Indiana parted ways with former head coach after first playoff appearance since 2016

Despite ending their seven-year playoff drought, the Indiana Fever made the polarizing decision to move on from head coach Christie Sides earlier this week.

The decision was a bit controversial at the time considering Sides showed year-over-year improvement from 2022 to 2023, finishing with seven more wins this season than last and qualifying as the No. 6 seed for the playoffs after finishing 10th in the WNBA standings two seasons ago.

Indiana’s decision was less controversial when Stephanie White was introduced as Sides successor on Friday, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that there’s still some questions around cutting Sides loose.

As ESPN’s Elle Duncan recently stated on “The Elle Duncan Show,” there’s one potential issue the Fever are perhaps overlooking that wouldn’t even be on their radar had they kept Sides around.

“You have to think about the development of the players,” Duncan said. “…You’re talking about a team that really started to catch fire towards the end of last year, and now they’re going to go through another coaching change. … You just wonder how much you’re stunting their potential development or growth, or at least delaying it, by bringing in a new regime.”

While it’s tough to argue against going all-in for a coach of White’s Caliber — she has a career win percentage of .622 and has made the playoffs in every year she’s coached in the WNBA — it’s also difficult to argue Sides didn’t have the Fever playing their best basketball down the stretch.

Indiana was 9-5 after the Olympic break, which was fueled by Caitlin Clark’s breakout performance where she really established herself as one of the five to seven best players in the league.

However, a strong counter argument to Duncan’s point is that Clark and Aliyah Boston both handled a head-coaching change jumping from the NCAA to WNBA just fine during their respective rookie seasons, and White is such a significant upgrade over Sides that player development won’t even be an issue.