INDIANAPOLIS — Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon delivered a foreboding warning in the hours before her team’s Finals-clinching opportunity on Sunday
The Indiana Fever are a dangerous team, she repeated in quick succession.
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They’re especially dangerous with their season on the line, as it has consistently been the last few weeks. The Fever are 3-0 in elimination games these playoffs after defeating the Aces, 90-83, in Game 4 on Sunday. They’ll attempt to win a fourth elimination game in the winner-take-all series finale on Tuesday in Las Vegas (9:30 p.m. ET).
“We’ve been through everything,” Fever head coach Stephanie White said after Game 4. “So being in these types of situations isn’t new to us. It’s when we’ve been at our best, and we’ve got to continue to be.”
The Fever won two straight to close their first-round series against the Atlanta Dream and will be tasked with doing the same against the Aces to advance to the Finals. The pattern is also identical — the Fever won at home in Game 2 of the first round and in Atlanta to move on; they won Game 4 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and will have to win in Las Vegas. The semifinals Game 1 victory was the team’s first in Las Vegas since the franchise moved to Sin City.
Indiana also won the Commissioner’s Cup over the Minnesota Lynx in July. A win in Game 5 would put the Fever in the Finals for the first time since 2015, when they lost a best-of-five series to Minnesota. It was White’s first of two seasons as head coach before returning to the franchise last offseason.
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Variations of the word “resilient” are used by the Fever daily to describe their season and how they’ve bonded together to reach an unlikely semifinal. No. 6 seeds rarely go this far in the WNBA playoffs, and this one in particular features multiple players signed on hardship contracts after season-ending injuries to five players. Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, Sydney Colson, Aari McDonald and Chloe Bibby have been on the bench most of the second half of the year.
“From day one, [this] has just been a really special group,” White said. “We’ve hit a lot of adversity collectively.”
White has been open about her own challenges to start the year when her partner’s mother faced health issues. The roster “rallied around me [and] rallied around each other,” a living example of the “we over me” mantra she preaches and that players have come to repeat as the wins and successes stack up.
“That’s been our identity the entire season,” Boston said after her best offensive performance of the postseason in Game 4. “‘We all we got, we all we need’ and we’ve stuck with it. I think the beauty of this squad, whether you’re hurt or not, everything that you do is for the betterment of this team for every win.”
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The Fever were on the playoff bubble and could have missed the postseason altogether with all the injuries to key contributors. They won their final three games of the regular season, and five of their final seven. All five injured players traveled, as well as Damiris Dantas a few times while she clears concussion protocol, and stay locked in during practices, film sessions and games.
Stephanie White took the Indiana Fever to the Finals in 2015 in her previous stint with the team. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
(Michael Hickey via Getty Images)
“Because they’re who they are as human beings, it allows us to continue to put one foot in front of the other,” White said. “We embrace everybody that’s come into this locker room. We try to put everybody in this locker room in positions to be successful. And I’m incredibly proud of the effort that we put forth to this point.”
It’s not lost on anyone that the Fever are heading to Las Vegas still playing with house money. To complete the true underdog story of the postseason, the Fever need the “we over me” mentality. Especially if the Aces come out more tenacious defensively, as both A’ja Wilson and Hammon insisted will be the case.
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Aliyah Boston played more aggressively in Game 4 with a packed stat line of 24 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 turnovers and 2 steals. Her defense on Wilson has kept the Fever in games The scrappy play of Lexie Hull, while dealing with a back injury, doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet.
Kelsey Mitchell had her bounce-back game — literally — in Game 4 as she weaved her way through the Aces defense to find her spots and shoot without hesitation. In each of the Fever’s losses, she shot worse than 30%.
“She’s always in attack mode,” Hammon said. “I love that about her game. But it’s her speed a lot of times and her brakes. She’s got a set of Ferrari brakes.”
Mitchell is averaging 23.3 points in the seven playoff games, right on the heels of Wilson’s league-best 24.7. While the Aces receive a heavy helping from guard Jackie Young, whose 18.9 points per game rank fifth in the playoffs, the rest of the Fever’s individual contributions drop off. Boston averages 12.7, good for 19th, and guard Odyssey Sims averages 12.3 (22nd).
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Sims signed as one of the Fever’s hardship players on Aug. 10 and has become an X-factor of their playoff run. She also had her best postseason performance in Game 4 after White sat her through much of Game 3 in favor of guard Shey Peddy, another hardship player.
If the Fever can steal this series in Las Vegas, they’ll break another streak: White is 0-3 in her coaching career when winning Game 1 of a best-of-five series. The Fever won Games 1 and 4 in 2015. In her first season with Connecticut in 2023, the Sun only won Game 1 against the New York Liberty in the semifinals. And in 2024, the Sun won Games 1 and 4.
“The desperation and the urgency that we play with when we’re in those positions has been exactly what we need, and we’ve just got to bottle that up and take it with us [to Las Vegas],” White said. “It’s a one-game season right now, and we’ve got to carry it all over, and we got to be better.”
