INDIANAPOLIS — Another notable thing happened to the Indiana Fever on Thursday morning: Nothing notable happened. They walked into an empty arena for practice. They stretched. They shot some layups. They moved to the other end of the floor and shot some more layups as “No Scrubs” echoed throughout Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
The most caricatured and weaponized team in the league went about the unexciting business of continuing to be good at basketball.
People who casually consume the WNBA might not be aware of this. That the Fever, right now, are playing like one of the best teams in the league. It’s an understandable oversight. On too many days, there have been too many fires to put out, too many absurdities to account for. An impartial, carefree observer would assume it’s hard to breathe when there’s nothing but air pollution wherever the Fever go.
Instead, they are remarkably more than fine.
One of the best groups in the Eastern Conference — a top-five club in the league — has actually been performing like a viable championship threat over the last month. By offensive rating, the Fever’s offense could wind up as the best in WNBA history. The defense is now competent, which only amplifies the pressure applied by that offense. Inside the funnel cloud, the Fever have evolved and grown as a unit and put together a competitively compelling basketball season.
This is not meant as finger-wagging. Who could be blamed for rubbernecking this scene, really? The commotion is real and impossible to ignore. But the Fever are not watchable in the same way a train wreck is watchable. The emerging point is that they are watchable, while somehow not being a train wreck.
“I was just thinking about that when I was warming up out there — it’s fun to see how much fun my teammates have with one another,” Fever guard Caitlin Clark said before a resounding win over the New York Liberty on Tuesday. “Because I feel like a lot of the narratives sometimes are the opposite of that. Obviously, I don’t expect people to understand. If you’re not in our locker room, how would you ever know?”
Short of someone commissioning a sweeping psychological study, how the Fever haven’t been driven mad indeed may forever be unknowable.
From the persistent early questions about Clark’s back injury to questions about how the team handled injury reports to a hard foul non-call allegedly precipitating death threats to technical fouls to comments on transgender athletes to a different hard foul and claims of “White privilege” to the home crowd booing its own coach just minutes after that coach made an impassioned statement defending her job and her relationship with the players … it’s been something. Every seam should be frayed by now.
But they aren’t, and yes, using the old “us against everybody” mind trick explains some of the why.
“A year ago and this year, it’s like we’re fighting different demons, fighting different battles,” Fever coach Stephanie White said. “But (it’s) the same character. Adversity reveals your character. This is a really special group, a really united group.”
Still, there are more quantifiable reasons worth exploring to explain how the Fever have surged out and ahead of the mudslides. For example: The questions people have about Clark’s health lately are quantifiable as zero.
Indiana’s franchise centerpiece played 13 games total in 2025 due to quadriceps, groin and ankle injuries. She’s played in 29 of a possible 33 in 2026. She’s logged at least 33 minutes in the last six games.
“I feel like myself,” Clark said this week, and for the Fever, that is a good feeling to have. As of Thursday morning, she was third in the league in scoring (21.7 points per game), tied for first in assists (8.2 per game) and ranked ninth in Player Efficiency Rating (22.2). She is on the floor a lot, and she is playing well a lot. Indiana presumably would trend up when that is the case.
in only 82 games, Caitlin Clark has recorded her 29th career double-double, the third most by a guard in WNBA history 😮💨 pic.twitter.com/f7zvIC8ibr
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) August 12, 2026
With Clark at full fitness and backcourt mate Kelsey Mitchell at full bore — Mitchell is averaging 28 points on the dot since July 1 — the Fever’s offensive rating sits at 115. That would be the best in league history, surpassing the standard set by the Washington Mystics (112.9) in 2019 that the Las Vegas Aces then outdid (113) in 2023. That is a handful for every opponent up and down the standings.
“The ability to see the next person be great is floating in our locker room in a lot of positive ways,” Mitchell said. “I don’t think that’s fake, and I think that’s why we have success with that.”
Meanwhile, it cannot be said that the Fever haven’t played much defense. What about the wall-ups against distraction? The boxing out of craven and toxic voices? The recovery speed following controversies foisted upon them by others and, occasionally, inflicted upon themselves? In this, the Fever are elite. Without peer. The most indefatigable unit we’ve seen in the history of the game.
The actual defense never needed to be that firm. It did have to be adequate, particularly relative to the potent offense. And that balance wasn’t struck well enough, frequently enough, until lately.
In this last nine-game stretch, the Fever have put 100 points on the board seven times while surrendering 100 or more only twice. They even had a chance to win a relatively low-scoring game against the title-defending Aces last week on the last possession.
“They do a good job of switching defensively and peeling off on drives,” Liberty coach Chris DeMarco said this week. “It feels like they always have five-on-five on defense. Really connected team. … The biggest thing in basketball is, when you get two on the ball, what happens next? And I think they do a great job of rotating for each other.”
Even though White can’t seem to please anyone in the league’s most scrutinized job, second-year forward Makayla Timpson didn’t decide to pencil herself into the starting lineup to bolster the team with size, athleticism and activity. On one possession against the Liberty on Tuesday, 6-foot-2 Timpson closed out on two-time MVP Breanna Stewart, broke down into a stance without biting on a pump fake, stayed in front of Stewart as she drove left, and made the Liberty star miss her shot.
Not a clip that would turn into a talk-show segment. But there aren’t many players on the roster capable of what Timpson does, nor with her defensive upside. And it’s emblematic of the Fever finding a footing on that end, or at least a way to stop slipping as much.
“From the start of the season,” Fever center Aliyah Boston said, “it’s been a drastic improvement.”
Coincidentally, that season started with a matchup against the team that revisits Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Friday. It will be the first time the Fever and the Dallas Wings see each other since a May afternoon when the only ruckus involved fans jostling for position along the railings, hoping beyond hope for an autograph from Caitlin Clark or Paige Bueckers, the luminous names leading the next era of WNBA basketball. Simpler times.
For one side, anyway.
It would be wonderful to believe that the universe will heed White’s call and resolve to cease throwing lunacies into the mix, allowing everyone to pay attention to the basketball her team is playing. It would also be hilariously naive. At some point, most likely, another wire will trip. The Fever are now too popular and too easy to use, which turns out to be a real bummer of a combo.
But they are playing very good basketball. They believe they are a title contender, if not a finished product.
“I want to get all of it,” Mitchell said.
And they have some normal days like Thursday, when seemingly nothing weird happened, and seemingly no one said anything the team would spend the next week answering for.
Everyone could appreciate that, even if everyone can’t entirely appreciate the postseason threat Indiana is becoming.
Small steps, though. One untroubled day at a time.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Indiana Fever, WNBA, Opinion
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