The Las Vegas Aces losing the three-peat, the NY Liberty winning their first title in 28 years, and the Indiana Fever making it to the playoffs after 2016. These were some unexpected storylines in the WNBA this season. While the season might have ended, the odd news hasn’t. The Fever in one such move fired their head coach Christie Sides on Sunday after just two years as rumors of Stephanie White joining the Indiana-based franchise amplified once again.

The news of the same was broken by the Fever franchise on their official X handle and also by reporter Alexa Philippou. As mentioned, Sides had taken the Indianapolis team to its first WNBA playoffs since 2016 and also provided the best ground for her rookie Caitlin Clark to establish her dominance and win ROTY.

Sides had joined the Fever in 2023 and had just completed her second season with them. Though the Fever went through a lot of ebbs and flows in her first season, they finished with a .325 winning percentage, their best since 2019. Sides also groomed Aliyah Boston and helped her develop into the player she is as she took home the ROTY award in 2023. Notably, the 47-year-old had been an assistant for the Fever since 2017-19, which might have helped her understand the management, which seems to be going through a complete change now.

The Fever already announced Kelly Krauskopf as the new President and Amber Cox as the chief operating officer and general manager with the latter scheduled to join from Monday. Therefore, the entire Fever squad looks to be in the process of revamping their organization and maybe aiming for better. And as the new head coach is still to be announced, there are murmurs that the Connecticut Sun’s Stephanie White, who was previously in Indiana, might take over the role.

Chicago Sun-Times reporter Annie Costabile recently shared that White might not come to coach the Sun in 2025. This prompted a lot of fans to speculate if she would join the Fever franchise. White has spent five seasons with the Fever in the capacity of a player before moving on to become the assistant at Indiana from 2011-2014 and then assuming the role of a head coach 2015-2016 seasons. Hence, after Sides has been fired, fans expect that she might take over the coaching role soon.

Meanwhile, Sides did her best to scale the franchise in those two years.

Christie Sides had impressed all during her tenure

When Sides took over the role of a head coach, the Fever had a 45-147 record in the previous six seasons. This was the worst record by any team in North American team sports. Therefore asked to do the Herculean task of changing things for the Fever, Sides did exactly that. That too in just two seasons of her four-year contract with the team.

In her first season itself, as mentioned, she groomed Boston and also got the team their best record since 2019. Coming into the 2024 WNBA season, Sides once again made Clark the centerpiece of the Fever and helped her win the ROTY while taking the Fever to the WNBA playoffs, for the first time since 2016.

Taking note of Sides’ hard work, the former General Manager Lin Dunn praised Sides for bringing stability to the team. She had also opined that she wouldn’t change Sides because “stability at the top is key.” Furthermore, Dunn also reflected on how the Fever were on their fourth coach in 7 years since White and how that could have been detrimental to their aspirations.

“And I think since coach White left, we’ve had 1, 2, 3, 4, I don’t know how many head coaching changes. And when you have head coaching changes, you have assistant coaching changes. So it’s like a roller coaster, and so it’s hard to grow that stability. I like what Christie has done. I like what she did last year. …I think what we’re trying to do is grow stability. You know what to expect. You know what the system is going to be. You know it’s not constantly changing. And so we’re trying to get stable with our players, stable with our growth,” Dunn pondered. But once she took over the role of Senior Advisor, Sides was fired.

Certainly, there was a noise of getting her fired from the fans after every defeat that Indiana faced, but the growing camaraderie and improving stats muted them. Hopefully, the Fever will soon reveal the exact reason for firing Sides, and perhaps it will be clear if the 47-year-old made some mistakes from her side.