{"id":577002,"date":"2026-04-11T01:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/577002\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T01:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:20:11","slug":"indiana-fever-sign-kelsey-mitchell-to-historic-1-4m-deal-ahead-of-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/577002\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Fever Sign Kelsey Mitchell to Historic $1.4M Deal Ahead of 2026 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caitlin Clark<\/a> and the Indiana Fever<\/a> have their sights set on the Championship during this offseason. In 2025, the Fever had an up-and-down season, or rather down then up. Indiana struggled to start the season, posting a 1-8 record after nine games. Clark herself had a tough year dealing with injuries; she was only available for 13 games, averaging 16.5 points per game, 8.8 assists and 5.0 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n

The Fever eventually rallied, going 24-20 on the season and receiving a No. 6 seed in the 2025 WNBA<\/a> Playoffs. Indiana defeated Allisha Gray and the No. 3 Atlanta Dream in a 2-1 first-round series. Indiana eventually lost to A’ja Wilson and the Los Vegas Aces 3-2 in the semifinals. This is the farthest Indiana has gone in the WNBA playoffs since 2015.<\/p>\n

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\"Indiana<\/p>\n

Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark warms up before a WNBA game.Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

The turnaround was in large part due to the strong play of guard Kelsey Mitchell. Mitchell played in all 44 regular-season games for Indiana, averaging 20.2 points per game and 3.4 assists per game. She was originally drafted with the No. 2 overall pick out of the Ohio State Buckeyes<\/a> in the 2018 WNBA Draft.<\/p>\n

Entering her ninth season, all with Fevers, she and Clark have formed a dynamic duo<\/a>, when they are on the court together, that is. In 2024, when coming back from the Olympic break until the start of the playoffs, Clark ranked third in the entire league in points per game at 23.1, with Mitchell ranked second at 23.4 per game. When discussing the upcoming season with NBC Sports during their NBA<\/a> pregame coverage, Clark gave high praise to Mitchell and her importance<\/a> to the team.<\/p>\n

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“…You know our first priority is to sign Kelsey Mitchell back,” Clark said on the broadcast. “Was first team all-WNBA last year, kind of my running mate in the back court. She makes it real easy for me. So there\u2019s nothing like playing for the Fever, I think we\u2019re going to be the favorite to win it all…”<\/p>\n

The WNBA and its WNBAPA reached a historic agreement <\/a>on March 20 that, amongst other changes, raised the salary cap for teams from the 1.5 million they received in 2025 to 7 million, along with raising the individual player salary max from $249,000.00 to 1.4 million. In response to the new cap structure, the Fever have made Mitchell the first 1 million dollar woman in franchise history.<\/p>\n

“BREAKING: 3x WNBA All-Star Kelsey Mitchell is finalizing a one-year, $1.4M supermax agreement to return to the Indiana Fever,” Yahoo Sports wrote on X. “per @chiney \ud83d\udcb0 Mitchell is now the first $1M+ player in Fever history.”<\/p>\n

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Indiana will start the season against Breanna Stewart and the New York Liberty<\/a> on April 25.<\/p>\n

Related: Geno Auriemma Makes Major Career Announcement After Final Four Loss<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Apr 10, 2026, where it first appeared in the WNBA<\/a> section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever have their sights set on the Championship during this offseason. In 2025,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[188707,4130,3444,435,1760,4129,2839,4806,436,99,434,70908],"class_list":{"0":"post-577002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-a39ja-wilson","9":"tag-allisha-gray","10":"tag-atlanta-dream","11":"tag-breanna-stewart","12":"tag-caitlin-clark","13":"tag-fever","14":"tag-indiana-fever","15":"tag-kelsey-mitchell","16":"tag-new-york-liberty","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-wnba","19":"tag-wnba-playoffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}