Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White hopes to ’embrace this moment’ in the WNBA

On November 2, 2024By Littum

This moment, this kind of growth WNBA has seen in the past year, is something Stephanie White has been waiting for for 25 years.

She will get to embrace that growth with her hometown franchise. White, of West Lebanon, Ind., was officially announced as the Indiana Fever’s head coach on Friday. It comes after the 2023 WNBA coach parted ways with the Connecticut Sun after two seasons.

“First and foremost, it’s home for me,” White told ESPN’s ‘NBA Today.’ “This is a franchise, Indiana Fever, Indiana Pacers, it’s in my DNA. Raised in Indiana, played in Indiana, played with the franchise, obviously part of the franchise when we won the WNBA championship.”

White has been a part of the WNBA in one form or another almost since its inception; she was drafted in 1999, two years after the league started in 1997. She has been a player, assistant coach, head coach with multiple franchises and won a WNBA championship as an assistant for the Fever.

In all these years, she has never seen anything like this moment in the league. The WNBA saw unprecedented growth in the 2024 season, catalyzed by Caitlin Clark and the rest of the rookie class. The Fever saw an over 1,000% increase in merchandise sales, had 38 games on national television and sold out arenas cheering for Clark and Indiana wherever they went.

White already has a familiar relationship with the Fever’s top player, even outside of being her new coach. White said she has known about Clark since she was in eighth grade; White was coaching at Vanderbilt at the time, and Clark was at the top of a lot of college coaches’ watch lists. Now, it’s been nearly 10 years since White first heard about Clark, and she’s grown into the superstar many coaches predicted she would be.

“She’s a student of the game,” White said. “She loves the game of basketball. She’s been so great in how she’s handled, you know, all the attention. She just wants to play, she just wants to win. I’m looking forward to coaching players like that and this young franchise, this young team and to take our next step.”

Viewership across the board soared in 2024, with that season becoming the most-watched on ESPN in 25 years – up 170% from 2023. The WNBA Finals were the most-watched in 25 years, with each of the five games going over 1 million viewers and 32 games during the season had over a million views.

White has seen this rise from both sides — in the WNBA offseason, she is an analyst for ESPN covering NBA and Big Ten women’s basketball play. She knew this moment would come based on the excitement she saw from women’s college basketball games in recent seasons.

“I think the biggest thing is just for me, having been a part of the WNBA for 25 years, working on both sides of it, in the media and in the coaching room, and also being a player in this league. , I mean, this is the moment we’ve been waiting for,” White told NBA Today in her first interview since being named coach of the Fever. “So I don’t know if you prepare for it as much as you just embrace it. Embrace where we are. Think about the momentum of where we wanted this league to be, where we’re still striving for it to go, and just embrace this moment, embrace this opportunity, continue to help this team, this franchise, position ourselves better to success.”

With his new role, White will now be tasked with coaching Clark and 2023 Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston, as well as Kelsey Mitchell (if she re-signs), Lexie Hull and the rest of the program for a deep playoff run. This is a Fever team just coming off a rebuild, and their 20-20 season in 2024 marks the first time they’ve made the playoffs since 2016.

There’s a lot of young talent on this roster: three All-Stars, two Rookies of the Year and players who have an innate desire to win. And White has the skills to leverage that into a contender.

“This young, exciting roster, you think about a generational player in Caitlin Clark and back-to-back Rookie of the Years with Aliyah Boston, and Kelsey Mitchell, I think, had the best year of her career,” White said. “It’s just an exciting list. What a unique moment we have in women’s basketball right now, and to come back and be a part of it in my home country with my home franchise, it’s just a unique opportunity and I’m so grateful.”