Indiana Fever first home WNBA playoffs game since 2016 due to format change

The WNBA changed its playoff format in part due to chartered flights making travel easier. It benefits lower-seeded teams like the Fever.Game 2: Fever vs Dream, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

INDIANAPOLIS — In last year’s WNBA Playoffs, the last thing Connecticut Sun coach Stephanie White wanted to do was coach a playoff game in Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

Potentially heading into Indianapolis as the opponents, White knew that the crowd would be rowdy. Indiana Fever fans had shown up all year after Caitlin Clark was drafted, watching the transformation into a playoff team.

Luckily for White and her Sun team, though, they eliminated the Fever in the first round in two games — both hosted at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, because of the league’s formatting that gave the higher seed the first two games of the best-of-three series.

“I remember a year ago in Connecticut, it was like, ‘Thank God we didn’t have to go back to Indiana,’” White, who left Connecticut following the 2024 season to coach the Fever, said.

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Those days of entering the playoffs without a guaranteed home game are over. The WNBA changed the first-round format to alternating home court in a best-of-3 series with the 2025 season with the higher seed hosting the first and, if necessary, third games.

This format is more accessible because all teams now fly charter, which only changed at the beginning of the 2024 season. 

And that means that on Tuesday, the Fever will get their first playoff home game since 2016.

“I think last year, our fans were robbed of getting to be part of the playoff experience,” Fever guard Lexie Hull, one of five players who returned from the 2024 team, said. “I mean, watching the Pacers in the playoffs, the fans really do show out, and Gainbridge is loud and crazy and electric. To be able to host a game there and be able to bring this to them, and have a really fun one, I think we’re really excited about it.”

Indiana’s active roster in 2016 consisted of Tamika Catchings, a Fever legend, who was playing her final year in the league; Briann January, who is now a Fever assistant coach; and Erica Wheeler, who spent multiple years with the Fever in separate stints and now plays for the Seattle Storm. White was in the second year of her first stint as the Fever’s coach.

No active Fever player was on the roster when Indiana last hosted a playoff game. Natasha Howard, the longest-tenured player on Indiana’s roster this year, was part of the Fever from 2014-15 before being traded to Minnesota. Kelsey Mitchell was drafted by the Fever in 2018, and she didn’t make the playoffs in the first six years she was on the team.

This time around, the Fever hope that playing at home to Gainbridge Fieldhouse, in front of 17,000 screaming fans, will give them the boost they need to even the series.

“I think it gives ourselves a chance to stay in a hunt of things,” Mitchell said. “We really trying to figure out, you know, a way to come back (to Atlanta for Game 3). We would like to play again, so we’re gonna have to take the necessary steps to be at our best. I would like to think that being back at home can kind of give us a sense of comfort, so hopefully we could use it for what it’s worth and not take it for granted.”

Atlanta leads the series 1-0 after an 80-68 win at Gateway Center on Sunday afternoon. The Fever will need to win on Tuesday night to keep the series alive, which would send it back to Atlanta for a decisive Game 3 on Thursday.

Chloe Peterson is the Indiana Fever beat reporter for IndyStar. Reach her at capeterson@gannett.com or follow her on X at @chloepeterson67. Get IndyStar’s Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Caitlin Clark Fever newsletter.