INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana fever are looking for a new coach.
But after let go Christie Sides Sunday, a month after the end of the Fever season, it can’t be just anyone.
With six head coaching positions available across the league, competition is plentiful. Bringing in another head coach for the first time after firing Sides, especially after Kelly Krauskopf, Fever President said they wanted to be “bold and assertive” with their goal of a WNBA championship, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense.
More fever news: What Christie Sides said after being fired
The Fever will need to aim big with an experienced head coach capable of taking Indiana deep into the playoffs. Letting go of Sides only makes sense if he’s an experienced head coach who has had a lot of championship success – and only a few coaches fit that description.
Stephanie White
The most obvious, yes, as Annie Costabile of the Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday, multiple sources expect White to take the job with the Fever. White had one year remaining on his contract with the Sun, but Connecticut announced Monday that it had parted ways with the coach.
White would be perfect for the Fever. She has a long history with Krauskopf, as it was Krauskopf who selected White in the Fever’s 2000 expansion draft, hired her as an assistant coach and associate head coach under Lin Dunn, and then hired her to his first head coaching position for the Fever in 2015.
White, who was an assistant when Fever won the Finals in 2012, led Indiana back to the Finals in 2015 in her first year as head coach. She left after the 2016 season for a college job at Vanderbilt, but returned to the WNBA as Connecticut’s head coach in 2023.
White might be just what Fever needs; she is an experienced head coach at all levels of the game and commands the respect of the rest of the league. She knows what it means to win in the WNBA, both as an assistant and as a head coach.
The Sun were contenders in each of the two years she spent in Connecticut, finishing second in the Eastern Conference and advancing to the WNBA semifinals each year. Connecticut also hangs its hat on defense, finishing first in defensive rating in 2023 and second in 2024.
The Fever have struggled defensively over the past two years, finishing 11th in the league both seasons. This is something Indiana has long struggled with, and the Fever need a defensive coach to shore up that side of the ball.
White is also from West Lebanon, Indiana, and won Miss Indiana Basketball out of Seeger High School in 1995 and a national title as a player at Purdue in 1999.
Curt Miller
Miller is the only other coach where it would make sense to let Sides go.
He was recently fired from The Sparks of Los Angeles after two seasons of reconstruction, like Sides. Miller was initially brought to Los Angeles to lead a rebuild of the franchise, but pressure from minority ownership groups within the Sparks franchise led to him being fired.
Multiple injuries, including one Torn anterior cruciate ligament for No. 2 pick Cameron Brink near the start of the season, hampered Miller’s 2024 season as the Sparks finished 8-32 – last in the league.
Outside of Los Angeles, Miller has been an effective coach. He was Connecticut’s head coach from 2016 to 2022, leading the Sun to two WNBA Finals appearances and playoff berths in six of the seven seasons he coached. Like White, he has the experience of leading a consistently good team into the playoffs.
Miller also has ties to Indiana, as he served as the head coach of the Indiana women’s basketball team from 2012 to 2014. He abruptly resigned from IU in July 2014, citing reasons health and family affairs, before joining the WNBA as an assistant with the Sparks in 2015.
Jenny Boucek
THE Pacers assistant coach has appeared on several WNBA coaching nomination boards, drawing on his experience as head coach of several franchises in the 2000s. Boucek, who has been an assistant on Rick Carlisle’s Pacers staff since 2021 , also already knows Krauskopf, who served as the Pacers’ assistant general manager from 2018-24.
Boucek, however, has not been in the WNBA space since 2017. She was the head coach of the Seattle Storm from 2015 to 2017, compiling a 36-58 record over three seasons. Before that, she was the head coach of the now-defunct Sacramento Monarchs from 2007-09, and was relieved midway through the 2009 season.
Boucek worked closely with Carlisle for several years based on their shared experience of standing out from the University of Virginia. She was also an assistant on her Mavericks team before the Pacers.
Boucek could be a potential hire for the Fever or one of the five other WNBA franchises looking for a new coach — that is, if they want to leave the NBA in the first place.
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This article was originally published on the Indianapolis Star: Indiana Fever coaching candidates: Stephanie White and who else?
