It’s safe to say that Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides doesn’t want to talk about what’s been on fans’ minds most lately.

“In three or four years, we can talk about championships,” Sides told Yahoo Sports last summer, when he was months away from winning the draft lottery and half a year before drafting generational talent Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston, their No. 1 pick for 2023, hadn’t even hoisted her Rookie of the Year trophy yet.

At the time, the Fever were already in the middle of the second year of general manager Lin Dunn’s three-year plan to avoid relegation after decades of relegation, which finally bore fruit this season.

The Fever (17-16) secured their first playoff spot since 2016 on Tuesday night, ending the longest playoff drought in league history. They moved up to sixth place over the weekend and will play for a position between the Seattle Storm (20-13) and the Phoenix Mercury (16-17) in the final two weeks of the season.

As the league’s best offense since the All-Star/Olympic break and arguably the most high-profile franchise this season with millions of viewers watching Clark regularly, many fans are talking about championships. Now.

But how realistic is this? Let’s take a look.

Fever peak at the right time

Indiana is peaking at just the right time, with a 6-1 record after the break and the league’s best offensive rating (111.0) and scoring average (91.4 points per game). Kelsey Mitchell and Clark have been the most impressive backcourt duo since the league resumed last month, ranking second (25 points per game) and third (24.5 points per game) in scoring, respectively. Lexie Hull is hitting 62.1% of her 3-pointers in the crucial opening minutes after hitting 28.1% before the break. The team leads the league in 3-point percentage (38.9) and 3-pointers made (11.1; the Liberty are second at 9.9) over the last month.

That’s the clearest reason why the Fever can compete with the best in the playoffs. Everyone is meshing better together and facing opponents a completely different team than they did in the first half. And the Fever are racking up wins against some of the league’s best teams: New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Seattle and Phoenix. The only team they haven’t beaten this year is reigning two-time champion Las Vegas, but they still have two more shots.

Historically, the WNBA champions have always been seeded No. 1 or 2. That’s in part because of playoff formats that once heavily favored the league’s best players with rest and now lean toward them with home-court advantage. (That could also benefit the Fever, who will likely play on the road for the first two games of a three-game first-round series, but whose away games have been attended by plenty of Fever and Clark fans.)

Chicago broke the pattern of top seeds winning it all in 2021 when it rode a No. 6 seed as a .500 team in the regular season and defeated the No. 5 Phoenix Mercury to claim the franchise’s first and only title. It was an Olympic year and Candace Parker’s first in Chicago. There were no Sky players on the Team USA 5×5 roster, so they were able to train together in the U.S., just like the Fever will in 2024.

Speed ​​can trump physicality and size

The Fever are one of the fastest teams in the league in terms of pace, ranking fourth overall, and have been playing faster since the break than any other team currently in the playoffs. That’s what would make four-time champion Sue Bird leery of facing Indiana if it were still playing.

“What I learned in my WNBA experience is that the pace of the game is more important than physicality,” Bird said on her podcast “A Touch More.” “It’s more important than size. It can be more important than experience, because oftentimes experience is a code word for, ‘You’re a veteran,’ which is a code word for, ‘You’re old.'”

Bird said the Storm’s “whole mantra was ‘pace, pace, pace, pace, pace'” when the franchise won titles in 2018 and 2020.

“What I see with Caitlin (Clark) and Kelsey Mitchell is that they just force it on people,” Bird said. “And that’s really hard. It can make your head spin.”

A typical example:

And this game, while successful, is not an exception. Clark’s ability to throw passes all over the field in transition and get the ball past multiple defenders in the box led Iowa to back-to-back national title games after the team had never won one before her era. The Hawkeyes ranked in the top 15 in speed both seasons and 26th or better in all four seasons of Clark’s college career.

Of course, pace isn’t the deciding indicator of a WNBA champion. Las Vegas has finished in the top three in pace each of the last seven seasons. Last season, they finished second in pace, while runner-up New York finished fifth. The Aces were the first-place team in 2022, but which team was second? The Fever, who ran in the opposite direction of the best lottery odds. Bird’s Seattle teams pushed for pace, but still finished in the second half of the league’s best in that category.

Youth can also be a disadvantage

Although the youth factor can be an advantage, in the past it has not been enough to lead a team to the championship. may Trump experience, but it takes a lot more to accomplish that over the course of a postseason series than in a single game.

The Fever’s current starting lineup is one of the youngest in the league. Mitchell is the elder stateswoman in her seventh season in Indianapolis. Clark is in her first year, Boston in her second, and NaLyssa Smith and Lexie Hull in their third. None of them are familiar with the WNBA postseason.

Their top competitors have it in their hands and, in some cases, endure the heartache of what they would gladly replace. New York (27-6), last year’s runner-up, has four players with at least seven years of experience and all with over four. Breanna Stewart won two championships in Seattle with Bird. Vandersloot led the Sky’s 2021 champions. Jonquel Jones knows the pain of a finals loss well, first with the Connecticut Sun and then again last fall.

Las Vegas struggled deep into the playoffs for years, including a loss in the 2020 finals, before breaking through. Stewart and Jewell Loyd learned from two-time champion Bird in Seattle and were eliminated in the first round in two consecutive seasons before winning their first. Washington lost in the 2018 finals but took the Cup the next season.

A place in the finals would be historic for Clark and Co. Only two first-rounders have played in the finals in their first season: Tina Thompson, the first overall pick in 1997, started for the Houston Comets in the first of their four consecutive titles; and Maya Moore won the championship with Minnesota in 2011, the year she was selected first in the draft.

WNBA title 2024 candidate

There are still five teams ahead of the Fever in the table and most of them have better chances of winning the title.

New York returned all five of its starters and strengthened the bench to win the franchise’s first WNBA title. The Liberty are the most consistent team with the best offense and have won all season despite having starters on the bench due to injury. Indiana is 1-3 against New York, but all three losses came within the first month of the season (two of them within the first week).

Minnesota (24-9) has the best defensive rating and best three-point percentage and is led by an experienced and veteran group. The Lynx struggled before the break without MVP candidate Napheesa Collier, but have bounced back after the break and have the best record in the league (7-1). Head coach Cheryl Reeve is a three-time coach of the year and led the Lynx to four titles in seven years in the 2010s. Indiana is 1-1 against Minnesota, with the last game being Friday in Indianapolis.

Connecticut (24-9) was on the verge of its first title in the last decade and strengthened itself before the break by signing 3-point shooter Marina Mabrey. The Sun have the second-best net rating behind the Liberty. Indiana is 1-3 against the Sun, but all three losses again came within the first month (and two within the first week).

Seattle is in the first season of its super team, signing former champion Nneka Ogwumike and All-Star point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith to complement Loyd and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Ezi Magbegor. The Storm slumped after the break with one of the league’s worst records over the last month, but have brought Olympic silver medalist Gabby Williams back into the fold. Indiana is 1-3 against Seattle, with all three losses coming before June 27.

And of course, the action in Las Vegas (20-12) is bumpier than usual. But the Aces are still two-time defending champions with a dominant MVP in A’ja Wilson leading the same starting lineup they’ve had for two championships. They’re not to be underestimated. And they lead the league in pace. Indiana lost road games in Las Vegas in May and early July; the Fever host the Aces at home on Sept. 11 and 13.

If the season ended Wednesday morning, the Fever would secure the No. 6 seed and travel to Minnesota for the first two games of a best-of-three first-round series. While there are factors in the Fever’s favor at this point in a unique Olympic season, there’s a reason Sides is still a few years away from wanting to talk about championships.