Fever make surprise run to WNBA semifinals without Clark

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Indiana Fever finally got a chance to celebrate Thursday night in Atlanta.

A smiling Caitlin Clark, dressed again in street clothes, rushed the court to hug her teammates. The tone in coach Stephanie White’s voice changed between the first two questions of her postgame news conference. And three-time All-Star guard Kelsey Mitchell recounted her journey here, to her first WNBA semifinal appearance — the one nobody saw coming just a few weeks ago.

Yes, this team defied the odds by playing their way — with grit, resilience and an uncanny ability to adapt to any obstacle that threatened to derail their postseason aspirations.

“I’ve had so many coaches in eight years, I’ve been on the worst record teams in the Indiana Fever (history), so I know where my career started at,” Mitchell said after the sixth-seeded Fever rallied in the final minute to beat the third-seeded Dream 87-85 in a decisive Game 3. “I know what I’ve had to go through to kind of be in this position, and I’ve never had a coach that poured into me respectfully, like Steph has. I’ve never felt that as a pro.”

The truth is White needed Mitchell every bit as much, maybe even more, than Mitchell needed that tight bond with the league’s 2023 Coach of the Year.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way after general manager Amber Cox spent the offseason pulling together a strong, deep and championship-experienced supporting cast around Clark, the 2024 Rookie of the Year, to turn Indiana into a title contender.

But nothing went according to plan.

Six-time All-Star forward DeWanna Bonner made only three starts and played in just nine games before she was released.

The seemingly indestructible Clark sat out one preseason game with a left leg injury, missed five more with an injured left quadriceps and four more with a left groin injury before hurting her right groin near the end of a July 15 game at Connecticut that would eventually end her season.

Guards Sydney Colson and Aari McDonald suffered season-ending injuries in the same Aug. 7 game at Phoenix and just when guard Sophie Cunningham started taking off, she suffered a season-ending right knee injury Aug. 17 at Connecticut, leaving the Fever without a natural point guard for the final month of the regular season.

But with their playoff hopes teetering, the snakebitten Fever found an unexpected answer to that massive hole — relying on All-Star center Aliyah Boston’s evolving passing game and watching Mitchell thriving as both a ball distributor and the team’s top scorer at 20.2 points per game.

“This group is just really special,” White said. “We say it pretty much ad nauseum, but it’s the resilience, the flexibility, the welcoming and inclusive nature of this team, their selflessness to pull for the we over the me, to let each teammate be who they are and shine at their best and to lift them up. In those moments, you know, I think that’s good for 12 or 15 points. It just is, and you couple that with the resilience, the toughness, the grit, the fight, the scrappiness and you always give yourself a chance.”

They proved it by winning the league’s Commissioner Cup title without Clark and again by closing the regular season with five wins in their final seven games, including each of the last three, to earn the No. 6 seed.

They did it again by rebounding from an 80-68 Game 1 loss by winning two elimination games — 77-60 on their home court and then back in Atlanta by scoring the final seven points, thanks in large part to five double-digit scorers and Lexie Hull’s steal with 4.8 seconds to play.

“I’m grateful and happy to be back in the semifinals again,” said Natasha Howard, who started her career in 2015 with Indiana before winning three WNBA titles and was selected the league’s 2019 Defensive Player of the Year. “I’m just so excited that we’re back here again with this group of young women and the job is not done yet.”

Next up is a best-of-five series that begins Sunday in Las Vegas against three-time MVP A’ja Wilson, an Aces franchise that captured WNBA crowns in 2022 and 2023 and a team that won its final 16 regular season games to finish second and rebounded from its first loss in 44 days by beating Seattle in Game 3.

Could they come up with one more surprise? Don’t count Indiana out.

“This group has been through every situation imaginable this year and we knew that we just had to keep it tight,” White said. “I love riding with these guys, I love coaching them and I’m just so incredibly proud of them.”

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