Ruling Caitlin Clark Out Won’t Cut Fever Front Office’s Ties With Looming WNBA Investigation – Report

The Indiana Fever looks more like a hospital wing rather than a WNBA squad this season. Bad luck has wrecked the season for several stars, with key players sidelined by freak setbacks that no prep could prevent. Take Caitlin Clark as an example. With 39.6 seconds to play in a victory against the Connecticut Sun in mid-July, she made a simple backdoor pass to Kelsey Mitchell and ‘felt a little something in her groin’. While the fans hoped for a commanding return, Clark joined Sophie Cunningham, Aari McDonald, Sydney Colson, and Chloe Bibby in the Fever “nursing home”. That is a long list, isn’t it? So, should something be done about it?

The luck factor played a big part right through the season. Even when it came to Clark’s bone bruise, Fever reporter Scott Agnes reported, “It happened at the very end of a workout session. Just awful luck, right?” When it comes to sustaining injuries, there is little you can control, but the recovery process is in the franchise’s hands. With so many season-ending injuries, the medical staff behind the scenes was bound to be questioned.

Taking the crisis into consideration, CBS analyst Erica Ayala asked on the ‘We Need To Talk’ podcast, “Is there a conversation maybe that the Indiana Fever are going to have to have as an organization when it comes to evaluating what the recovery process is?”

According to the Next Injury tracker, the Indiana Fever have had 16 injuries, which is lower than the league-wide average of 18.4. Despite having fewer injuries by comparison, the Fever’s injury squad has missed a cumulative of 78 games. That brings its games per injury to 4.9, which is greater than the mean of 4.2. The Fever are missing players for more time as compared to their peers, which is why Ayala further says, “It’s fair to question if that’s a part of what needs to be observed when you look at it from the Fever perspective.”

Let’s look at each season-ending injury point by point. Caitlin Clark suffered through two major and minor injuries. She sat out their first preseason game against the Washington Mystics on May 3 due to left quad tightness and then returned immediately for the game against Brazil in Iowa on May 5. After a blistering start to the season, she was diagnosed with a left quadriceps injury after the New York Liberty game in late May, and then she tumbled into multiple soft tissue setbacks.

When Clark injured her right groin, certified sports physician Jesse Morse, M.D., wrote in his July 15 post on X, “Whatever the medical staff is doing right now is unfortunately not enough.” He stressed on the fact that she did not get enough time for recovery, writing, “Sometimes even shutting them down for a couple weeks isn’t enough.”

For others, it was fairly straightforward. McDonald and Colson stumbled out in the same Phoenix Mercury game on August 7 and instantly knew their season was over. Colson tore her ACL, while McDonald had a bone in her right foot. Cunningham rammed into Bria Hartley in their Connecticut Sun game on August 17 and was almost immediately ruled out for the rest of the season. The reports just confirmed what everyone knew.

Chloe Bibby is another interesting case. She had been out since August 17 with her left knee injury, but was officially ruled out only on September 4. “It’s just with all the travel and everything else, it just swelled up and swelled up so much that it’s caused some issues,” White explained regarding the emergency signing. The medical staff failed to get her back up and running within the required timeline. Whether that was actually possible or not can be learned only by getting the actual reports, but the doubts were bound to creep in. 

Alicia Jay agreed with Erica Ayala on the need to investigate the injury issues when she said, “They haven’t been on the lucky side when it comes to injuries, but with the sheer amount, you have to kind of do a little investigation or do a, you know, do your due diligence into that just for the future of your players and the future of your franchise.”

Injuries have been prevalent throughout the league, and the Indiana Fever is not the exception, but the fact that many of those were season-ending is what concerns the fans and the analysts alike. And that’s why analysts and experts are urging the Fever to investigate their injury issues and also the WNBA for the league-wide injuries suffered this season. The Indiana Fever are fully determined on winning, and this injury problem kept them from realizing the dreams they had in the offseason. Will the medical staff get the axe by the time 2026 arrives?

Why Indiana won’t shake up its medical staff even after the Caitlin Clark Debacle

The Indiana Fever medical team has come under fire considering the situation around the team. However, they are more than equipped to actually deal with the situations they have faced this season. Todd Champlin, Indiana’s director of medical services and head athletic trainer, is among the WNBA’s longest‑tenured trainers. He is now in his 11th season with the Fever after a prior year with the Seattle Storm, following 15 years in minor‑league ice hockey. 

Dr Sarah Kessler, who is their Head Athletic Performance Coach, has been in Indiana for more than 4 years. For her first stint, she was the performance data analyst with the Pacers and then switched to the Fever, where she has been for almost 3 years. So, the medical professionals at the helm are pretty experienced and well-known in the field. When it comes to Caitlin Clark’s injury and how it was handled, maybe it was a problem with the patient rather than the care. 

“I’ve never been through anything like this, and I think that’s probably why it’s been so hard. I’ve never really dealt with injury, and that’s probably been a challenge in itself because when I first was feeling pain, I didn’t understand it. I was like, am I just tight? Am I just getting old? Do I need to hit a stretch? Do I need to get a little rubbed out? Do I need some Icy Hot? Like, what’s going on here?” Clark said in her interview with Sue Bird on August 8. Even Cunningham called her injury “weird.” 

The professionals would have been taking Clark’s opinion on how she was feeling every step of the recovery process. Like Clark said, since she had never experienced something like this, that judgment was difficult, causing further setbacks. A definitive answer could be found only after an internal review, after the season ends. This is another thing the Fever management has on their to-do list, along with the offseason strategy.