INDIANAPOLIS — Stephanie White said she is thrilled about every aspect of returning to her home state for her second stint as Indiana Fever head coach. But the chance to work with the past two WNBA Rookie of the Year award winners, Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston, is an especially strong draw.
“You’ve got the point guard and the center … you have the bookends that you want to build around,” White said Monday at a news conference at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. “These two are the best. There’s so many things they do well right now. And you saw the difference between the beginning of the season to the end of the season, and how much better they got with one another.
“When you think about the great point guards and post players that our game — not just our league — has seen, they are going to go down in history as the greatest. And I’m excited about the opportunity to work with them.”
White, a star in high school in Indiana and in college at Purdue, played for the Fever for four seasons and was an assistant coach to Lin Dunn when they won the 2012 WNBA title. White was head coach of the Fever from 2015 to 2016. She has since coached in college at Vanderbilt and spent the past two seasons with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun.
White, who was initially announced as the Fever’s new coach Friday, led Connecticut to a sweep of Indiana in the first round of the playoffs this year and went 3-1 against the Fever in the regular season.
“We know how much of a legend she is in Indiana,” Clark said Monday. “I think that’s really cool. Playing against her, I would say I felt like her teams always had the best scouts against us. I think that just speaks to her knowledge of the game and her way to analyze, and she clearly was on to something. Hopefully, in turn, now that she knows how to stop us, that should be a good way to know how to [help us] beat certain things as well.”
Boston added, “There’s nothing better than playing for a coach that you can already tell she’s going to pour into us. She knows the talent that we have and I’m super-excited to get out on the court. You can feel the intensity already.”
Clark, Boston and guard Lexie Hull attended the news conference along with new Indiana general manager Amber Cox and team president Kelly Krauskopf, who was the Fever’s president from the organization’s inception in 2000 until 2018, then worked with the Indiana Pacers before returning recently to the Fever.
The three players all had positive things to say about former coach Christie Sides, who was fired Oct. 27. Sides took over after the Fever’s 5-31 season in 2022 and guided them to 13-27 and 20-20 records the past two years, including a return to the playoffs this season for the first time since 2016. But the players also praised White for what she can bring to the franchise.
White, 47, said her primary reasons for leaving the Sun were to be closer to her partner and four children in Nashville, Tennessee, which will remain her offseason home base, and the chance to come back to her home state and a Fever franchise that she said is like “part of my DNA.”
Despite the Sun’s success against the Fever this season, White said of Indiana, “They were always really scary for us, I think because of the way they could score the basketball. I was very concerned about pace and transition, 3-point shooting, the way they spread the floor.
“They’re an exciting team to watch. I think offensively, we can be more creative, we can utilize more versatility, utilize certain players in different ways.”
White joked that as a player, she didn’t like to play defense, but it’s been one of her strengths as a coach.
“We’ve got to get better on the defensive end of the floor,” White said of the Fever, who were third this season in scoring average (85.0 PPG) but next-to-last in points allowed (87.7).
White has done a lot of television broadcasting work and got to know and talk with Clark through the Iowa Hawkeyes games she did. Like Clark, White was a guard as a player.
“It helps, No. 1, having a relationship,” White said. “Seeing the ins and outs of what makes her unique and special. Watching her work, study, adjust … watching her in shootarounds and practices, how coachable and competitive she is, how much she interacts with her teammates.
“The fact that I played this position, that I’ve been around this league for so long … she’s familiar with me, she knows what I’m about … she understands how I see the game.”
Both Boston and Hull will be playing in Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 league that launches an eight-week season in January with all its games in Miami. There has been much speculation about whether the league will be able to lure Clark, who has been noncommittal. Clark said Monday she had no deadline in her mind about deciding.
“We’ll see,” Clark said. “I don’t know. Just taking it as it goes … see if I want to play eventually.”
Boston, who did a lot of college broadcasting work last season, said she will continue that along with playing in Unrivaled. White said she supports the players in whatever they want to do in the WNBA offseason, whether it’s taking a break or playing elsewhere, be that overseas or in newer U.S.-based opportunities like Unrivaled or Athletes Unlimited.
“Everybody has a different cadence toward the offseason at different points in their career,” White said. “I always think it’s good to play. Coming back into training camp having played games vs. not … if you haven’t played, timing, rhythm, game shape — all those things are tough to simulate just working out. I do think there is some value, but each player approaches it differently.”
As for the Fever’s approach to the offseason, Cox said they will be discussing which six players to protect from the Golden State Valkyries’ expansion draft on Nov. 17 and looking toward free agency.
“Kelsey Mitchell is our top priority heading into free agency,” Cox said of the longtime Fever guard who like Clark averaged 19.2 points this season. “She is a cornerstone of this franchise. She’s been here seven seasons and had endured a lot, hasn’t won a lot. I really want her to enjoy what is to come. She deserves that.”
White said she knows there is still a lot of growth ahead for the Fever but thinks many of the pieces are in place for them to aim for the franchise’s second championship.
“The future is so bright,” White said. “Our ultimate goal is to hang another banner in the Fieldhouse.”
