Before Caitlin Clark entered the WNBA and turned the Indiana Fever into one of the most heavily scrutinized teams in American sports, Kelsey Mitchell was the face of the franchise.
During the lean years that led to Indiana getting back-to-back No. 1 overall picks (center Aliyah Boston and then Clark), Mitchell held it down. The franchise’s glow-up has allowed Mitchell to blossom on the court into a star in her own right, most notably during her streak of 20-plus point games this season.
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As the 30-year-old Mitchell approaches free agency, though, she isn’t holding back regarding the difficulties of being part of a team that is constantly dissected and put through the culture-war ringer.
“Showing up every day to compete for fans that may or may not like you is hard. I don’t think people understand that,” she said Saturday at the team’s end-of-season press conference.
“I think having to show up for people that don’t look at you and have, you know, the star eyes when they see me. But playing with CC and having the eyes that she got, we get a lot of flak just for being on her team. So I think that comes with a lot too, and I think that people gotta give us grace. I think that this organization is unbelievable, man, but I think that when it comes to really trying to be yourself, it hasn’t always been easy. That’s all I’ll say.”
The Fever fanbase once again became a topic of conversation during the team’s first-round series, as Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson uncharacteristically confronted a heckling fan along the baseline late in Game 2. Beyond that, Indiana was frequently at the center of unfriendly interactions between fans and players throughout the season.
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Two courtside fans at Gainbridge Fieldhouse were removed from a game in August after locking horns with Aces forward Jackie Young. After a loss to the Fever the previous month, a man was fired from his job after Aces point guard Chelsea Gray revealed he had called her a racial slur in a message on social media. Both at home and on the road, demonstrators turned Fever games into grounds for protests over transgender rights after Fever forward Sophie Cunningham argued against trans women competing in women’s sports.
Mitchell referenced social media “hate” during her comments Saturday.
“I don’t think people really understand how much we endured,” she said. “If I showed y’all my DMs about the hate and all of the stuff that comes with being a professional athlete but specifically being an Indiana Fever basketball player, it’s a lot that goes into that.”
At the same press conference, Fever general manager Amber Cox stated that “attacks on our fan base have no basis in reality.” While it would be unusual for a team executive to disavow their own fans, Cox’s comments run in stark contrast to Mitchell’s, and reinforce the difficulties for Fever players even compared with what their bosses might see.
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