WNBA: Expectations are high for Indiana Fever ahead of 2025 season

WNBA training camp is an exciting time of year for everyone, but for the Indiana Fever, the 2025 season will be one of unprecedented hype and expectations.

The Fever already have one of the league’s most popular players, reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark, who, along with up-and-coming All-Star center Aliyah Boston and dynamic shooting guard Kelsey Mitchell, led Indiana to its first playoff appearance in quite some time in 2024. They improved considerably throughout the course of the season, overcoming a 1-8 start to finish 20-20, and though they ended up falling to the Connecticut Sun in the first round of the postseason, the message had already been sent: The Indiana Fever are ready to be competitive again.

During the offseason, Indiana’s front office did its best to shift the team to win-now mode, making several key acquisitions in free agency and hiring a proven head coach to lead them. The Fever’s years-long rebuild is officially over, and their championship window is now open, but is it still too soon to realistically expect them to compete for a title?

Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark are capable of carrying the Fever

The primary reason to believe in the Fever for 2025 is obvious: They have two of the WNBA’s brightest young stars in Boston and Clark, and they’re only going to get better.

Drafted with back-to-back No. 1 overall picks in 2023 (Boston) and 2024 (Clark), it was more or less assumed that the duo would one day lead the Fever back to championship contention. The fit, in theory, seemed perfect; pairing an ultra-efficient low-post scorer who had anchored years of elite collegiate defenses with a guard boasting a generational offensive skillset would give the Fever a true foundation to build upon, and having blue-chip players at two separate positions would make surrounding them with complementary talent a relatively simple task.

It’s still very early in this new era of Indiana basketball, but the Fever are clearly headed in the right direction. Both Boston and Clark easily won Rookie of the Year honors in their respective debut seasons, and both made the WNBA All-Star Team in 2024. In their first season together, Indiana made the playoffs, breaking a seven-year drought during which the Fever went a combined 58-174.

For some of the dedicated fans who had sat through all those years of losing basketball, that playoff berth might be reason enough to be optimistic about what the Fever can accomplish in 2025, but it doesn’t accurately reflect just how well they’re set up for the future. Consider that, in the second half of the 2024 season, Clark averaged 22.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 10 assists per game, quickly shaking off the struggles typical of rookie point guards to earn a spot on the All-WNBA First Team. Boston, meanwhile, finished in the league’s top five in shooting percentage (52.9 percent) and offensive rebounding rate (10.7 percent) for the second-straight season, further cementing herself as one of the WNBA’s fiercest presences in the paint. Both players are growing up quickly, and it’s plenty reasonable to expect that they’ll take another step forward in 2025.

The Fever will be deeper and more experienced in 2025

Speaking of growing up, a major point of emphasis for the Fever this past offseason was to add a stronger veteran presence to their roster. Indiana loaded up in free agency, signing forwards DeWanna Bonner and Natasha Howard in free agency and trading for wing Sophie Cunningham. The Fever also added forward Brianna Turner and guard Sydney Colson, both of whom had played roles on WNBA Finals teams in Phoenix and Las Vegas, respectively.

These acquisitions not only give the Fever the veteran leadership they had previously been lacking, but also shore up their depth significantly. Bonner, Howard and Cunningham are all starting-caliber players; Bonner ranks fourth in WNBA history in total points scored (7,482) and has made six All-Star teams, while Howard is a two-time All-Star who averaged over 16 points per game in her last four seasons.

The Fever don’t need any of these new players to play at an All-Star level; they just need to take some of the pressure off of Boston, Clark and Mitchell. In her introductory press conference, Bonner praised Clark’s competitive nature and said that at this point in her career, she’s content with simply being “another puzzle piece.” Cunningham, meanwhile, raved that everyone in Indiana “wants to be a part of something special,” which has made the integration process an easy one.

Having that kind of buy-in from proven players is important for any team, and in the Fever’s case, it makes them significantly more dangerous as a unit than they were last season. Beyond the obvious interpersonal benefits of surrounding young talent with championship-proven vets, casting players like Bonner and Howard in tertiary offensive roles will make the Fever much tougher to match up against, especially if one or both of them end up coming off the bench.

Stephanie White brings a proven track record as Indiana’s head coach

The Fever also got more experienced on the sidelines. Stephanie White is back as Indiana’s head coach, having previously held the position from 2015-16, and with her comes the expectation that the team will make a deep playoff run.

It was White, after all, who was coaching the Sun last season when they defeated the Fever in the 2024 playoffs. She coached Connecticut to the WNBA semifinals in both of her seasons at the helm there, and was also responsible for leading the Fever to their last WNBA Finals run in 2015.

Just as she did back in her first stint in Indiana, White will be tasked with taking a playoff team and turning it into a championship-caliber one. For this, she has a simple philosophy:

When you’re building teams, it’s not about always just getting the best players. It’s about getting the best compliment of players who fit well together, who play well with one another, who work to bring the best out of one another.

Can the Fever defend well enough to be true contenders?

If there’s one aspect of the Fever that may still be reason for concern, it’s the team’s defense. Indiana ranked 11th in the WNBA in defensive rating, allowing 107.5 points per 100 possessions, and though the Fever were typically able to push the tempo and score in bunches, they lacked the ability to truly lock down and win low-scoring games—particularly against the better teams in the WNBA.

This is one area that White is surely looking to address, though it will be easier said than done. White’s Sun teams ranked among the best in the WNBA in defensive rating during her time there, but she also had a rock-solid defensive infrastructure to work with, with players like Bonner, Alyssa Thomas, DiJonai Carrington and others making coaching that end of the floor a breeze. Effort was never in question for those Connecticut teams, and the amount of experience up and down their rosters meant that White could challenge them.

The Fever will have their fair share of veterans, too, but for many of them, it will be their first season in Indiana. White and her staff will need to get everyone on the same page quickly, and that’s especially true for players like Boston, Clark and Mitchell, none of whom have been part of a strong defense at the WNBA level. There’s no question that the Fever will be able to score, but how well they’re able to defend could be the difference between a deep playoff run and an early exit.