It did not take long after getting a new coach for Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark to realize what she was missing last season when Christie Sides was in charge.
Under Sides, the 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year led the Fever to the WNBA Playoffs as the No. 6 seed with a 20-20 overall record.
They were exposed by a veteran Connecticut Sun team in a 2-0 sweep in the first round of the playoffs. Sides was then fired a little more than a month later, on Oct. 27.
The team got a new coach five days later when Indiana announced the hiring of Stephanie White, who was head coach of the Sun in 2024, and Clark soon witnessed the detail that helped White out-coach Sides’ team in the playoffs.
Former Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides talks to guard Caitlin Clark
“I mentioned to Stephanie, ‘Caitlin really was impressed with your gameplan,'” Sean Gregory, senior sports correspondent for Time Magazine, said.
Gregory wrote Time’s 2024 Athlete of the Year feature on the WNBA superstar, where he recalled his experience at a Fever shootaround on “The Sports Media Podcast” with Richard Deitsch while discussing what it was like to write the Time cover story.
He shared a quote he overheard from Clark that revealed her true feelings about Sides’ gameplans last season.
“Caitlin said, ‘We never really had the best gameplans back,'” Gregory recalled. “I heard that and I was like, ‘wow.’
“I’m sure Christie Sides doesn’t love hearing that,” Gregory added, confirming it was a dig at the former coach.
Clark and Sides were seen having visible disagreements that showed they were not on the same page throughout the season.
Clark broke her silence on Sides’ firing in Gregory’s Time article, bluntly responding to the outside noise suggesting she had something to do with Indiana ousting the coach.
“I’m actually not the general manager of the team,” Clark said.
Based Clark’s damning assessment of Sides’ gameplans, the issues with the former coach may have been more obvious than fans realized.
The motivation for Sides’ firing is a moot point now with White back at the helm. The 47-year-old is planning to take the Fever back to the promised land and get the most out of Clark’s talents.
White was an assistant coach in Indiana when the franchise won its first WNBA title in 2012. She was previously head coach of the Fever for two seasons, leading the team to the WNBA Finals in 2015 and another postseason birth in 2016. The Fever did not return to the playoffs again until 2024.
