{"id":127371,"date":"2025-09-07T21:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T21:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/127371\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T21:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T21:22:08","slug":"2025-wnba-playoffs-indiana-fever-clinch-berth-for-second-straight-season-despite-caitlin-clark-injury-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/127371\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 WNBA playoffs: Indiana Fever clinch berth for second straight season despite Caitlin Clark injury, others"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite getting just 13 games from Caitlin Clark<\/a> and losing five players to season-ending injuries, the Indiana Fever<\/a> have earned a spot in the 2025 WNBA playoffs. The Fever clinched their berth on Sunday with a 94-65 win over the Washington Mystics<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a competitive start to the game, the Fever pulled ahead in the middle of the second quarter and never looked back. In a completely dominant second half, the Fever held the Mystics to just 27 points en route to a 29-point win — their second largest of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now 23-20, the Fever have set a franchise record for wins in a season (the 44-game season is the longest in league history) and secured their first winning campaign since 2015. They are also locked into a top-seven seed. It’s still possible they could jump the Golden State Valkyries<\/a> for the No. 6 seed, but they will need to win their final game on Tuesday against the league-leading Minnesota Lynx<\/a> and hope the Valkyries lose their final two games.<\/p>\n

After toiling at the bottom of the standings for nearly a decade, the Fever made the playoffs last season for the first time since 2016 thanks in large part to Clark’s arrival. Instead of slow-playing their rebuild, they overhauled the entire organization this offseason to try and build a contender.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kelly Krauskopf and Amber Cox were brought in to run the front office, Stephanie White was hired as coach and half a dozen new players, including DeWanna Bonner<\/a>, Natasha Howard<\/a> and Sophie Cunningham<\/a>, arrived via either free agency, trades or the draft.<\/p>\n

Heading into the season, the Fever were openly talking about competing for a championship, and they started their campaign with a 35-point win over the Chicago Sky<\/a>. Clark recorded a triple-double that day and Bonner moved into third place on the league’s all-time scoring list.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Little went right after that. Bonner quit on the team after nine appearances and five players, including Clark, suffered season-ending injuries:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Breaking down the Fever injury situation: Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham among several players sidelined<\/p>\n

\n Jack Maloney <\/p>\n

\"Breaking<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Clark, most notably, was limited to just 13 appearances and never played more than five consecutive games. While she averaged 16.5 points, five rebounds and 8.8 assists, she shot just 36.7% from the field, including 27.9% from 3-point range. Incredibly, she was just 2 of 35 from behind the arc on the road.<\/p>\n

The Fever did win the Commissioner’s Cup championship for the first time in franchise history without Clark, but have been significantly worse without her overall. They went 8-5 when Clark played and had a plus-9.1 net rating with her on the floor, and are 15-15 when she doesn’t play with a plus-1.3 net rating with her off the floor.<\/p>\n

Anything can happen in the WNBA’s best-of-three first round, but the Fever have virtually no hope of winning a title without Clark. They have the worst championship odds (+20000, per Caesars<\/a>) of any team currently in playoff position. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite getting just 13 games from Caitlin Clark and losing five players to season-ending injuries, the Indiana Fever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[21316,49,735,48,726,31924,16298,1612,2803,736,11578,10879,82,12194,737,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-127371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-aari-mcdonald","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-caitlin-clark","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-chicago-sky","13":"tag-chloe-bibby","14":"tag-dewanna-bonner","15":"tag-golden-state-valkyries","16":"tag-indiana-fever","17":"tag-minnesota-lynx","18":"tag-natasha-howard","19":"tag-sophie-cunningham","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-sydney-colson","22":"tag-washington-mystics","23":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}