Did the Indiana Fever make the right move by firing Christie Sides?

The Indiana Fever are looking ahead to 2025, and they have decided that head coach Christie Sides will not be a part of it. The organization let her go in late October 2024.

It’s an interesting decision, as the franchise clearly took their time to determine whether or not Sides was the right person to lead the Fever into the future. We’ll take a closer look at whether canning Sides was the right move for Indiana. All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference.

Fever president of basketball operations Kelly Krauskopf said in a statement to ESPN, “We are incredibly grateful to Coach Sides for embracing the challenge of leading us through an integral transition period over the last two seasons, while also positioning us well for future growth.”

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Krauskopf continued, “While decisions like this are never easy, it is also imperative that we remain bold and assertive in the pursuit of our goals, which includes maximizing our talent and bringing another WNBA championship back to Indiana.”

ESPN noted that Krauskopf and the Fever brass seemed to be content with the job Sides was doing, based on their comments from early October 2024. Krauskopf said, “I was really impressed with the progress that they made and how Christie is a resilient leader. You know, she’s a culture builder.”

WNBA teams have not been shy about making changes this offseason, as the Fever became the sixth team in the league to part ways with their head coach since the season ended.

Right around when the news broke of her firing, Sides posted, “leave it better than you found it” to social media, indicating that the Fever are in a more advantageous position now than they were before.

The move has to at least be considered somewhat unexpected, considering that Sides helped guide Indiana to the playoffs after a tumultuous 1-8 start. It seemed like the Fever were hitting their stride at the right time, and that the future was bright for Caitlin Clark and the franchise.

With that said, the Fever bowed out to the Connecticut Sun in a two-game sweep, without putting up much resistance. It’s possible that Indiana management wanted to see a better effort from Indiana during the most important games of the season.

Sides finished her two-year tenure with the Indiana Fever 33-47, which is not any sort of special record to write home about. It’s possible that Sides could have overseen her first over .500 finish in her coaching career in 2025, but the Fever did not want to wait and see if she could become a top tier coach.

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Sides’ firing speaks directly to a directive and motivation to take advantage of every single season of Caitlin Clark’s prime in the WNBA. It feels like Indiana believes that they should be contending for WNBA championships perennially, otherwise they would not have parted ways with a coach who seemed to get the most out of her players in 2024.

Sides did tweak her rotations as the season went on. Guard/forward Lexie Hull was a reserve for most of the 2024 season, but Sides inserted her into the starting lineup down the stretch, which was a move that paid dividends for the club.

However, perhaps some of the reason Sides was let go was due to her inability to quell Caitlin Clark’s more-than-sporadic tantrums at referees throughout the course of the season. Clark received six technical fouls in 2024, which was one shy of the threshold that would have gotten her automatically suspended for a game.

Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock criticized Clark’s lack of composure on the court, which he felt took away from the immense skill she has. It’s possible that the Fever are looking to bring in someone that they feel Clark will respect more, which might lead her to calm down a bit when there are foul calls that go against her or the Fever.

As noted earlier, the Fever are not the only WNBA team in search of a new head coach, so the competition for some of the same candidates could heat up in a major way during the offseason. Of course, the Fever have the advantage of featuring one of the brightest stars in basketball history.

It’s also going to be fascinating to see whether Krauskopf and other Fever management personnel decide to run their candidate list or thought process by Clark. After all, Clark is the cornerstone of their franchise, and it might behoove them to get her sign off before bringing in a new coach. However, they might also feel like they should not give Clark this much power.

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