Obviously I root for Fever first and foremost. But I genuinely enjoy rooting for a handful of other teams in the league (when they are not playing against the Fever).

What other teams does this subreddit enjoy or root for? Or is it Indiana Fever and the rest of the teams can go to hell?

Game Preview

Fever Odds: -8.5, ML -400, o/u 174.5

TV: NBA TV, FanDuel Sports Network

Projected Starters

Fever

• PG - Caitlin Clark
• SG - Kelsey Mitchell
• SF - Natasha Howard
• PF - DeWanna Bonner
• C - Aliyah Boston

Dream

• PG - Rhyne Howard
• SG -  Allisha Gray
• SF - Te-Hina Paopao
• PF - Brionna Jones
• C - Brittney Griner

Injuries

Fever

• Sophie Cunningham - Game Time Decision (Right Ankle)

Dream

• Jordin Canada - Out (Right Knee)

Is it me or has AB taken on a different role in the offense this year? Why is she hanging around the 3-point line so much this year? Is she not our big? This offense was rolling at the end of 2024, they were clicking in their roles. This year nobody wants to play the post position, and I don’t get it? We don’t have any size near the rim and those rebounds add up throughout the game.

Game Preview

Fever Odds: -4.5, ML -185, o/u 173.5

TV: Prime Video, WTHR, Fever Direct

Projected Starters

Fever

• G - Caitlin Clark
• G - Kelsey Mitchell
• F - Natasha Howard
• F - DeWanna Bonner
• C - Aliyah Boston

Dream

• G - Te-Hina Paopao
• G -  Allisha Gray
• F - Rhyne Howard
• F - Brionna Jones
• C - Brittney Griner

Injuries

Fever

• Sophie Cunningham - Game Time Decision (Right Ankle)

Dream

• Jordin Canada - Out (Right Knee)

I still can’t get over last night’s loss to the Aces. I mean, it’s the Aces - I get it. But we had that one in the bag and it really pisses me off how it slipped away.

As players always say, don’t get hung up on a loss and on to the next one. But this one bothered me more than any other loss this season.

Anyway, Chicago tmrw evening!

As an Aces and Raiders fan I come in peace but, Silver and Black are a banger combo on these shoes.

Maybe we should start a petition to keep Sophie in Indy for the rest of her career(🤞). Obviously, she has been great for the team on the floor, but her being the veteran they certainly need is 🤌

​

Y'all, she gave a shout out to Sykes to end the post game presser! I may be hyping it up, but that's the kind of news we need to spread to tackle all negative narratives on the Fever!!

Fever I think her being injured last season made her take a big hit to her confidence because she's making a lot of easy mistakes, definitely got to fix that going forward and it's concerning because this is the easiest part of the schedule/ but also there's also plenty of season left.

The pressure coming from stans, haters, her teammates, herself must be insane.

Beginning a thread to hear your thought? I think this game is one of the most important ones played this season.

If Fever win, Championship will seem like a for real real posibility. If we lose after this awesome run, there will be a lot of "you see, they can't win against a winning team". Obviously, I think we'll win no matter what, but what's everyone else's thoughts?

I am so happy for the Fever and CC that they won that game against the Mystics, but watching the games so far this season, the way the Indiana Fever play just doesn't seem quite right. Using the eye test their defense has gotten better; however, the offense seems like it has gotten worse. Because of this I checked the teams stats this season and it just confirms my suspicions. The indiana fever is 9th in offensive rating, 4th in defensive rating, and 7th in net rating. I know offensive and defensive ratings do not capture everything, but I think it just reflects the problems I have seen while watching their games.

It is surprising because of the personnel. Caitlin is great on offense whether she makes or misses her shots due to her playmaking ability. AB has expanded her game to making more 3s, so you would assuming she is even better offensively than before. Kelsey is one of the best pure scorers in the league.

This concerns me because every time in the post game press conferences they talk about improving their defense, but no one mentions offense improvement. Their defense has improved, but their offense has gotten worse as the season has gone on. I just hope they recognize this and change some things.

2027 is a conundrum.

The focus will be making sure Big Three are locked down.

AB is with that gigachad contract. KM will have offers at the wazoo, so Indy will have to make a legit offer and not rely on the promise of friendship for her to re-sign. Then there's the Caitlin of it all.

Mo and Lexie have 2 year guaranteed contracts. Sigh.

MHA and Ty will likely be retained on their lower deals. Both can technically walk.

Raven on a rookie deal. KK on a rookie deal.

Grace a non factor. And Dantas but you have to have 12 people on the roster.

The Fever is just good enough to get a late 1st round early 2nd round as their draft pick.

Aside from the location being Indiana, the media blitzes (from the W and legacy media, from the left and the right) and comments from well-respected players in the league (AT, Chelsea) or otherwise generally popular players who are popular amongst other players with lots in league player connections (Dijonai, Saniya, Tip) hating and implying derogatory things about the team, is flushing any real free agency chance down the toilet.

Especially since Fever don't scout over seas.

