The Indiana Fever are finally looking like the team many expected them to be. After a rocky start to the season, the backcourt of Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell has played at an extraordinary level, and the Fever have transformed themselves, but according to one former Fever insider, there’s an intriguing problem hiding in plain sight.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
During a recap of the Fever’s last game against the Connecticut Sun, former Fever insider Scott Agness pointed to Indiana’s recent performance, which has overwhelmingly been driven by homegrown talent, and pointed to one clear underperformer.
“You gave a monster off-season contract to Monique Billings. She played just over seven minutes in this game, zero points, two rebounds. She got a two-year $1.6 million contract. Barely made an impact, if at all, in this game,” he said in the video posted to his YouTube channel.
“What the Fever are doing right now, they’re doing it with those they drafted, that that are homegrown, from Kelsey Mitchell, Lexie Hull, Aliyah Boston, Caitlin Clark and Makayla Timpson, respectively, in that order did they draft them. They’re getting a lot from them… What we’re seeing now is the Fever starting their five most productive players.”
All five of the Fever’s current starting five were drafted by the team over the years, and all of them were first-round picks, except Timpson was the 19th overall pick of the second round in 2025. Of these, the Fever got two first overall picks -Boston in 2023 and Caitlin Clark in 2024. Mitchell was drafted second overall in 2018 while Hull was sixth overall in 2022.
Billings, as Agness noted, signed with the Fever on a two-year, $1.6 million deal this offseason in one of the biggest additions of the offseason. Her regular-season debut with the team was solid, as she dropped nine points and eight rebounds against the Los Angeles Sparks on May 13.
However, her recent play has seen a steep drop-off in minutes. For her first 30 games of the season, Billings averaged 21.1 minutes a night for 7.5 points per game and 52.8% from the field, but over her last nine games, her minutes and points per game have dropped to just 14.2 and 4.4, respectively.
Part of that reason is the redundancy the team runs into when it plays both Billings and Boston, since both naturally play center. What was an understandable compromise during the offseason has now become an adjustment that never made sense.
Over that nine-game stretch, she has only started one game despite starting every other game of the season, and the one replacing her among the starters is 2025 second-round pick Makayla Timpson, who has seen a steady increase in minutes throughout the season. It first occurred when the Fever faced Chicago on August 8, and head coach Stephanie White had a clear reason for it.
“(Timpson’s) been playing really well,” White told reporters after the game. “She gives us a different look on the defensive end because of her versatility. She doesn’t try to play outside of herself, and I like the combination of her and (Aliyah Boston), and then when we can bring Mo in to back up the five.”
More recently, the coach praised her forward for being “so coachable,” adding that she was a great template for young players after the game against the Sun.
Billings represents a larger problem for the Fever. Agness pointed out that the Connecticut game saw minimal contribution from the bench, and called the out the team’s play.
“Sophie Cunningham, you’d like to see her knock down a couple of shots,” he said. “Monique Billings, Myisha Hines-Allen having some kind of influence. [Tyasha] Harris did knock down one three-pointer, helped navigate the offense for 13 minutes, but this was top-heavy.”
For now, the Fever’s 26-14 record suggests that they’re on the right track. The team is the #4 seed, Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell are producing at historic levels, and the team has won seven of their last nine, but as the team looks to make a deep postseason run, the supporting cast will increase in importance.