Christie Sides was hired in November 2022 to coach a team that had not made the playoffs since 2016 and had no shortcut out of the wilderness. Her job was patience. The roster she inherited had the No. 1 overall pick coming and not much else, and the front office was honest about the timeline — this was a rebuild, and the first year was going to be a first year.
She came to Indianapolis with a twenty-year coaching résumé and no head-coaching job on it. She had played at Ole Miss under Van Chancellor, finished her degree at Louisiana Tech, and spent the next two decades as an assistant — at Tech, at LSU, in Russia, in Chicago, in Atlanta, and, between 2017 and 2019, on the Fever bench under Pokey Chatman. The Fever knew her. They were bringing her back.
Her first month on the job, the Fever drafted Aliyah Boston with the No. 1 overall pick. The 2023 season finished 13 — 27, which sounds like a losing year and was one, but Boston won Rookie of the Year and the team was, by the eye test, no longer an embarrassment. The hard part of the rebuild had a face now.
The 2024 lottery gave the Fever Caitlin Clark, and Sides drafted her No. 1 overall. The arena sold out every night. National television rearranged its schedule. The team went 20 — 20 in the regular season, made the playoffs as a six seed, and were swept by Connecticut in two. Clark won Rookie of the Year. It was the first Fever playoff appearance in eight years and the franchise had its first back-to-back Rookie of the Year winners. It was also not enough.
The Fever fired her on October 27, 2024. The reporting was uniform — defensive rotations, lineup decisions, late-game management, the use of the two best young players in the league. The franchise had decided that 20 — 20 with Clark and Boston was a ceiling and not a floor, and they wanted a coach who could push the ceiling. Six weeks later they hired Stephanie White.
The honest read is that Sides did the work nobody else wanted and got fired for not being good enough to do the work that came next. She took a franchise at its lowest point in two decades, drafted two of the most important players in WNBA history, ended the longest playoff drought in team history, and handed the keys to her successor at a higher water mark than the one she was handed. The Vault keeps her here for that.