Oh, we have got to get into this now. We know the Indiana Fever’s front office has been an absolute dumpster fire. An absolute dumpster fire, guys. We all know that. They look like they are lost. They have no clue what to do, where to turn, what’s going on. A basketball president of basketball operations and business operations for the Indiana Fever, Kelly Crossoff, took to the Quarian Company podcast.
She went in on how they’re going to try to reinsert Caitlyn Clark and get her back acclimated. And then what was the thought with the draft picks? We know the Indiana Fever have signed 5’9 and under point guards when they already have the best point guard in the world on their team.
She addressed a lot of things. We got to get into it. Kelly Crossoff, come to the front. I need to hear from you. What is going on with the decision-making? What is the plan for Caitlyn Clark? Because it looks like it’s your idea to try to build a team to win without her rather than getting supplemental pieces for her.
I’m trying to understand what’s going on. I don’t understand the whole plan in terms of going into camp. The Fever have signed Shtori Walker Kimber. Heading into camp, they have eight guards, three forwards, and one center. What are we doing?
I got to hear her explain this. I got to hear what she had to say about Caitlyn Clark getting reacclimated.
When you have a player like Caitlyn Clark, Kelly is my guest from the Indiana Fever. When you have a player like Caitlyn Clark, that is—I don’t need to tell anybody about what Caitlyn Clark is. We know that.
But even though she’s practicing with her teammates, even though she’s around it, even though she’s pretty ubiquitous within the fieldhouse when you go to different events there, that’s different than being in games.
How long does it realistically take over the course of a season when you are reinserting something that big, mixing the drink for everybody, to get that cohesiveness on the floor together back once again?
Yeah, it does take a minute, but the thing about Caitlyn is we’ve had a lot of great players here. She makes it so easy for everybody else because of her IQ, because of her passing ability, the way she sees the floor.
Okay, because of her passing ability and because of her IQ. But Stephanie White wants her playing small forward. She wants her playing off the ball. So everything you’re saying doesn’t even matter.
She really creates a lot of ease on the offensive end. It’s not that hard to play. You have to find the right players that understand that, but it still does take time.
There were moments last year when we were down the stretch where we were thinking, imagine if we had Caitlyn back and healthy. We were losing players along the way, but thinking about the opportunities ahead of us and knowing that if we get everybody healthy again—we lost Sophie partway through, she was shooting over 40% from three, really helping us spread the floor.
There was a lot of optimism coming into this year, knowing that when they get back on the floor together, because we started seeing glimpses of it when everybody was healthy and back on the court together, we’re hopeful it’s going to take us a long way.
But that’s the thing. I think you felt like you could just run it back. Teams got better. The New York Liberty got bigger across the board. This is not the same. We needed to adjust and improve. It feels like you just wanted to keep things afloat. Then you went and got all these small guards. It doesn’t make sense.
What do you mean re-acclimate her? They need to get reacclimated to her, not the other way around. This is the Clark show.
I wanted to touch on this. The business of sport can be frustrating for fans, but it’s part of it.
We’re about to get to the part where she talked about the idea of reserve players and why they signed all these guards.
We’re probably going to add another backcourt player. We may be making an announcement today. To your point about the guard play, you have to be ready. We were able to salvage it last year, but we’re going to tweak a little bit.
We may add a veteran guard that will help us. We have two development spots. We’ll be able to carry 14 players—12 on the roster and two on development contracts that can be converted to standard contracts, like two-way players.
Sometimes rookies drafted in the second and third rounds can’t stay on standard contracts, but we can keep them in a development role.
So basically, one of the third-round draft picks could go to a development spot instead. It doesn’t make sense.
Let’s listen to what she said about drafting Raven Johnson.
The idea of trying to always find another guard is about getting the best player available, but positionally we were focused on a guard. Raven was one of those guards. Defensively, she’s someone who can back up Caitlyn and grow with the team long term on a rookie contract.
We knew we had to strengthen that position. After watching Raven at South Carolina and knowing her pedigree, we were thrilled she was available.
Do you factor in coaching background when evaluating players? Absolutely. Being exposed to high-level coaching prepares players better.
One of our scouts attended a South Carolina practice and said any player from that program would be ready for the WNBA because their practices are like pro-level sessions.
That was Kelly Crossoff explaining the reasoning behind drafting Raven Johnson, the development plan, and how Caitlyn Clark will be reintegrated into the offense.
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