Aliyah Boston won't be playing basketball this winter. That's the news, and it's mostly good news. Mostly good? Cera, the Defensive Player of the Year is skipping her own league. And resting the knee the Fever are paying for. Hang on to both thoughts. This is the Indiana Fever Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 29th. I'm Cera, and Joey's here with me. Today: Boston and Unrivaled, the argument that a new general manager might let Kelsey Mitchell walk, Sophie Cunningham's honest version of the Aces series, and a Hall of Famer's MVP complaint that turns out to be half right.
Chris Phelps, in an Athlon story carried by Yahoo Sports:
However, while Boston is expected to be healthy for the start of the 2027 WNBA season, the knee surgery will keep her out of the upcoming Unrivaled season as she continues her recovery.
Okay. I hate it, and I also completely get it. The timeline first. Unrivaled announced it Wednesday. Boston will miss the league's 2027 season and is expected back in 2028. Season three tips off January 8th at TD Garden in Boston. Her surgery was earlier this month, an arthroscopic repair of a torn lateral meniscus in her right knee. And that tear goes back to Unrivaled in the first place. It does. Phelps writes she got hurt in February, during the league's second season in Miami. That cost her the rest of that season and the World Cup qualifiers in March. Then she played 40 of the Fever's 44 regular-season games, plus all three playoff games, on it. Career-high 16.1 points a game, on a torn meniscus. People need to stop talking about her like she had a quiet year. Jeremy Beren at Sporting News adds what she's giving up. Boston was Unrivaled's Defensive Player of the Year last winter, set the league's single-season blocks record with 29, and Phantom went 11 and 3 before losing the title game without her. She'd also signed a multi-year extension with Unrivaled in late August. So she's walking away from money and a title defense. For a winter, yes. And Beren's take is that sitting out is the right call for her, and for a Fever team that gave her the league's richest contract in April. That's the same contract at the center of the front-office story this week, so keeping it off a court this winter isn't the worst idea. Fine. Rest up, AB. I'll be the one sulking about it in January.
We've been on the front-office shake-up since Monday. Here's a new angle on it. Grant Young, at Indiana Fever On SI, on what Amber Cox's exit means for Kelsey Mitchell:
But that doesn't necessarily mean she's the best fit for Indiana, especially when paired with Caitlin Clark. Some believe that these two guards being too offensive-minded and not elite defensive players is detrimental to the team's overall defensive abilities, and a new GM might share this opinion.
No. Absolutely not. They just made All-WNBA First Team together. And Young doesn't argue with that. His point is about who's making the call. Cox said after the season that Mitchell was a major priority and that the goal was for her to retire a Fever player. She said the same thing a year ago, and Indiana used the core designation to keep negotiating rights. Now Cox is gone. So the promise left with the person who made it. That's his read. Young writes that Mitchell's status feels a lot more uncertain than it did a week ago, and that a new GM could look at an underperforming season, with Mitchell and Clark both healthy, and decide to spread that money across another free agent or two. The defense argument I'll hear. Ninth in defensive rating is real. But you don't fix that by letting a First Team guard walk. You fix it with the other three spots. To be clear about what this is. It's an argument, not reporting. Nobody's said the next GM feels this way, because there isn't one yet. Noral Parham at the Indianapolis Recorder confirms the organization is running a national search for the job, and no hire has been announced. So someone we haven't met is going to decide whether Kelsey stays. Cool. Very relaxing.
Siddharth Rawat at EssentiallySports, on Sophie Cunningham's appearance on This Past Weekend with Theo Von:
Great environment. I’ll give them that, but some tough calls. We didn’t make our shots, just didn’t play great.
That's Sophie. No spin, a little shot at the refs, move on. And the box score backs up the shooting part. Indiana shot 38.5 percent in Game 3 to Las Vegas's 45.3. Clark, Boston and Mitchell combined for 60 points but went 21 for 57, and 29.6 percent on 27 threes. Twenty-one for fifty-seven. I didn't need to hear that again today. The tough calls part has numbers too. The Aces shot 35 free throws to Indiana's 20, and A'ja Wilson took 15 of them on her own. Stephanie White said after Game 3 it was a game of the margins, and pointed to the same gap. And then there's the ref story. That's from her own No Hesitation podcast, and it's her account. She says White was given a technical while trying to challenge a play, and when she asked an official named Tim why they couldn't challenge, he told her he didn't know the rules. If that's what happened, in a playoff elimination game? Come on. There's a happier part of the Theo Von conversation. Divij Kulkarni at HITC picked up Cunningham remembering Indiana, back when she was drafted in 2019, as a nap town where you wanted to get the game over with. Now she calls it the place you want to play. From nap town to people's Super Bowl. And the Fever have her as an unrestricted free agent. Pay the woman, new GM.
Last up, Rohit De, in a story on Yahoo Sports, on Nancy Lieberman's appearance on the All the Smoke podcast. Lieberman said she didn't think Clark got a single MVP vote this year. De checked:
The HOFer was a little off on one point. Clark did get MVP votes. She finished fourth with 212 points and one first-place vote, behind A'ja Wilson, Minnesota Lynx rookie Olivia Miles and Fever teammate Kelsey Mitchell.
She got the fact wrong and still kind of made her point. That's where De ends up too. The vote claim was wrong, but her bigger argument is that Clark doesn't get enough credit. Lieberman also called the league divisive, said there's jealousy and envy, and credited Clark and Angel Reese with getting the WNBA to where it is. The jealousy and envy part is going to get a lot of mileage online. I'm already tired. Which is why the basketball case is the better half. De lists it: 891 points and 333 assists, the first player with 800 and 300 in a season, top three in both scoring and assists, and the league's first 40-point, 10-assist game. Lieberman's business argument is that Clark's attention raises everyone's salary under the new CBA. And fourth isn't a snub. Wilson, Miles and her own teammate are a serious top three. Agreed. Clark finishing behind Mitchell in the MVP vote is a decent answer to anyone saying Indiana's a one-player team. Put that on a T-shirt and send it to the new GM.
If you've been with us through the playoff exit and the front-office week, rate the Indiana Fever Daily Podcast and leave a short review wherever you listen. It's the main way other Fever fans find the show. One sentence is enough. Hot takes about Mitchell are welcome.
Golden State is up three games to two, and Game 6 is at 12:30 Eastern this afternoon in Atlanta. Win it, and the Valkyries are champions. Lose it, and it goes to a Game 7 Saturday at Chase Center. Either way, somebody's lifting a trophy for the first time, and it isn't us. I'll be watching anyway. We'll have it tomorrow, Friday. The Indiana Fever Daily Podcast is a Lantern Podcast. I'm Cera, that was Joey, and thanks for listening.