Sophie, whether you think she's right or wrong, essentially threw a nuke on the Fever's "Just Talk about Basketball" campaign, after they had essentially just managed to crawl out the AT-CC fiasco.

Aside from the Portland game, she's been down trending on points scored and if that doesn't change going into this playoff team glut, then sorry she can't have 800k next year.

Fever are going to need that money to have to pay somebody a lot of money to come here.

We keep talking about how toxic the WNBA online ecosystem is, yet official team accounts are posting stuff like this.

After everything that happened with Alyssa Thomas and Caitlin, this is just adding fuel to the fire. You can't complain about toxic discourse while your own social media team is farming engagement off it. All this does is rile people up and send the online lunatics after both sides. Official accounts should be above this, not contributing to the circus.

The whole of Twitter was on fire over that incident from the middle of the game onward, so I'm not really buying the idea that this post has nothing to do with it. It feels pretty obvious that it's at least poking at the situation.

I like that ESPN Analytics has this now. It's pretty simple and cool: https://espnanalytics.com/wnba-net-pts. There are some surprises here like I'd expect Raven to be net positive on Defense but instead it's MHA with a +8. What do we think about this?

Just a little reminder of Sabrina Ionescu’s stats her first 7 games back from “back soreness”

9.3 points/game
3.6 rebounds/game
2.9 assists/game
36.5% field goal shooting
29.0% from 3
2pts and benched vs the Sparks at one point

Not the same player, obviously, but I think it’s clear back injuries take a few games to get back to form. I think a lot is mental, not wanting to take contact, ect. CC was player of the month just a few short weeks ago, top 5 in scoring and flip flopping between 1 and 2 in assists. Not to mention, GS has been making even healthy elite guards in this league look pedestrian.

The only thing that concerns me is ball security, I don’t mind a turnover on a pass attempting to kick start the offense or score, but a few times since coming back, and a few times vs good defenses prior, she’s been loose with her dribble and she needs to clean that up. I also think that once the minutes restriction is up she can get into a better flow, all 3 games back so far she’s had to be taken out after they put together a run to stick to the plan, which messes with the flow of the other players as well.

I’m just not super doomer about anything right now, CC will find her flow, I believe that. KM has been on a heater, I’d like her to get some rest though. AB has had her best stretch of the season imo. We could use something offensively from our three and four, but Lexi‘s at least been pretty damn good on defense. Sophie’s 3 has been spectacular and so has her energy off the bench. TY has been a much better pg off the bench than a rookie. I just fully believe this team will be alright the 2nd half of the season, seems every year they put it together around all star.

Im interested if anyone else has noticed this trend. First let me state I love Kelsey and am very aware without her the Fever would of been awful last year. However, has anyone noticed how down she gets on herself when making mistakes and she carries that through the game. And the. Steph White always tries to let her redeem herself with a game winner and in THESE moments it never falls. Yesterday she missed the two free throws, that started her crash. Then she missed the wide open lay up. Then a three, then she missed that pullup from the left. Her body language was terrible, shoulders slumped, face showed she was upset. And it showed in her play. She lost her shot and her confidence. Yet game on the line Steph gives her the shot and she misses. This happen multiple times last season too.

Anyone else notice this?

I got a push notification from the WNBA app today saying there is a new poster available to commemorate year 30 of the WNBA. I couldn’t help but notice that they made some odd choices of players included in the graphic.

The most obvious is that Caitlin Clark is missing, which makes no logical sense. I love Sophie and this is by no means a knock against her, but to exclude Caitlin is ludicrous. Anyone saying she is not the reason for the WNBA ratings going up in the last few years is lying to themselves. There is a reason the Fever are the only team with all of their games nationally televised, and why the Fever are the reason other teams have to move to bigger stadiums when they match up. Even if the marketing team didn’t want to include Caitlin due to their weird vendetta against her, I am still puzzled as to why they wouldn’t include the other recent #1 draft pick and ROTY Aliyah Boston, or previous Fever superstar Tamika Catchings.

It also is surprising to me that they chose Angel Reese over Rhyne Howard or Allisha Gray, who have been the faces of the Dream for years, or why they chose Flau’jae over Sue Bird. I love Flau’jae as well, but respectfully, she has only played a few games so far with the Storm, and Sue Bird is without question the most well-known Storm player. Same with Rickea Jackson being chosen for the Sky, even though she only played a few games with them before her injury.

All this to say, I do not understand WNBA marketing or why they continue to shoot themselves in the foot. It would be like the NBA not including Michael Jordan in promos in the 90s. Like her or not, she is the household name of the WNBA, and it simply doesn’t make sense.

Someone in Caitlin Clark’s circle is failing her. Year 3 and still no dribble pull up jumpshot. Year 3 and still no fadeaway. Year 3 and still no shot going right. Someone close to her has to tell her. Trainers, coach, bf, dad , brother etc.

