Katie Douglas grew up in Indianapolis. She went to Perry Meridian on the south side of the city, then up the road to Purdue, where she was Big Ten Player of the Year twice and a Naismith All-American, and then she was drafted by Orlando in 2001 and traded to Connecticut and spent seven years there building a résumé that would belong on a wall somewhere. In February of 2008 the Sun traded her home.
What she gave the Fever for the next six seasons was the kind of shooting that opens the floor for the player next to you. The player next to her was Tamika Catchings. Catchings ran the franchise; Douglas ran the wing. She made All-Star teams in 2009 and 2011, she made All-WNBA Second Team twice in her Indiana years, and the perimeter shooting she had carried out of West Lafayette translated cleanly to a Fever offense that finally had two stars on the same wing at the same time.
In 2012 she averaged sixteen and a half points a game in the regular season, second on the team behind Catchings, and the Fever finally got over the East. Then her ankle gave out in the Conference Finals against Connecticut, of all teams, and she watched most of the championship series against Minnesota from the bench in a walking boot. With the clincher in hand and the Fieldhouse on its feet in the final seconds of Game 4, Lin Dunn put her in. The crowd, which had been standing for a while already, kept standing. Indianapolis knew exactly whose minute it was.
The All-Star selections were her ledger. Five trips in all — 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, and one more in 2014 after she had moved back to Connecticut. She was 2006 All-Star Game MVP. She won the WNBA Three-Point Contest in 2010. She made the All-Defensive First Team four times. She finished with 5,563 career points, 727 three-point field goals made, and 623 steals — eighth, fifth, and fourth all-time at her retirement.
Her Fever run ended in 2014 with a return to Connecticut for a farewell season, but the line that matters is the one written in Indianapolis: she was the shooting guard on the only Indiana Fever team that has ever won a championship, and she was the kid from the south side who came home to do it.
The Vault keeps her here in Defense Wins It, where the ring still lives.