Caitlin Clark had an uncharacteristically forgettable performance on Saturday night against the Portland Fire. She finished the game with a season-low six points, alongside six assists and two rebounds. But if you actually watched the first three minutes of the game, it looked like it was going to be another masterclass performance from Clark, and even the Fever team as a whole. In those opening three minutes, Indiana raced out to an 8-2 run, with Clark either scoring or assisting on every single point. But then, Fever head coach Stephanie White decided to sub Clark out halfway through the first quarter.

This and several other coaching decisions did not quite make sense to WNBA analyst Rosalina Lee. In a recap video of the game shared on her YouTube channel, Lee pointed to a number of such decisions that she described as confusing.

“I do unfortunately have to call out the coaching in this game because the rotations were just so confusing,” she said. “I do not understand why Ty Harris, Raven Johnson, Grace VanSlooten, and Makayla Timpson were all on the court at the same time.”

Looking at how the game unfolded and eventually ended in a 100-84 loss, it would not be entirely out of place to place some of the blame on Fever head coach Stephanie White. In fact, the decision to take Clark out at a time when she was the “hot hand,” as Lee described it, was the first questionable call. 

As Lee put it, “Subbing the hot hand out 3 minutes in in the first quarter feels a little soft.”

That also happened to be the same point at which White took Aliyah Boston out of the game. And it ultimately affected the game. As soon as Caitlin Clark came out, the Portland Fire went on a 13-2 run and completely took control of the contest, something Lee also highlighted. However, this was not the only decision that Lee found rather shocking. According to her:

“The entire game was sloppy.”

She questioned some of the lineup combinations used throughout the game. She said:

“Steph White, for some reason, played the entire team in that first quarter. Monique Billings played eight minutes and she was yanked out without scoring anything. The defense in this game was so weird.”

Among all of those decisions, however, the biggest talking point still remained the early removal of Clark alongside Boston. Although coach Stephanie White has since explained the move, saying that Aliyah Boston was still on a minutes restriction and that taking her out at that point simply coincided with the time Clark is usually substituted. That explanation still did not convince Lee.

As she said, “You have to kind of like read the room or read the court, I guess. When you have a player with a hot hand starting out, you keep the ball rolling. You don’t really sub them out in their typical substitution times.”

With that loss, the Fever now sit at 4-4 this season. They are also currently ninth in the overall league standings and fourth in the Eastern Conference. Their next game comes against the Atlanta Dream, where they will be hoping to bounce back and return to winning ways.

Coach Stephanie White says the hungrier Portland Fire team outworked the Fever

For the quality that the Indiana Fever have on their roster, the manner in which the Portland Fire dominated the game had only one explanation for head coach Stephanie White. For her, it simply came down to the fact that Portland was the hungrier team and played with a greater competitive edge than the Fever.

Speaking during the post-game press conference, a video of which was shared on the Fever’s YouTube channel, White’s exact words were: “I just thought they were the hungrier team. I thought that they played with a relentless effort, a relentless pursuit… They wanted to be disruptive on defense, to get to their spots on offense. I thought their competitive spirit was better than ours.”

Portland had a good reason to stay competitive, considering its previous loss to the Atlanta Dream by 20 points. As for the rotations as well as the foul trouble that occurred throughout the game, White also credited Portland’s intensity. She mentioned:

“I thought Portland did a really good job of attacking the matchups that they wanted. That created foul trouble, that created rotations. You know, it created opportunities for them to run free for offensive rebounds as well because we were in rotations.”

In short, the way Stephanie White sees it, the Indiana Fever simply did not compete well enough to win. But for WNBA analyst Rosalina Lee, the fault rests on White’s shoulders for the many confusing coaching decisions she made throughout the game.