Stephanie White’s return to Indiana Fever seen as homecoming

The Indiana Fever on Monday formally welcomed former and returning head coach Stephanie White back to the franchise with an introductory news conference on the team’s practice court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

White, 47, was named the team’s coach on Friday after she parted ways with the Connecticut Sun earlier last week following two playoff appearances in as many seasons. She previously coached Vanderbilt University’s women’s basketball team and was the Fever’s head coach from 2015 to 2016.

“It’s going to be really hard for me to not get emotional today, but you know, I think all of these familiar faces in the building here, this is coming home for me,” White said Monday during her news conference.

The Indiana native and 1995 Indiana Miss Basketball played for Seeger High School in West Lebanon before leading Purdue University to the 1999 NCAA championship. She played five WNBA seasons, including four with the Fever.

The Fever is expected to return most of the team’s core players next season, led by Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark, back-to-back No. 1 picks in the 2023 and 2024 WNBA Drafts, respectively, and winners of the last two WNBA Rookie of the Year awards.

The news conference also marked the first public appearance by Amber Cox, who was named the team’s general manager one month ago. Kelly Krauskopf, who rejoined the franchise as president of basketball and business operations this offseason after six seasons with the Indiana Pacers, also spoke with media.

Here are eight things White, Cox and Krauskopf said when answering questions from the media during the news conference and in individual interviews afterward:

White, on sense of responsibility to the league during a huge period of growth:

“It’s an exciting time. You know, those of us who have been around since Day One have been waiting for this moment, we have envisioned this moment. And so the responsibility, embracing the opportunity with where our game is—where women’s basketball is—certainly, we always want to recognize those whose shoulders that we stand on now and those who are trailblazers moving the needle and moving the game forward.

And so for me, I’m just excited, I’m humbled, I’m passionate, I’m competitive and I’m committed to continuing to move the needle for our league. I love this league. I love the game of basketball. I love the challenges that being at this pivotal moment create, and as a competitor, embrace these opportunities that we have. Certainly, we all know it’s not easy, but anybody who’s ever known what we do knows that it’s worth it.”

White, on differences between this turn with the Fever compared with her two-season stint as coach in 2015-16:

“I think, first and foremost, the game is different … Obviously, this is a franchise that, for each moment we’ve been in in the league’s history, we’ve always had everything that we needed to succeed. And as the needle moves and as things … continue to change so rapidly, we’ve kept up with that, and I think that’s a really important piece of where we are in the WNBA history, and forward thinking [about] where we’re going to be in the near future.

But for me, there’s always been a piece when it comes to walking into this building and seeing all of these familiar faces. … Everything has changed, the expectations are higher, the game is different, players are better, teams are better—teams are deeper. The league is expanding, so there’s no rest for the weary. We’ve gotta get to work, and we gotta be forward thinking.”

Krauskopf, regarding the timing of hiring White less than a week after parting with former head coach Christie Sides:

“You’re always looking at your options [and] sometimes those things are tandem. Sometimes they go hand-in-hand. You’re thinking about ways where you can improve. You know, things came together pretty quickly, from the time that we initially decided that we were going to go ahead and part ways, and almost like, literally within a day or so, I’m hearing that Stephanie was going to be leaving Connecticut. So, it was a fortuitous moment that that worked out well for us, and here we are.”

Cox, about Fever players including Aliyah Boston and Lexie Hull participating in the new Unrivaled women’s basketball league, which has also approached Caitlin Clark about joining:

“It really is a personal decision, based on where each player is, based on the rest that they need, based on what they’re trying to accomplish in their off season. I think the good news is there are more and more opportunities for players to stay stateside. So whether they’re playing in Unrivaled, whether they’re playing in [Athletes Unlimited] or they’re just staying here to do marketing for the team, those are opportunities that are here in Indiana to raise their profile. And I think in all cases, that’s advantageous for us as a franchise. But again, I think it really is a personal decision based on where the player is in terms of their development.”

White, discussing how the coaching staff and management can capitalize on the popularity of the Fever among existing and new basketball fans:

Players want to play in front of big crowds, so when it comes to free agency, when it comes to attracting players that want to play with a great point guard and a great center, that want to play with a great wing player in Kelsey Mitchell, that want to play in an environment that’s going to be sold out, night in and night out, in a city that loves basketball and that will love them—I think that’s how you use it as a coach.

I think that the way we navigate it from an Xs and Os standpoint, is we have built-in energy, right? We have built-in energy, but we can’t depend on that. We can’t use that as a crutch. We’ve got to make sure that our attention to detail is always at its highest, and we use this as an added bonus and as fuel, to play for something bigger than ourselves, to play for this organization, to play for this city that loves basketball, to play for these fans who are showing up every single day. You don’t accomplish great things without playing for something bigger than yourself, and this gives us an opportunity to do that.”

Cox, on what it was like to watch the popularity of the Fever explode, from the front office for WNBA team Dallas Wings:

I think we all immediately felt the impact. When I was in Dallas a year ago, we hosted Indiana for a preseason game, and that was a sellout—that traditionally is not the case for our preseason games, so we immediately knew that every team around the league was going to feel that impact.

But I think you’re also seeing all of the work of the pioneers and the people that put in the years of work to build this, paying off for teams [that are] setting records across the board. But certainly the impact of the last couple of years and this Indiana Fever team, how exciting they are to watch impacted not only Indiana, but everyone across the league.

Krauskopf, talking about what led her to want to return to the Fever:

First of all, the Fever is why I came to Indiana 25 years ago. So, I sort of look at it as my 25-year-old child. It’s close to my heart. I was asked to come in and kind of reset the direction and help get them pointed in the right way. So, in a lot of ways my coming back had to do with sort of a calling, if you will. It’s part of my DNA. Basketball and women’s sports has been what I’ve done my whole life. Initially, I wasn’t thinking about [it being] something I wanted to return to, because I was like, I built it when I started 18 years ago. But I saw the opportunity and saw that I could help. So that’s what happened.

White, on returning to her home state and being closer to family:

“It was really important. I think I’m at the point in my career where making a decision for one reason or another isn’t really good enough anymore. It’s got to be about professional opportunity, it’s got to be about the personal opportunities. And for me, being near my family—some of them are here today, including my nephew, who I’ve only seen a few times. So it will be great to see see his little, cute face more often. For my children to be able to be around my family even more, it’s important.

For those of us who have children, you know you don’t get these years back—you don’t get this time back. And my family sacrificed a lot of time with my children [so] for them to now be able to have them around more often, for me to be closer to home, it was really important. There’s always a time in your life where you feel like everything needs to be grounded, everything needs to be centered so that you can be where your feet are, no question about it. I think that’s why we all do what we do, and sacrifice in some way, shape or form, to be the best that we can be. But when it can all align and we can all come together, there’s no greater feeling. So that was certainly an important part of it.”