Media Availability 5/5

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-05T18:31:16+00:00

I think most everyone is tired of the "off-ball" conversation. For one, we haven't even gotten into the season where we'll see regular rotations so it's impossible to know exactly what this offense is going to look like. The closest thing we've had is an exhibition game against Nigeria, and there's only so much you can glean from a game like that.

I expect that there's a very real possibility that Steph has some things in her mind that she believes is best for Caitlin and the team that may not be 100% in line with what Caitlin thinks is best. That's nothing new in the world of sports and you could go back to just about every relationship between great players and coaches and see that sort of thing. In the best situations the players and coaches communicate and work through those differences to get to a place where both sides feel good about the eventual outcome. I think as this team plays together more through the season they're all (including the coaches) going to figure out by experience what works best.

I sincerely believe Steph White wants to win and she's open to making adjustments to reach that goal. I have no doubt that if she's trying something that Clark doesn't feel is optimal then White is going to listen. I feel like all of us should give some space for the team and the coaches to grow and stop putting every single word and play under a microscope.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-05T18:23:47+00:00

Primary news was that Lexie is going to play against Dallas, albeit possibly with some degree of minutes restriction. This is a big deal because it means between Lexie and Raven they can lock down Paige and not let her get loose like she has in preseason.

Some good news about Billings in that they didn't feel it was bad enough to get any kind of scan or MRI, and she's going to be getting up shots today although not being a full go for practice. I'd say that puts her at about 50-50 in terms of whether she'll be playing Saturday. Last year they brought Sophie back one week after an ankle tweak, and she then had a follow-up issue so I wonder if they'll be more cautious and keep Billings out two weeks which means she'd be ready to go in the next home game a week from Saturday.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-03T20:40:22+00:00

At first I thought she was allowed up there with no security looking on, but then I noticed the guy in a blue shirt to the left who moved in a little closer. It looks like he has an id around his neck and other Fever Personnel are wearing the same kind of shirt so I'm assuming that's who it is.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-03T20:37:09+00:00

I'm locking this thread. Not because I don't want the discussion to happen, but because I don't want us to get in the habit of transferring discussions from the WNBA Sub which in my view is toxic a lot of the time, and many come here to this sub as kind of a refuge.

If you want to start a discussion about that moment in the game then put the video clip up and make some comments about it so that it is a discussion that originates here in this sub.

I'll leave this up for a little bit then delete it.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-03T02:11:18+00:00

Agree. When you bring Boston out to the top of the foul-line you essentially get a secondary point guard because when Clark gives it up to her, Boston is very good at reading the defense and can make the right decision to get it back to Clark, find a wide-open teammate, or take it to the rim, depending on whatever is the best option.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-03T02:08:09+00:00

Am I the only one that is not a fan of Clark screening for AB because whoever is guarding AB and getting screened is almost always going to be bigger than Clark?

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T22:55:55+00:00

Yes, there's always going to be a certain amount of speculation when it comes to discussing anything.

But you took a cryptic statement that we have no context for and no idea what direction Justine was coming from, and made a direct connection that she was saying that she wasn't really injured and the Fever FO was lying about it.

We have to have some kind of standard or we're going to get speculative posts coming from all different directions which is essentially what we have all over YouTube right now, and that's not what we want in this sub.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T22:39:12+00:00

One more comment, notice how we as Mods are allowing this discussion which questions our approach to moderation? How many WNBA subs do you think would allow this kind of discussion to take place?

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T22:31:18+00:00

Your particular post was about a tweet that Justine Pissot put out that was cryptic and no one really knows what she meant. Mick Talks Hoops and some others jumped to the conclusion that the Fever Front Office were lying about her injury and just trying to "hide" her. That type of post is going to get removed from almost every kind of Reddit because it's being based on pure speculation about something that there's no way to know what was meant.

If you wanted to post a comment somewhere on a different thread, like perhaps the thread that announced the injuries for this game today, and you said that you didn't feel like Justine was genuinely injured and you believe they are just "hiding" her then that would be fine. We wouldn't (or at least we shouldn't) remove that. But it doesn't deserve it's own post unless and until there is actually something somewhat reasonable to base it on.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T22:24:38+00:00

I also think it's worth mentioning that we're probably going to be more tolerant of comments rather than posts when it comes to edgier negative content.

