The Indiana Fever became the most popular team in the WNBA by an exponential factor after drafting Caitlin Clark. Fever fans pack every road game and help put up huge ratings every time the team is on national TV. Clark is the most celebrated player of the modern era, but her legions of fans have never seen her win a championship. Clark failed to win a state championship in high school at Dowling Catholic, and she came up just short of a national championship during her legendary four years with the Iowa Hawkeyes in college. Clark\u2019s pursuit of her first true ring is one of the most magnetic storylines in basketball right now with so many people around the world heavily invested in her journey.<\/p>\n
Another WNBA season ended for Clark on Thursday night without a championship. The Las Vegas Aces beat the Fever, 94-83, in the decisive Game 3 to win the first-round series. It\u2019s the second straight year the Aces have knocked the Fever out of the playoffs. Las Vegas is a modern-day dynasty, with three championships (2022, 2023, and 2025) led by superstar A\u2019Ja Wilson, who is on the brink of a record-setting fifth league MVP. The Aces are where the Fever want to be, but they\u2019re still a few pieces away.<\/p>\n
The Aces won the series because the Aces are the better team. It\u2019s as simple as that. This should not be a controversial comment for a team as decorated as Las Vegas, especially when it was the No. 3 seed compared to Indiana\u2019s No. 6 seed entering the playoffs. Yet, the Fever\u2019s massive fanbase largely believes the team was screwed by the league and\/or the refs, and that there\u2019s some grand conspiracy to keep Clark from a title. The Fever only added fuel to the fire by pointing out the free-throw discrepancy in Game 3 \u2014 35 attempts for Vegas, 20 for Indiana \u2014 after the game.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the refs\u2019 job to make sure the free throw numbers are even at the end of the game. It\u2019s their job to call the game fairly. Vegas is going to draw more fouls because they have a more powerful interior attack than the Fever. You draw fouls by going to the basket, not by chucking jumpers. Of course, the free throw discrepancy is just a small part of it. Fever fans also wanted A\u2019Ja Wilson suspended for Game 3 after she walked near the stands to confront an Indiana fan in Game 2. Wilson should not have done that, and she should have been ejected for it according to the rulebook<\/a>. Suspending her for Game 3 is a stretch though, and just sounds like sour grapes from Indiana fans.<\/p>\n The Aces have special chemistry with Wilson, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray as the core of their dynasty. Las Vegas\u2019 depth is worse than ever this year, especially after NaLyssa Smith\u2019s season-ending injury<\/a>, but it hasn\u2019t really mattered. Becky Hammon is an elite head coach, and she knows how to get the most out of her group. It sure helps when you have three superstars, led by the best player in the world \u2014 who certainly has a strong case to be considered the best player of all-time. Unlike Clark, Wilson excels on both ends of the floor, and that\u2019s kind of an unavoidable problem for Indiana.<\/p>\n The Fever broke the WNBA record for offensive efficiency this year. They also only finished No. 8 in defensive efficiency, the worst of any playoff team. Clark is not a good defender, and neither is backcourt mate Kelsey Mitchell. Both are MVP-caliber offensive players, but good teams can take advantage of their defensive deficiencies in the right matchups. Unless the Fever are going to make the incredibly bold decision to trade Mitchell, they\u2019re just going to have to live with having a poor defensive backcourt. That puts more pressure on the rest of the roster to be better than it is right now.<\/p>\n What Indiana really needs is an upgrade at power forward. The Fever had a lot of different options at the four this year with Monique Billings, Myisha Hines-Allen, and Makayla Timpson all giving them minutes, but none of them were good enough. Indiana needs a strong defensive front court partner next to Aliyah Boston \u2014 who is not a great defender herself \u2014 who also won\u2019t ruin their spacing on offense. That\u2019s an extremely hard player to find, because there are only so many people in the world with that skill set.<\/p>\n The bench could use an upgrade, too. They need a rim-protecting center who can effectively spell Boston. Is it best to actually move Boston to the four and play her next to a shot-blocking five? Maybe, but it would make Indiana a bit slower overall. I liked what rookie Raven Johnson gave to the Fever late in the season, and they need to keep developing her. Lexie Hull was a nice contributor all year, and Sophie Cunningham gave the team some good minutes before she went AWOL in the playoffs by finishing -39 in the three games against Vegas. Cunningham has the 3-and-D skill set the Fever need, but she\u2019s still a pretty limited player overall.<\/p>\n The margins are just really slim at the top of the league. The Fever are a finesse team. They need a smash-mouth component. Clark, Mitchell, and Boston are all terrific, but do they fit well enough together to eventually win a championship? The Aces get way more from Wilson and Young defensively than the Fever get from any of their three stars. The margins are only going to get slimmer once Clark is on a max contract after her rookie deal expires.<\/p>\n Back to Game 3. Fever fans are complaining about this foul on Kelsey Mitchell in the final three minutes. I get it, but it\u2019s a bang-bang play, and a good example of why basketball is the hardest sport to officiate. Did Mitchell get fouled by Gray here? If it\u2019s a clean strip, then it\u2019s clearly a foul on Mitchell afterwards. It\u2019s hard to tell.<\/p>\n Playoff basketball is the best, but it\u2019s not for the faint of heart. Clark and Mitchell had poor shooting nights in Game 3 \u2014 combining to go 13-of-41 from the field \u2014 and their defense isn\u2019t good enough to overcome that. That\u2019s why the Fever lost, not because the league doesn\u2019t want Clark to win a championship for whatever racist reasons<\/a> some new WNBA fans believe.<\/p>\n The Fever aren\u2019t good enough to win a title yet. They were, after all, only a No. 6 seed in the playoffs. Indiana can get Clark her first real ring eventually, but they\u2019re still a couple pieces away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Indiana Fever became the most popular team in the WNBA by an exponential factor after drafting Caitlin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-868411","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\/868411","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=868411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}