The Indiana Fever have successfully built a contender around Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston. They made all the right moves, re-signing Kelsey Mitchell, adding DeWanna Bonner, Natasha Howard, and other veterans in free agency, and trading for Sophie Cunningham. This could be a championship roster.
Despite the revamped roster, the Fever will have to face many challenges in the 2025 season. One major challenge is that winning a championship in the first season after assembling a “super team” is not an easy thing to do, especially when your main competition has experience playing together.
The Fever’s training camp roster features only five players who were on the team last season—Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston, Kelsey Mitchell, Lexie Hull, and Damiris Dantas. Everyone else was with a different team last season. So was the Fever’s head coach.
The Fever will have to build chemistry and implement a new system quickly or risk falling behind their competition. New York, Minnesota, and Las Vegas are the other sure-fire contenders in the league. The Lynx kept their core completely intact and the Liberty and Aces are returning most of their key pieces from their championship teams.
That is the first challenge the Fever will have to deal with—they will have to find their rhythm quickly. Even if they can do that, history is not necessarily on their site, though. Few teams win a championship right off the bat.
The Liberty, for example, built their “super team” in 2023 when Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones came to New York but did not win a championship that year. Likewise, the Aces drafted A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young in 2018 and 2019 respectively, but didn’t win a championship until 2022. Elena Delle Donne joined the Washington Mystics in 2017 but the team didn’t win a title until 2019.
The Fever can build the foundation for a championship run
Caitlin Clark has already made her goals for the 2025 season clear. For her, a successful season ends in a championship. Doing that just one year after drafting the face of the franchise and in the same year that they were able to add championship veterans to the roster will be a tall task.
Due to a new CBA kicking in soon, most of the Fever’s veterans only signed one-year deals and will be free agents after the season. However, that does not mean that the Fever only have a one-year window to win a championship.
Bonner, Howard, and the other veterans signed with the Fever for a reason. It should not be difficult to convince them to re-sign after the 2025 season. Even if the Fever cannot win a championship this year, they can build a culture veterans like Bonner and Howard want to return to and give the team a chance to win a title the next year.