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Caitlin Clark dedicated her offseason to trying her hand at golf, supporting her boyfriend Connor McCaffery’s Butler Bulldogs, and returning to Des Moines to watch her Iowa Hawkeyes. Besides all of that, she watched the Indiana Fever get to work to surround her, Aliyah Boston, and Kelsey Mitchell with the right pieces to compete for the WNBA championship.
Clark hyped up all the moves her franchise completed in the last couple of months, adding a series of fire emojis to celebrate how stacked the Fever are after a busy offseason.
Besides re-signing Kelsey Mitchell for another year, the Indiana Fever landed Jaelyn Brown and Sophie Cunningham in a three-team trade with the Phoenix Mercury and Dallas Wings. DeWanna Bonner and Natasha Howard joined as free agents before Sydney Colson and Brianna Turner did the same.
These moves took the Indiana Fever from being a potential playoff team to the title conversation. Even Minnesota Lynx star Courtney Williams admitted that Indiana would be “scary” for some teams after adding all the pieces they put together.
The Fever finished with a 20-20 record last season, enough to rank sixth in the league. They lost to the Connecticut Sun in the first round of the playoffs, but the expectations are way higher this season. Caitlin Clark showed that she could lead this team to compete against anybody in the league, but the bar will be higher once she starts her second year in the WNBA.
Seattle Storm star shoots down anti-Caitlin Clark narrative from 2024 season
Seattle Storm veteran Lexie Brown also discussed the Indiana Fever’s offseason moves. After many tried to push the narrative that WNBA veterans hated Caitlin Clark, Brown said that seeing Bonner, Howard, and Cunningham signing and being excited about joining forces with Clark demonstrated that those claims were baseless.
“I think all the noise from last year, obviously it’s gonna be there, but you add a ton of veterans that supposedly were ‘hating’ on the rookies, but all wanted to go play with her. Like, they wasn’t hating,” Brown said on the Full Circle Podcast on Feb. 8.
“They was pissed that we had to chase her around all the time. But if you get the opportunity to play next to a player like that you’re gonna take it.”
The Indiana Fever has high expectations now, although at least three teams will try to take them out of the way for the championship.
Edited by Dipayan Moitra
