahoo Sports last summer while still months away from winning the draft lottery and half a year before drafting generational talent Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston, their 2023 No. 1 pick, had not even lifted her Rookie of the Year trophy yet.
At the time, the Fever were deep into Year 2 of general manager Lin Dunn’s three-year plan to rebuild the league’s decades-long basement dweller — a plan that has finally come to fruition this season.
The Fever (17-16) clinched their first playoff berth since 2016 on Tuesday night, snapping the tie for the longest playoff drought in league history. They moved up into the No. 6 seed over the weekend and are playing for positioning between the Seattle Storm (20-13) and the Phoenix Mercury (16-17) down the season’s final two weeks.
As the league’s hottest offense out of the All-Star/Olympic break, and arguably its most prominent franchise this season with millions tuning in regularly to watch Clark, many fans are talking about championships now.
But how realistic is that? Let's take a look.
Fever peaking at the right time
Indiana is peaking at the right time with a 6-1 record out of the break and the league’s best offensive rating (111.0) and scoring average (91.4 ppg). Kelsey Mitchell and Clark have been the most formidable backcourt duo since the league resumed last month, ranking second (25 ppg) and third (24.5 ppg) in scoring, respectively. Lexie Hull is shooting 62.1% from 3-point range in critical starting minutes after shooting 28.1% before the break. The team leads the league in 3-point percentage (38.9) and 3s made (11.1; the Liberty are second with 9.9) over the last month.
It is the clearest reason the Fever could contend with the best in the playoffs. Everyone is meshing better together and presenting opponents with a much different team than they faced in the first half. And the Fever are collecting wins over some of the league’s best: New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Seattle and Phoenix. The only team they haven’t defeated so far this year is reigning two-time champion Las Vegas, but they have two more shots at it.
Historically in the WNBA, champions have been a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. That is in part because of playoff formats that previously heavily favored the league’s best with rest, and now lean toward them with home-court advantages. (Which could also favor the Fever, who would likely travel for the first two games of a three-game first-round series, but whose road games have been heavily attended by Fever and Clark fans.)
Chicago broke the top-seeds-win-it-all mold in 2021 when, as a .500 team in the regular season, it rode a No. 6 seed and defeated the No. 5 Phoenix Mercury for the franchise’s first and only title. It was an Olympic year and Candace Parker’s first in Chicago. There were no Sky players on the Team USA 5x5 roster, allowing them to practice together in the U.S., same as the 2024 Fever.
Pace can trump physicality, size
The Fever are one of the league’s best in pace, ranking fourth overall, and have been playing faster since the break than any team currently in playoff position. It’s what would make four-time champion Sue Bird leery of facing Indiana if she were still playing.
“What I’ve learned in my WNBA experience is pace of play trumps physicality,” Bird said on her “A Touch More” podcast. “It trumps size. It can trump experience, because a lot of times when you’re experienced, it’s really code word for: ‘You’re veteran,’ which is code word for, ‘You’re old.’”
Bird said the Storm’s “whole mantra was ‘pace, pace, pace, pace, pace’” when the franchise won titles in 2018 and 2020.
“What I see in Caitlin [Clark and], what I see in Kelsey Mitchell, is they’re just ramming it down people’s throats,” Bird said. “And it’s really hard. It can have your head spinning.”
Case in point:
the full-court pass from Caitlin Clark 😮💨
the behind-the-back pass from Kelsey Mitchell 😤
and the finish from NaLyssa Smith 👊 pic.twitter.com/Q4SIVCkKHU— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 1, 2024
And that play, while prolific, is not an anomaly. Clark’s ability to fire full-court passes in transition and slip the ball past multiple defenders in the paint led Iowa to back-to-back national title games after the program had never reached one before her era. The Hawkeyes ranked top 15 in pace both seasons and 26th or better in all four seasons of Clark’s collegiate career.
Of course, pace isn’t the be-all indicator of a WNBA champion. Las Vegas ranked top-three in pace each of the last seven seasons. They finished second in pace last season, while runner-up New York ranked fifth. The Aces were first in 2022, but the team that was second? The Fever, racing the opposite direction to the best lottery odds. Bird’s Seattle teams pushed for pace, but still fell into the second half of the league’s best in that category.
Youth can also be a detriment
While the youth factor can be an advantage, it hasn't been historically enough to lead a team to a championship. It can trump experience, but it takes a lot more to do it over a postseason series than a single game.
The Fever’s recent starting lineup is among the youngest in the league. Mitchell is the elder stateswoman in her seventh season in Indianapolis. Clark is in her first year, Boston is in her second, and NaLyssa Smith and Lexie Hull are in their third. None of them have familiarity with the WNBA postseason.
Their top competition does and, in some cases, bear the heartache from it that they’d like to replace. New York (27-6), last year's runner-up, runs out four players with at least seven years of experience and all above four. Breanna Stewart won two championships in Seattle with Bird. Vandersloot led the 2021 Sky champions. Jonquel Jones is well versed in the pain of losing a Finals, first with the Connecticut Sun and again last autumn.
Las Vegas battled deep into the playoffs for years, including a 2020 Finals loss, before breaking through. Stewart and Jewell Loyd learned from two-time champion Bird in Seattle and exited in the first round back-to-back seasons before winning their first. Washington lost in the Finals in 2018 before lifting the trophy the next season.
A run to the Finals would be historic for Clark and Co. Only two No. 1 overall picks have played in the Finals in their first seasons: Tina Thompson, the inaugural top pick in 1997, started for the Houston Comets in the first of their four consecutive titles; and Maya Moore won the 2011 championship with Minnesota the year she was drafted first overall.
2024 WNBA title contenders
There are still five teams sitting above the Fever in the standings and most have better cases for title contenders.
New York returned all five starters and beefed up the bench in an effort to win the franchise’s first WNBA title. The Liberty are the most consistent squad with the best offense and have won throughout the season with starters on the bench due to injury. Indiana is 1-3 against New York, but all three losses were within the season’s first month (two within the first week).
Minnesota (24-9) boasts the best defensive rating and 3-point shooting, led by an experienced and veteran group. The Lynx faltered without MVP candidate Napheesa Collier before the break, but are back to winning out of the break with the league’s best record (7-1). Head coach Cheryl Reeve is a three-time Coach of the Year and led the Lynx to four titles in seven years in the 2010s. Indiana is 1-1 against Minnesota with a final meeting on Friday in Indianapolis.
Connecticut (24-9) has been on the cusp of its first title for much of the past decade and shored up ahead of the break by adding 3-point shooter Marina Mabrey. The Sun have the second-best net rating to the Liberty. Indiana is 1-3 against the Sun, but again all three losses came within the first month (and two within the first week).
Seattle is in the first season of its superteam, adding former champ Nneka Ogwumike and All-Star point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith to complement Loyd and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Ezi Magbegor. The Storm fell post-break with one of the league’s worst records over the last month, but they added Olympic silver medalist Gabby Williams back into the fold. Indiana is 1-3 against Seattle. All three losses came before June 27.
And, sure, the goings in Las Vegas (20-12) are rockier than usual. But the Aces are still two-time reigning champions with a dominant MVP in A’ja Wilson leading the same starting five they’ve had for two championships. They can’t be counted out. And they lead the league in pace. Indiana lost road games in Las Vegas in May and early July; the Fever host the Aces at home on Sept. 11 and 13.
If the season ended on Wednesday morning, the Fever would lock into the No. 6 seed and travel to Minnesota for the first two games of a best-of-three first-round series. While there are factors working in the Fever’s favor at this point of a unique Olympic-year season, there’s a reason Sides is still a couple of years away from wanting to talk about championships.
