Oh, did she ever. Mitchell has played more in the last eight years than anyone else in the WNBA. That\u2019s simple arithmetic: Those 277 games, nearly always in the starting lineup, 8,466 minutes total, comfortably atop the playing time leaderboard with fewer than a dozen players coming within even a thousand minutes of her. But the statement feels true spiritually as much as statistically. Mitchell has logged more time on the floor than anyone else in the last eight years, but she has made her time feel more expansive, too. She plays in the way that some sharks swim\u2014like she will die if she ever stops moving. Other players are cleaner and more patient and more efficient. None are faster.<\/p>\n
That playing time means that Mitchell knows the Fever\u2019s trajectory more intimately than anyone else. All of those games, all of those fast, frenetic minutes. Years spent losing in front of almost no one. Then losing in front of seemingly everyone. Finally winning in front of everyone and then some. Plenty of people have borne witness to that transformation of the franchise. A few have personally shaped it. But none have lived it quite like Mitchell.<\/p>\n
All of which has led here, to a season on the brink, down 2\u20131 to the Aces in the WNBA semifinals<\/a>. It marks the deepest playoff run in a decade for the Fever. And it has come in a year when they have faced a string of hardships so extensive as to feel almost literally unbelievable. (Plenty of teams know the difficulty of losing their point guard. Not many know the difficulty of then losing their backup, and the backup to the backup, too.) With a backcourt torn apart by season-ending injuries\u2014to Caitlin Clark, of course,<\/a> but also to Sydney Colson, Aari McDonald and Sophie Cunningham<\/a>\u2014they nonetheless have managed to advance through the postseason. And they have done it living and dying with Mitchell.<\/p>\n Mitchell (center) dropped 34 points to lead an upset of the Aces in Game 1. \/ Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images<\/p>\n This is not how this season was meant to play out. Back when Mitchell re-signed with the Fever in January, she did it with the understanding that everything about this group was changing<\/a>, and she would, too. Indiana was finally aiming not just at the playoffs but at a potential championship. That meant a new head coach (Stephanie White) and a new front office (Kelly Krauskopf and Amber Cox) along with enough new players to fill out half the roster. It was also meant to introduce a slightly different role for Mitchell. \u201cKelsey has had to be a high-volume scorer for the Indiana Fever her entire career,\u201d White said at the beginning of the season. Yet with this upgraded roster, ideally, she would no longer have to be. They would have options. She would have space.<\/p>\n But front offices make plans and basketball gods laugh. As the injuries kept coming and the hardship contracts piled up this summer, Mitchell instead ended up taking more shots than she ever had before for the Fever. (She ended up taking more shots than anyone in the WNBA.) Her usage rate was the highest that it had been in years. On this new-look, big-swing roster, Mitchell was shouldering more of the weight than ever in some ways. Yet she was carrying it more effectively, too.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n