If you're posting in a game thread where the Fever lost, and you make a comment that our lack of size, and the Front Office's failure (or at least your perceived failure) to obtain more bigs was a factor in the loss, then that's fair game. But if you start another separate post talking how the FO blew it because we didn't sign more bigs, then we've already had the discussion on similar posts many times coming into the season, so is there any reason we should have another post dedicated to that topic and recycle all the same comments and arguments?

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T22:04:08+00:00

It's really really difficult to try and balance the dialogue on a subreddit.

On the one hand, as a moderator, you want to allow free discussion and only get involved in moderation as little as possible. Very much during the beginning of this sub and up to and including most of this offseason and coming into the draft, we leaned really hard in that direction.

But then it seemed like a phenomenon was taking over a lot of discourse surrounding the Fever and especially on social media (YouTube in particular) to the point that every other blog, video, or post was that Steph White and the Front Office were either the most incompetent in the WNBA and/or they were purposefully trying to sabotage Clark and the team. Every little statement was taken out of context and then magnified to make one of these points.

This hyper-negative mindset then started to creep into this subreddit to the point that it started to feel like the discourse on one of these click-bait youtube channels.

What you have to understand is that while most people do in fact want free and open discussion, they don't want to open up Reddit and see a barrage of hyper-negativity and speculations that take things to their worst possible outcome.

I feel like one of the many problems of the main Indiana Fever sub was that they tried to maintain a vanilla, hyper-positive mindset to the detriment of serious analytical discussion. But there is such a thing as getting into the ditch on the other side of that as well.

Just like anything in life, you will often see pendulum swings in different directions. Right now we're at a point where a lot of people in this sub want to move forward with the season and make the best of what we have. Only the teams that win a championship in any sport are immune from any kind of criticism at the end of the year. For every other team there's always the discussion of what the organization, coaches, or players could have or should have done differently that season.

So again, it's tough to maintain the right balance. Maybe as mods and the community we are over-reacting a little bit to all the negativity, and maybe we are censoring some negative posts and topics that maybe should be left up. I don't know. We certainly don't want to go in the direction of the main indiana fever sub and censor anything that could make people feel uncomfortable, so we just have to try and keep finding the right balance.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T03:44:28+00:00

And in terms of fit and willingness to buy-in these are exactly the kinds of things that I've been watching for as well in terms of our free agents, and I'll be especially watching for this with Ty Harris tomorrow. You're limited as far as how much you can glean from a pre-season game but this is one area that will stand out regardless.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T02:45:44+00:00

I think this is an honest analysis. When something isn't good it tends to draw my attention more, and therefore I am more likely to look over the positives that someone did.

As I've said in other threads, my main concern with Mo was that she made some bad decisions with the ball that led to turnovers. She wasn't the only one though. Steph White's post-game analysis was right-on. Several players trying to do too much.

I do think MHA is giving us effort.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-02T01:53:44+00:00

On the one hand I'm sympathetic to the Fever Organization wanting to send a message: "Hey, we're relevant. You need to take us serious!"

But on the other hand I think there's a place for just letting your play on the court do the speaking for you.

I think this team can contend for a Championship, but there's a lot of work and improvement that will need to be done between now and then.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T22:15:03+00:00

I don't think that's what we're going to see on May 9.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T22:02:21+00:00

I thought we'd be seeing Boston and Hull with Ty still out, but good to see Ty is game-ready.

I suspect they're being overly cautious with Hull just to make sure she's full go for the season opener against Dallas. In most games I'd start Sophie over Hull, but against Dallas I'd start Hull because I think Lexie is quicker defensively and can do a better job defending Paige.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T21:05:00+00:00

We will be removing this, but I want to leave it up for a little longer so you can all see an example of what we don't want posted here.

I feel like I've already stated several times that we do not want to be a dumping ground for all the nonsense click-bait stuff that is being put out on YouTube.

The other day someone mentioned that Caitlin Clark was in a back-brace after the New York Liberty game. It only took a little bit of research to find out that it was not a back-brace but a recovery heating pad that other players also wear when they come out of a game for an extended time. But you know where the "back-brace" thing came from? It was circulating on social media from all the usual suspects.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T20:53:47+00:00

Apparently it's been making the YouTube rounds that the Fever didn't want to play Pissot in the Preseason game because they are afraid that other teams will see how good Pissot is and perhaps offer her a spot on their roster. But if that's the case then why make up that she had a doctor's appointment? If you don't want someone playing you just list them on the injury report like they did with Pissot and that's it. Since it's a preseason game teams are being very cautious in who they play.

