Indiana Fever's resilience shines in Commissioner's Cup championship

Yahoo

4 days ago

MINNEAPOLIS — Before storming into the locker room for a champagne shower celebration, Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White took off the pair of sneakers she had just finished coaching in. She had been wearing Caitlin Clark's Nike Kobe V Protro Player Edition sneakers, which sold out within minutes of going on the market on Monday. White knew they were precious and didn't want anything to get on them.
Only after handing them to a team staff member did she feel comfortable entering Indiana's locker room. The Fever's Commissioner's Cup party commenced.
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Clark didn't play in Indiana's 74-59 victory over the Minnesota Lynx in Tuesday's Commissioner's Cup title game because of a groin injury, but she was one of the leaders in the postgame festivities. Guard Sydney Colson said Clark was biting off bottle caps. Guard Lexie Hull said that she, Clark and wing Sophie Cunningham shot-gunned beers. After Colson finished a postgame media scrum outside of the Indiana locker room, Clark was among several Fever players who re-soaked the veteran guard in Round 2 of her celebratory champagne dousing. Indiana took home a title on Tuesday, but the lessons from the win should linger for longer than just a single night.
The Fever trailed by eight points after the first quarter — a daunting deficit against Minnesota, which had been undefeated at home this season. And then, Indiana's defense stiffened. The Fever held the Lynx to a season-low seven points in the second quarter as they went on an 18-0 run. Indy surrendered just 15 third-quarter points as MVP front-runner Napheesa Collier saw shot after shot rattle off the rim. An early Indiana deficit flipped into a lead. A lead became a win, which came with a trophy.
'We have a resilient group,' White said. 'They're tough, mentally, physically, they pull for one another. I'm proud of them that they can see it come to fruition.'
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It was hard not to see the impact Indiana had on defense. The Lynx surely felt the Fever's pressure, too. White noted that Indiana was more disruptive in passing lanes and made Minnesota's movement difficult. Indiana's point of attack, ball-screen defense was stout. Its communication, for the game's final three quarters, was excellent.
'Our intensity was a little bit better, our attention to detail was a little bit better,' White said. 'It's what we're capable of doing.'
Indiana has shown flashes of what its ceiling might be throughout the first six weeks of the season. It blew out the Chicago Sky on opening night as Clark recorded a triple-double, helping set championship expectations. The Fever's 14-point victory over the New York Liberty on June 14 has been another exclamation point — that win playing an instrumental role in Indy, not New York, competing for the $500,000 pot that accompanied Tuesday's contest.
But too often the Fever have had lulls. Defensive lapses and communication errors have limited Indiana to being just a bottom-half defense in the league thus far. Clark has dealt with two injuries, missing eight total games, and veteran wing DeWanna Bonner went from a starting role to the bench to getting waived — all in less than two months.
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'We gut-check all the time and we're resilient,' guard Kelsey Mitchell said after recording 12 points in Tuesday's win. 'It felt good to get a win under gut-checking circumstances.'
The circumstances that came with Tuesday's win mattered to the Fever. Yes, it was only one win and it won't even count in the league's regular-season standings for either team. But White said pregame that the matchup came with 'a little added juice and adrenaline.' Hull said her teammates were approaching the game with a higher attention to detail, knowing it would be especially important to be disciplined. Cunningham saw Tuesday as an opportunity for Indiana to jell.
'Not everyone has clicked on the same page, but once you do, it's gonna be scary, but you have to get there,' she said hours before tipoff.
Indiana's offense shot just 42.9 percent from the field, and no Fever player scored more than 16 points. Those numbers won't frighten opponents.
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But for a night, White said Indiana focused on making the easy play and not the home run play. The Fever won a meaningful game without their most meaningful player.
'You've seen this group grow,' White said. '(Clark's) a player who has a high usage rate, has the ball in her hands a lot, and learning to play without her, learning to make big plays and tough moments on both ends of the floor is important, because that's going to pay dividends down the stretch of the season for us.'
Added Colson: 'We were No. 1 today. We just need this mindset to fuel us forward.'
The challenge now for Indiana becomes building on Tuesday's success. Clark's return — she has missed three consecutive games — will lift the Fever's eventual ceiling, but the defensive standard has at the very least been made clear. The Lynx's 27 first-half points and point total for the game were season lows. Their 34.9 percent field goal percentage was also a season-low.
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Colson played 21 minutes off the bench, the most since Indiana's win over the Liberty. Aari McDonald not only pushed pace on offense, but White applauded the recently-signed Fever guard for setting the defensive tone, too. Lynx starting guards Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams combined to shoot only 5 of 21.
Indiana's holistic success is why even amid a topsy-turvey start to the season, the Commissioner's Cup celebration could be especially meaningful. Colson said it could be a turning point.
Fever players donned championship hats and T-shirts on the court after the win. Howard, after scoring 16 points and recording 12 rebounds, held an MVP trophy for her standout performance. When the festivities concluded on the court, Clark was the first player to enter Indiana's locker room.
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A celebration awaited. She didn't have to shoot from the logo, create in the pick-and-roll or generate transition opportunities for Indiana to win. She merely cheered on her teammates, and then soaked them after.
'It's nice to take a trophy home, but this isn't the ultimate goal,' White said. 'It's a goal, and we've got to continue to get better.'
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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