The 2015 Fever returned to the Finals against the same Minnesota Lynx team they had beaten in 2012. They lost in five. It was a decent run. Stephanie White, in her first head-coaching stint, had taken a team without a true second star to within two games of another championship. It looked like a beginning.
It was a goodbye. Catchings retired the next year, in 2016, at age 37. The franchise had built itself around her for fifteen seasons. There was no plan for what came after. There was, for a long time, no plan at all.
White left after 2016. Pokey Chatman took over and stayed three years. Marianne Stanley took over for 2019 and stayed three years. Carlos Knox finished the 2022 season after Stanley was let go mid-year. Christie Sides took over for 2023 and 2024. Then Stephanie White came back. That is seven head coaches in ten years, if you are counting, and the wins say the players were counting too.
The drafts produced some real players — Kelsey Mitchell came in 2018 and stayed and got paid the way she should have been paid. Victoria Vivians had a moment. NaLyssa Smith showed flashes. But the records did not improve fast enough. The franchise missed the playoffs every year between 2017 and 2023. The Fieldhouse was usually half-empty.
The Catchings statue was unveiled outside Gainbridge in 2024. By then the team that played inside had finally turned the corner. The wait was over. It had taken seven coaches and eight years and a player named Aliyah Boston and a player named Caitlin Clark to get to the corner. The Vault keeps the long stretch in the file marked “Necessary.”