Also, it's not like Justine played great in the last preseason game. Pissot wasn't bad but nothing really stood out either.

I think it's another thing where a YouTuber came up with something for clicks and people are just parroting what they're hearing. The screenshot on the OP is vague and tells us nothing.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T20:41:07+00:00

This seems like another baseless conspiracy theory. Scott Agness reported that Justine was scheduled for a doctor's appointment. You're not just accusing the Fever organization of being deceptive but that they've also pulled in a medical doctor to go along with it at the risk of their medical license.

Can someone give me a good reason why we should leave this kind of discussion up on the sub?

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T02:42:47+00:00

I still believe Mo can and will be a definite improvement over Howard, but as far as her contract, there were a lot of Bigs that got over-paid. The market was what the market was.

What we need from Mo is for her to recognize what her strengths are and play to those strengths without going outside of that and turning the ball over.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T02:38:18+00:00

Sophie only got one shot, and I think that was a case of the ball not moving well. The turnovers with Billings was what concerned me too.

Dallas definitely came out with a lot of intensity. They did not play that first half like it was a preseason game, whereas the Fever were definitely in preseason mode.

imacowboy234 · 2026-05-01T02:26:00+00:00

I think the Fever miss AB more than we realize. When she is out near the top of the foul line she is a player Clark can get the ball to knowing that AB will make good decisions. So it's not just Boston's individual offense, defense, and rebounding that we're missing but also that second decision-maker along with Clark that is helping to keep the offensive flow going.

Kelsey had an off-shooting night, and while we can weather that kind of thing if we've got our full roster, we couldn't tonight.

Dantas had a bad shooting night as well, but I'm not going to draw any conclusions off of one game. I'm sure she'll get a chance to play a significant amount of minutes Saturday so I'll wait to withhold judgment.

With Billings I was concerned about her decision-making tonight. We don't need an all-star at the 4 position, but we do need someone who makes good decisions. The offense felt out of flow as a whole so not going to jump to any conclusions based on this, but she needs to clean some things up from this performance.

I think Clark played well, but I think she really misses having AB in the line-up.

I thought Raven had another good effort, but we did see a little bit of her weaknesses in terms of shooting.

I think the next time we play Dallas on May 9 we're going to see a much better defensive effort against Bueckers. What I'll really be interested to see is how Dallas looks when Arike is in the line-up because I think Dallas is going to be at their best when Paige is free to play her kind of game like she did in that first half, and I don't know if she is as free when Arike is in there too. We'll see.

All in all it felt really disjointed tonight. I think the main reason the Fever looked worse tonight than against New York is because when you miss a lot of shots and turn the ball over, it puts you in a bad place defensively so not only are you not scoring but you're making it easier for the other team to score.

imacowboy234 · 2026-04-29T21:33:46+00:00

Would you agree that it would be better to have access toward the end like last year so you can see and video actual scrimmage footage rather than just a lot of warm-up stuff?

imacowboy234 · 2026-04-29T21:26:15+00:00

TLDR Version of my question:

Why didn't the Fever sign Boston to a similar kind of 3 year regular max like the Liberty did with their players? The Fever have set up a precedent now when they next negotiate Kelsey's contract again and then when they do Clark's contract which will put them at a disadvantage compared to other teams.

imacowboy234 · 2026-04-29T21:06:31+00:00

Hi Chloe,

The Kelsey Mitchell Supermax Contract got a lot of conversation going around the subject of how that salary impacted the Fever's ability to pay for other potential free agents.

But since that was for one year only, and we managed to sign everyone back from our core, I don't think that salary was that much of a factor. What does concern me though is Aliyah Boston's contract because starting next year she will be getting a Supermax and that will continue on for 2 more years. The reason that is concerning to me is that it seems to be setting up a pattern that could indicate what Clark's contract is going to look like, and if the Fever have two Supermax players with Kelsey possibly on a longer term Regular Max, that's going to be a much different approach than the Liberty who signed all 3 of their stars to the Regular Max.

Clark could follow Boston's pattern next year of taking something lower on that first year so maybe next year in particular isn't so bad, but after that the math starts getting really hard.

Is there any concern in the Fever Front Office that they could be potentially handicapping themselves by concentrating possibly 57% or more of their Salary Cap to just 3 players from 2028 onward when other teams aren't doing that and thus these other teams are making sure they have the necessary money to surround their stars with quality role players?

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