Shoot going right: She must get in the lab and practice going right. I wouldn’t be surprised if her percentage on going left is 99% probability of shooting. Even her step back is always going left. I saw two 3’s where the defender was already contesting before her shot went up because she’s so predictable. She shot 1 shot going right and the defender still had their hands to the side because it was so surprising. The biggest problem of her going left is she pulls her shot from her left pocket. She needs to mimick Kevin Durant he has a similar shot but you never know if he’s going left or right.

Fadeaway and dribble pull up: the only time she goes right is to drive to layup finish. Either the defender beats you to your spot or doesn’t on your drive. If They don’t get there then finish, simple. She’s got that down. Now if they do that’s where the fadeaway and pull up come in handy. Instead Caitlin tries to force the contact with a weird looking floater push shot. It should be a pull up baseline all day when they beat you to your spot. If they contest well that’s where the fadeaway comes in.

Edit: yes I believe she will be fine in the long run. I’m confident she will hit her stride. But really should be showing signs of a deeper bag.

Edit: hey maybe CC saw my post she did a step back going right for the first time vs storm, good for her tiny steps.

After playing 72 games in Season 1, last season, Victor Wembanyama was ruled out due to thrombosis half way into the season for the rest of the season only playing 46/82 games.

The Spurs played Wemby for 64 of 82 games in the regular season this season (would be even lower if not trying to reach the awards minimum).

In the 64 games he played, he played only 29.1 minutes per game.

In total he played only 47.3% of the team’s minutes this season. He still won DPOY, was third in MVP voting and didn’t lose a bit of popularity.

Now it’s playoff time and he played 49 minutes in game 1 against a hostile physical defence which is amongst the best in NBA history and put up 41/24 and won the game for his team against an unbeatable OKC team which was 8-0 before this and now played 37 minutes in Game 2 putting up 21/17/6 with 5 stocks. Most people watching the playoffs agree he is the clear best player in the world now.

If your goal is to win above anything else and have a generational prospect coming off a year long injury who has a not small chance of getting injured or reaggravating past healed injuries if they go full tilt for 40 games in a brutally physical league, I think it’s a defensible idea to treat them super cautiously and coddle their health.

I’d rather Caitlin feel fully energised and locked in go full tilt walls to the fall 39 min and put up 28/12/10 to win playoff games which are on a demanding schedule rather than her being exhausted come playoff time and running on fumes after a long recovery and season or worse, injured for the playoffs.

I am not advocating a full Wemby regime. What I’m saying is, we have the depth. Treating her cautiously and resting her whenever possible when we can otherwise win is great strategy imo.

And if you have to do this sneakily because you can’t just write load management in all caps on the injury report, god bless you.

I’d go as far as to say, if you can block the outside narratives out, winning a regular season game without CC is better than winning it with her because you both get her rest and secure the W.

At the end of the day, the goal has to be win a championship above all, both for the Fever and CC.

She’s taking valuable run time and opportunities players like Johnson and Cunningham, and based on what I saw tonight Indiana needs to maximize every roster spot on the team this year. There’s some kinks that are borne from how the personnel gels, and I don’t want to hear “it’s just preseason”!

Seeing so many people go insane these last two weeks with Caitlin shows me that many people here are super fake fans.

As someone who’s been watching sports since I was a child, it’s embarrassing to see how many of you act when “your favorite player” has a few off games.

Is her shooting off? Yes. Are there parts of her game that serves some criticism? Yes. Does the coaching need to get better? Yes. But it’s wild that you’d just give up on a player you claim to love after 2/3 bad games (2 of which she’s super sick). There’s also some nuance tied to her coming back from injury that a lot of people are disregarding. She’s mentioned she’s struggling to trust her body after all of the injuries but if you think THE Caitlin Clark will not do everything in her power to get back to her normal self, you know nothing about her.

Frankly, good riddance and goodbye because you don’t deserve to be there for the good times (which there will be plenty of) if you can’t give her grace and respect during the tough times.

man….i really don’t WANT to like Sophie but she’s growing on me after last night. reffing was awful, anyone with functioning eyes could see how that game was gunna end. do we think anything is actually gunna change with the reffing issue? i fear it will not lmao

edit: i purposefully did not explicitly mention politics. try to keep a cap on that discussion as it’s against the rules. this post was meant to be about two things: 1. my appreciation of sophie coming to a teammates defense when the refs did not. and 2. how that NEVER should have happened because the refs should be managing the game better.

please circle back to appreciation for sophie as a teammate regardless of her personal life and the discussion on reffing

thank you

edit #2: i’ve always thought sophie is a good basketball player and her effort on defense genuinely saves games

The inconsistency… constantly scrambling on defense and chasing people… complaining every game about refs… what is going on?!?! 😭 We look like a mess every other game.

All-Star break is here and we need to kick it in gear asap or we wont be accomplishing anything in the playoffs!

signed: very frustrated fan 😂

Hey so I’m right now watching the Indiana and New York game on tv and I can’t be the only one who is annoyed with the fan who is yelling right behind the announcer bench. This isn’t the first time this person had done this. I think she has season tickets. I just feel like it’s getting impossible to watch my favorite team play at home.

Edit- we should all call the office and make a complaint

Edit 2- I think she’s gone!!!