an 89-73 win in the first game of their semifinal series<\/a>. The veteran was the most unstoppable player on a court that included four-time MVP A\u2019ja Wilson, with Mitchell using her speed and tough shotmaking ability to give the Fever a 1-0 advantage. Mitchell lived in the paint and at the line. The Aces had no answers for her downhill attacking, and their defensive rotation sprung gaps as a result.<\/p>\n\u201cKelsey Mitchell has been through the worst parts of this franchise, and she deserves to go through the best,\u201d Indiana coach Stephanie White said. \u201cAnd she\u2019s rising to the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get to this latest high, Mitchell had to rescue the Fever from their lowest depths. She has persevered through five head coaches, six losing seasons and had to play multiple seasons in different arenas due to Gainbridge Fieldhouse renovations, remaining committed to a franchise that didn\u2019t give her much reason to. The only saving grace of that wasteland in Indiana history was Mitchell\u2019s individual production.<\/p>\n
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The arrival of Caitlin Clark in 2024 (and Aliyah Boston the year before) finally shone a deserved spotlight on Mitchell\u2019s game. She earned her first All-Star berth in Boston\u2019s rookie season and made the playoffs in Clark\u2019s first season. And for the first time in 2025, Mitchell entered the season on a team with the opportunity to contend for a WNBA title.<\/p>\n
But even that optimism was short-lived, as Indiana suffered a spate of injuries that pushed the team down in the standings. The nadir of the Fever season came on Aug. 17. Ten days after Indiana lost Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson for the year, while the team was still navigating the absence of Clark (though she hadn\u2019t officially been shut down for 2025), Sophie Cunningham hurt her knee against Connecticut, and it was immediately clear the injury was bad. The Fever trailed the Sun, who were 6-26 at the time, by 19 at halftime.<\/p>\n
It fell to Mitchell to rally the troops.<\/p>\n
She scored 24 points after halftime to lead Indiana back from 21 down, its largest comeback in franchise history, totaling a career-best 38 points in the process.<\/p>\n
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It proved to be a positive turning point for the Fever. While the outside world started to count Indiana out with the mounting pile of injuries, the team realized its internal strength.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could have given up and we didn\u2019t,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201c(White) felt that we didn\u2019t give up, and I think any coach that\u2019s leading people knows what that means, and so I think she looked at our group like, damn, I got a different respect for y\u2019all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell\u2019s teammates have been singing her praises throughout the season. Her media availability Saturday was interrupted multiple times by Clark and Cunningham, among others, yelling \u201cMitchell for MVP!\u201d and \u201cVote Mitchell!\u201d Odyssey Sims walked by Mitchell\u2019s postgame interviews on Sunday and interjected: \u201cI love you Kelsey, my MVP.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of the league is coming around to Mitchell\u2019s impact. Mitchell was at the top of Las Vegas\u2019 scouting report, with multiple players and Aces coach Becky Hammon highlighting Mitchell\u2019s pace in the halfcourt and in transition.<\/p>\n
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The adulation doesn\u2019t come naturally to Mitchell. A few years ago, she wrote a list of times she thought she would quit, coaches who had counted her out, and media outlets who didn\u2019t want to talk to her. It\u2019s a different experience to be in demand for reporters and the center of attention \u2014 at least on the court \u2014 for a team in the WNBA\u2019s final four.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s new, it\u2019s fresh,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cI can say that where we started and where we\u2019re at. I don\u2019t know if anybody thought we were here, but it\u2019s an unbelievable experience to be able to do it with these girls and do it with this coaching staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stakes are only getting bigger. Two wins \u2014 and a team filled with multi-time champions \u2014 stand between the Fever and a trip to the WNBA Finals. Indiana could have an opportunity to close out this series at home, another experience Mitchell has never been a part of.<\/p>\n
She is remaining even-keeled in the process. She let herself celebrate beating the Atlanta Dream in the first round only for the duration of the flight home \u2014 but no longer. She prepared for Sunday\u2019s game against the Aces like she would any other. She doesn\u2019t know how to change her preparations at this time of the year.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s leading to some of the best basketball of her career in the longest season of her career, one that will extend as long as Mitchell can take it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy journey and the way I have it was positioned for me,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cEverything that I had to go through, it was big for me, because I can enjoy this moment a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in The Athletic<\/a>.<\/p>\nIndiana Fever, WNBA<\/p>\n
2025 The Athletic Media Company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 Kelsey Mitchell is in unfamiliar territory. The first round against Atlanta was her first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[4662,21316,4655,505,732,49,735,48,4785,6003,2803,4650,38383,74890,10879,82,2807,2047,12194,630],"class_list":["post-161332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aja-wilson","tag-aari-mcdonald","tag-aliyah-boston","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-dream","tag-ca","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-canada","tag-connecticut","tag-fever","tag-indiana-fever","tag-kelsey-mitchell","tag-odyssey-sims","tag-postseason-game","tag-sophie-cunningham","tag-sports","tag-stephanie-white","tag-sun","tag-sydney-colson","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161332","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=161332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}