That Fever season was crazy, huh?

INDIANAPOLIS — I once sat in Indiana Farmers Coliseum after the Indiana Fever dropped their fifth-straight game to the Seattle Storm with a final score of 95-73. The Fever were 5-18 at the time and had recently changed head coaches. A rebuild, at the time headlined by NaLyssa Smith, had both just started and been going on for a while.

Kelsey Mitchell was on that Fever team, but she is just about the only recognizable figure from that squad still around today. After the 22-point loss to Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd, and the rest of the Storm it was time for postgame media interviews. Interim head coach Carlos Knox, as well as Mitchell and starting point guard Danielle Robinson, answered questions about Indiana's poor performance.

The Fever were playing in The Barn (as Smith called it) because Gainbridge Fieldhouse was being renovated. Later in the season, they played a few games at Butler's historic Hinkle Fieldhouse. For many reasons — an unproven coach, a new headlining player, a poor record, a bad identity, and no real home base — the 2022 Fever felt like afterthoughts.

That night, while Knox and players were fielding questions, that could not have felt more true. Myself and the two other reporters in attendance that night quite literally could not hear their answers. The press conference area was basically just a storage area next to a garage door and under the bleachers. As we were asking questions, a leaf blower was cleaning out the trash in the stands right above us and didn't move away even after waiting for some time.

The 22-point loss was the Fever's first home game in over two weeks. While they were gone on the road, All-Stars were announced for the 2022 season and Mitchell was a notable snub. As she heard a question about not being honored for her strong season, the leaf blower kicked up in volume. Nobody could hear her answer.

In my first three seasons covering the Fever, there were a lot of moments that felt like that. Thoughts of "how can this be happening to a professional sports team?" were somewhat frequent. One head coach clashed with me (and another reporter) on multiple occasions after being asked basic questions during losing seasons. There was a bouncy castle and slide right next to the court during games in Gainbridge Fieldhouse. That stuff just relates to the environment. The basketball was awful. They went 17-73 in my first three seasons covering the team. Many roster decisions from draft picks to trades to signings were... perplexing, to put it kindly. There were many well-intended people within the franchise, but the product was a mess.

Today, none of this even sounds real to a Fever fan. In 2023, they drafted Aliyah Boston. One year later, Caitlin Clark. Mitchell is still around. Stephanie White is once again the coach. Kelly Krauskopf is back heading the front office. And they're good. Really good.

Wait, what? To fans who started watching the team within the last three years/seasons, it isn't surprising at all. They've been ascending fast in that time with a trio of All-Star talents. In both 2024 (20 wins) and 2025 (24), the Fever won more games than I saw in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined.

An afterthought no longer. They're good and could have been even better if not decimated by injuries this season. The Las Vegas Aces just won the title and swept the best-of-seven WNBA Finals over the Phoenix Mercury. One round earlier, they played Indiana minus Clark — after five full-length regulation games, the series was still undecided.

So to many, this success is unsurprising. To me, though, the polarity is still so jarring. Some people that I've been seeing around the team for years still bring it up. On the night the Fever improved to 22-20 and all-but clinched a playoff spot, one person that's been around for more than a half decade opined to me "can you believe this is where the team is now?"

I can, because I've seen all the steps the Fever took to get here. But this season was truly something else. DeWanna Bonner, their All-Star free agent addition, played in nine games. Clark missed 31 outings with different injuries. Chloe Bibby, Damiris Dantas, Sydney Colson, Aari McDonald, and Sophie Cunningham were all at one point key contributors, and they all missed a good chunk of time.

Clark, McDonald, Bonner, Cunningham, and Dantas would be a great lineup. Add in Bibby and Colson off the bench and it's nearly a full rotation. That's what the Fever were missing this year. In a season filled with top-to-bottom change.

I will admit I was lower on the Fever than the consensus entering the season. Many saw them as top-tier title contenders, I thought they'd be in the fourth-to-sixth best team range mostly due to their newness and need to establish an identity. Those aren't bad things — and I still believed their future was bright.

At times, even with Clark healthy, I felt decent about my prediction. Indiana went 8-5 when their star point guard played — a win percentage that translates to a 27-win season. That's a too-simple way of looking at things, but a 27-17 record would have tied the Fever with the Mercury and the New York Liberty for... fourth, fifth, and sixth place. I guess my read on things wasn't so crazy.

But actually, it was crazy. Sure, the Fever were 8-5 with all three of Clark, Mitchell, and Boston in the lineup. But in some of those games, they were missing Cunningham. In others, Bonner, even White had some absences. Mitchell started the season banged up. McDonald, who was very effective, joined later.

If they all overlapped for any significant stretch of time, Indiana might have been great. My evidence: starting lineup data. When the Fever started Clark, Mitchell, Lexie Hull, Natasha Howard, and Boston this season, they went 6-3. Their two most common starting lineups without Clark (Odyssey Sims plus Mitchell, Hull, Howard, and Boston is one while McDonald, Mitchell, Cunningham, Howard, and Boston is the other) both went 5-4.

That Sims-led group was the starting lineups in the playoffs — a stretch of time in which the Fever beat the Atlanta Dream in a series then nearly beat the champs. All of this is to say that when White had time to build a system around the players she had available, the Fever were really good.

She rarely did. Imagine if White had time to build anything with the team's best players all together. That almost never happened. That's why this season was crazy. So many absences and hurdles to clear, so little continuity. The only constant was change.

If there are more constants next season, and who knows with a new CBA coming, the Fever could be truly great. I can tell you now, if they have even a decent free agent period my prediction for where they finish next season will be much higher. I've seen what White can be with a lesser version of the team she expected to have. Imagine what she can do in a more normal season.

And a much less crazy one at that.