The Indiana Fever were one of the favorites to win it all this season, but the hype ended in the first round of the playoffs, when the Las Vegas Aces knocked them out for the second year in a row. The Fever’s world-class offense looked like a shell of itself as Aces head coach Becky Hammon’s veteran team countered every move. Many fans blamed Fever head coach Stephanie White’s game plans. Fans weren’t the only ones confused: guard Sophie Cunningham has also questioned some of the team’s strategies.
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Cunningham has never named White when discussing those strategies, but WNBA broadcaster Robin Lundberg has noticed a pattern in how she talks about the Fever’s game plans and the way the team approaches things.
“So Sophie Cuttingham has now called out Stephanie White politely, repeatedly. None of that is direct,” Lundberg said on his YouTube channel. “None of it is her saying, ‘Stephanie White wasn’t the right coach or is a bad coach’ or anything that blunt, but reading between the lines. It’s a little bit of tea, some telling tea from Sophie Cuttingham when she is explaining what she thought went wrong with the Fever or what they didn’t do so well.”
“And the structure of her new podcast [No Hesitation] allows her to do so within the framework of the basketball discussion they’re having. But it is not like one instance. We’re now dealing with her discussing these things over and over again. And the general theme to me would come back to coaching,” he added.
Lundberg went on to cite a few examples. The first came right after the Fever were knocked out of the postseason. On the No Hesitation podcast with Drew Hanlen, Cunningham pointed to the team’s inconsistent offensive plans.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m harping on the negative,” Cunningham said in October. “But when you lose, you think about everything that you could have done, right? The inconsistency. And one of them was, on offense, when stuff was working, it’s like we got bored of doing it, so we tried other stuff. And I’m like, why? Why?”
She then described a play the team ran, a guard screen, post and drag that she called a “77.”
“If that works and they can’t guard it, why would we ever get away from it? Why are we calling all these other plays?” Cunningham added. Hanlen responded, “Spam it!”
“But we don’t!” Cunningham replied. “I don’t know if that’s on our point guards; I don’t know if that’s on our staff…”
Lundberg noted that she didn’t mention White by name. He reads the comments as a sign that White overthinks the offense and moves on to other measures too quickly. Cunningham, 30, didn’t name White or the other Fever coaches, but the coaching staff designs and calls the offense.
A second example came in September, when Cunningham said that with four games left before the playoffs, Indiana’s practices typically ran two to two and a half hours, with full-court drills and intense running against male players.
“Then there is what Sophie said about practice and the practice being too much,” Lundberg added. “That is the rumblings I’d heard that many of the players were thinking it was a bit much, a little extra.”
Cunningham isn’t the only Fever player whose comments, or silence, have drawn attention.
On the latest episode of the Post Moves podcast, Candace Parker brought up the ongoing uncertainty around the Fever’s coaching situation with Aliyah Boston. While Boston didn’t directly comment on the situation, her reaction said it all. She appeared about to laugh, then steered away from the question, and she and Parker moved on to Unrivaled, both struggling to keep a straight face.
“Look, AB is very smart. She understands that anything she says in that situation, there is no positive benefit for her to comment really in any way,” Lundberg recently said after reacting to the clip. “But I’ll comment for her. I just don’t see how Stephanie White can return. I really don’t. And I don’t say that to be mean.”
Usually, a head coach’s future is tied to the general manager’s. With the Fever parting ways with team president Kelly Krauskopf and general manager Amber Cox, White is currently in the hot seat.
A decision on her won’t come until the Fever find a replacement for Cox. With the front office in flux, it will be up to the team’s next decision-maker whether White returns for a third season at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.