Sky<\/a>-Fever matchup of the season, in which the Fever rolled to a 113-90 victory, here\u2019s a question with an obvious answer:<\/p>\nWhat does it take to build a historically good offense?<\/p>\n
Historically good players.<\/p>\n
So says Sky coach Tyler Marsh, who was an assistant on that 2023 Aces team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re loaded, so there\u2019s no surprise,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re extremely talented individually. They run with great pace. They can hurt you in the half court. Steph is a great coach. Put all those things together, it\u2019s no surprise where they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all White\u2019s pleading about defense \u2014 the Fever rank only 11th in defensive rating \u2014 she admits it\u2019s pretty fun to coach a group this loaded.<\/p>\n
The Fever have not one but two MVP candidates: Caitlin Clark, one of the most perceptive passers the league has seen, and Kelsey Mitchell, one of its most unstoppable scorers.<\/p>\n
Ask almost any WNBA player who the toughest cover in the league is the answer tends to be Mitchell. This season, her efficiency has elevated her into historic company. Mitchell is averaging 24.7 points on 50\/44\/85 shooting splits, numbers comparable to all-time great Diana Taurasi in 2006.<\/p>\n
Asked whether it feels like the Fever are producing a historically good offense, the nine-year veteran said not really.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always progress to be made, honestly,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cPeople see that it\u2019s been good. Imagine what it could be if you actually cleaned up some things.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another irony. For all their offensive prowess, the Fever are still frustratingly turnover-prone.<\/p>\n
Cleaning that up would make them even scarier. But whether the fifth-place Fever make a serious championship run will depend more on whether they can defend.<\/p>\n
White is right: They aren\u2019t the only team that can score.<\/p>\n
The third- and fourth-best offenses in WNBA history belong to the 2026 Lynx and Aces.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t get caught up in thinking we can outscore everybody,\u201d White said. \u201cWe can outscore some people, but we can\u2019t outscore everybody. When you\u2019re trying to accomplish what we\u2019re trying to accomplish, we can\u2019t be lulled into thinking that\u2019s going to be enough.<\/p>\n
The Fever\u2019s record-setting pace isn\u2019t happening in isolation. The WNBA is simply a higher-scoring league in 2026.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of explanations: a greater emphasis on three-pointers, a sharper focus on analytically valuable shots and more free-throw attempts as the game is officiated more tightly.<\/p>\n
The Fever, and Clark in particular, sit at the intersection of it all.<\/p>\n
Clark represents a new kind of point guard: a great playmaker who also takes half her shots from three. Players like Sabrina Ionescu foreshadowed her arrival, but Clark has stretched the combination to its extreme.<\/p>\n
Loaded indeed.<\/p>\n
Before the game, White called Clark and Mitchell two of the most gifted guards in the league. She also did not, as this column nearly did, forget to mention Aliyah Boston, one of the league\u2019s premier post players, who missed the game against the Sky.<\/p>\n
But White always returns to where her heart is:<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, you\u2019ve got to be able to defend in our sport to be able to compete for championships.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the lead-up to the Bears\u2019 season \u2014 have you heard that it\u2019s football season? \u2014 coach Ben…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-823847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823847","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=823847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}