Stephanie White: An Indiana basketball legend and a good fit for Clark
Credit to Author: Michael Voepel, Alexa Philippou, Kevin Pelton| Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2024 19:46:42 EST
Of all the head-coaching changes in the WNBA this offseason, Friday’s move might be the biggest.
The Indiana Fever named Stephanie White their new head coach, tasking her with leading Caitlin Clark and a Fever squad that could garner more attention and scrutiny than any team in WNBA history.
White returns to Indiana following a two-year tenure with the Connecticut Sun. White was the Fever head coach for two seasons in 2015 and 2016 and has a long tenure in the organization: four years as a player in the early 2000s and four more as an assistant (including the Fever’s 2012 championship season) prior to her head-coaching stint. The Sun announced White’s departure Monday, a day after the Fever said they were moving on from former coach Christie Sides.
ESPN looks at what White’s homecoming means for Clark, the Fever and their championship timeline, and where the Sun go from here.
Michael Voepel: She is a good fit. In 20-plus years as a coach, she has grown a lot. White was a key part of the Fever’s 2012 WNBA title as an assistant to Lin Dunn. She has previously worked for Kelly Krauskopf, who has returned to the Fever as president. And as a broadcast analyst for college basketball, White called several of Clark’s Iowa games and knows her well.
White is also a basketball legend in Indiana. A superstar at Seeger High School in West Lebanon, Indiana, in the 1990s, she led Purdue to the Big Ten’s only NCAA women’s basketball championship in 1999. She played five WNBA seasons, including four with the Fever, and got into coaching at the college level at Ball State in 2003. White moved to WNBA coaching in 2007 as an assistant with the Chicago Sky before spending 2011-2016 with the Fever as an assistant and then head coach.
White was the head coach at Vanderbilt from 2016-2021, but had less success there than in the pro game. In her two seasons with the Sun, White went 55-25 and made the semifinals both years, winning WNBA coach of the year in 2023. Alyssa Thomas was the MVP runner-up in White’s first season and DiJonai Carrington was the league’s most improved player this season.
White coached against Clark and the Fever this year, going 3-1 in the regular season and sweeping Indiana 2-0 in the playoffs. White can use that scouting and preparation knowledge to help the Fever improve in 2025.
Voepel: White knows what it’s like to be a player in the spotlight who wants her teammates to feel just as valued. That was her role at Purdue, and she has watched Clark navigate the same circumstances at Iowa and with the Fever. Clark is a student of basketball who learns from everyone she can. Clark knows White’s history and the common ground they have, even if 25 years separate the former Big Ten stars.
A look at Stephanie White’s pro coaching career. — ESPN Research
And while they already were familiar with each other, they now have a shared purpose. White will work with Clark on staying aggressive as a passer while trimming turnovers, how to leverage her strengths against her weaknesses on defense and how to keep growing as a leader — balancing playing with passion and keeping her cool.
Alexa Philippou: One notable difference from when White last coached the Fever: Those teams had already won a championship and leaned more veteran, particularly with franchise player Tamika Catchings in the twilight of her career. (Catchings’ final season was White’s last in Indianapolis too.) White’s 2023 and 2024 Sun teams were similar as well; they didn’t win a title, but the players were regulars in at least the WNBA semifinals.
Taking over a younger Indiana team powered by a pair of recent No. 1 picks and a lot of other green talent presents a different dynamic. It’ll be fascinating to see how Indiana’s building process unfolds in the years to come, with Clark and Boston on the precipice of superstardom and on a franchise so hungry for a deep playoff run after a lengthy drought.
Philippou: The 2025 season will mark a new era for the organization, one when the stakes are higher than ever. Krauskopf is back to serve as president, and Amber Cox comes in from Dallas as Indiana’s general manager, with Dunn moving to a senior advisor role.
In adding White, the Fever’s intentions are clear: One of the best coaches in the league since her return in 2023 will be tasked with getting Clark, Aliyah Boston and ideally Kelsey Mitchell back to the mountaintop the Fever achieved in 2012. Her goal is to turn a team coming off its first playoff berth since 2016 into a true contender.
The three previous times that franchises drafted consecutive No. 1 picks — the Las Vegas Aces and the Seattle Storm twice — each won championships within four years. White’s hiring indicates the Fever are angling to do the same.
Kevin Pelton: This is where the timing is important. I don’t think Sides deserved to be fired based on her two seasons with the Fever, but I also think White is an upgrade on the sidelines. The way things went down, with the Chicago Sun-Times reporting last week that Indiana was a finalist to hire White before the Fever had fired Sides, was messy at best. But if White leads the Fever deep in the playoffs, that won’t likely be part of the story going forward.
Last year, the Fever had the WNBA’s best offense on a per-possession basis after their 2-9 start, but ranked 10th out of 12 in defensive rating.
That doesn’t fall entirely, or even primarily, on Sides. She inherited a team that ranked last in defense in 2022 before the arrival of Boston and Clark, and Indiana lacked both size on the wing and defensive depth in the frontcourt. Still, White kept Connecticut among the league’s elite defenses the past two seasons despite considerable roster turnover, so bringing her in is undoubtedly about building a championship-caliber defense to go with an offense that is already ready for prime time.
Pelton: No WNBA team has been able to weather turnover on both the roster and sidelines better than Connecticut. Only Thomas remains from the rotation coached by Curt Miller that reached the 2019 Finals, yet the Sun’s streak of advancing to the semifinals or beyond is now at six years and counting. Yet with Thomas, DeWanna Bonner and Brionna Jones all unsigned for 2025 (though Thomas could be designated Connecticut’s core player) and White gone, that track record feels more tenuous than ever.
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The obvious question here is whether Miller might return after the Los Angeles Sparks fired him on Sept. 24, kicking off the WNBA’s coaching turnover. In seven years in Connecticut, he won WNBA coach of the year twice and led the Sun to the Finals twice. As well as White did to modernize Connecticut’s offense with improved spacing, the team would be hard-pressed to do better than Miller as a replacement.
Philippou: Sun president Jen Rizzotti told ESPN that Connecticut’s coach must be prepared to lead the team and franchise amid an uncertain time. Even beyond this upcoming winter, the majority of the league is going to hit free agency heading into 2026, when a new CBA will presumably come into effect.
The franchise — which was purchased by the Mohegan tribe and relocated from Orlando prior to the 2003 season — is a small-market team and doesn’t have the reputation for having the resources of the Aces, Phoenix Mercury or New York Liberty.
But Rizzotti acknowledged that front offices league-wide know they’re going to have to sell players on their franchises in the coming years. “And for me,” she said, “that is going to be facilities, that is going to be culture, that is going to be support for our players off the court in whatever ways that looks like. So we understand that, and we’re going to make sure we’re putting ourselves in a position to compete with other teams in the league in that regard.”
There’s no official word on whether a practice facility could be imminent — when they can’t practice in Mohegan Sun Arena, the team practices in the Mohegan Tribal Center, which they don’t have exclusive use of. When asked about the possibility of building one, Rizzotti said, “My ownership group is very aware of the investment level that needs to be made for us to stay competitive. … They know that it’s a different ball game. They understand what owning a WNBA team means going into the future. And they’re prepared to support that.”