Indiana Fever Part Ways With Katie Lou Samuelson Amid Busy WNBA Offseason

The Indiana Fever have been extremely busy throughout this WNBA offseason.

Over the past few weeks alone, they’ve re-signed guard Kelsey Mitchell, signed elite wings DeWanna Bonner and Natasha Howard along with former WNBA champion guard Sydney Colson, and traded for Sophie Cunningham and Jaelyn Brown.

Indiana has received a ton of praise for making these moves. However, with so many players coming on board, it also meant that the Fever would need to offload some of their 2024 rostered players to make room.

They included forward NaLyssa Smith in a trade package to acquire Cunningham and Brown and also waived Grace Berger. However, one of the most surprising roster decisions the Fever have made came on Monday, when they announced on X, “we have mutually parted ways with forward Katie Lou Samuelson.

“wishing you all the best, Lou ❤️”.

It’s interesting that the Fever called it “mutually parting ways”, which isn’t something they did when announcing that they had waived Grace Berger.

ESPN insider Alexa Philippou added context to this move by writing on X, “Sources tell ESPN conversations between Samuelson & Indiana regarding buyout terms have been happening over the past week. In that span she’s also been in discussion with four teams as potential next destinations

“Samuelson will hit the wire for 5 days, then becomes a free agent”.

There was a surplus of players at the wing position after Bonner, Howard, and Brown came on board (not to mention that Indiana still has Lexie Hull), which likely factored into this decision.

It surely won’t take Samuelson (who has played with a different team every season of her WNBA career) long to find a new squad this offseason.