The Indiana Fever’s luck is disintegrating as quickly as it appeared.
The organization known for missteps and losses caught a break when it won consecutive WNBA draft lotteries to select center Aliyah Boston and point guard Caitlin Clark as their franchise cornerstones. They capitalized on the opportunity by building a championship-worthy 2025 roster.
The three months since training camp feel classically old-school Fever, even if barely any of it can be blamed on the organization itself. Clark has been available less than half the season while dealing with various injury setbacks. Sophie Cunningham missed time. DeWanna Bonner severed ties. And now Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson will miss the rest of the season with injuries sustained in a loss to Phoenix on Thursday.
Forget decimating their point guard depth. It completely wipes it out.
The immediate question is how to fill the void. Indiana, with its nine available players, will be able to sign a free agent to a hardship contract. But it cannot do so until after its “rivalry week” game at home against Chicago on Saturday. Options include Zia Cooke and Jaylyn Sherrod, who were both waived recently. Veterans Moriah Jefferson, Shey Peddy and Odyssey Sims are available.
That decision is nothing compared to the questions the Indiana front office needs to ask in the coming days. Their realistic championship aspirations — ones that still held even a month ago when they won the Commissioner’s Cup title — appear extinguished. They’re fifth in the standings, buoyed by former hardship contract signee McDonald’s success running the offense in Clark’s absence, Colson’s veteran title-winning leadership and a defense that came together on a string.
Everything is quite suddenly different now. Can they tread water for the final month of the regular season? Is it even worth it to try?
Those are two questions few outside of the organization can begin to answer with any sliver of certainty, because there is none around Clark. The Fever have been cagey since preseason on the MVP vote-earner’s injuries, as the expansive and vague descriptions notorious in hockey now sweep the WNBA.
When Clark went down ahead of the All-Star break with a right groin injury, head coach Stephanie White initially categorized it as “good news” that she was “day-to-day.” One week later, the team sent out an update emphasizing a “priority on her long-term health and well-being.” They set no timetable and no additional details. White reiterated those points again on Monday.
It doesn’t take a PhD to read the message between the lines. There is no rushing Clark back to chase a 2025 WNBA championship. There will be opportunities in the future for their young core. It’s a respectable choice that might not have been made in previous iterations of the Fever.
That Clark’s injuries are all soft tissue (left quad tightness, left quad strain, left groin injury) presents its own challenge in these questions.
“With the type of injuries that I’ve dealt with, there’s no real … it’s not like, six weeks, OK, you’re coming back for the Connecticut Sun game on Aug. 30 or whatever,” Clark said on the “Bird’s Eye View with Sue Bird” podcast episode released earlier on Friday. “It’s, ‘How do you feel?’ And even when I have been back, I don’t know how I’m going to feel the next day when I’ve been playing when you’re dealing with these types of injuries.”
It’s unclear how Clark is progressing. Her tunnel fit for the Aug. 3 game at Seattle was her practice uniform. She began full-court, full-speed running recently, the ABC broadcast reported last week. But still no basketball activities.
Time is dwindling. There are 13 games left over a span of 34 days.
The margins are tight. The Fever are nearly as close to a No. 4 seed and home-court advantage in the first round as they are to missing the postseason entirely. The Phoenix Mercury (19-11) are in fourth, 2.5 games ahead of the Fever. The Valkyries (14-15) and Sparks (14-15) are tied in eighth at two games behind Indiana.
Clark, White and the Indiana front office need to decide if and when it becomes not worth it to bring Clark back into the fold. She’ll need at least a few games to ramp up after 13 appearances and none since July 15. And if the Fever fall to the seventh or eighth seed, is it worth it to put her in a physical, high-octane postseason battle against either of the league’s two best teams that soon?
Maybe it is. Maybe a Clark-led Fever team is confident in its ability to knock out the Minnesota Lynx or New York Liberty in a best-of-three. Their ceiling is high, albeit not as much without McDonald or Colson.
But the risk is, too. It’s arguably higher now than it was two days ago when Clark had established depth within the Fever’s system to rely upon. How much more bad luck do the Fever want to invite?
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