The Indiana Fever are undergoing a major front-office shakeup. President of basketball and business operations Kelly Krauskopf has stepped down and general manager Amber Cox has been fired. The team announced Krauskopf’s decision to step away on Friday morning before later announcing Cox’s departure.
Krauskopf was the Fever’s original president and general manager for their inaugural season in 2000, and remained in that role until 2018, when the Indiana Pacers hired her as their assistant general manager and she became the first woman in NBA history to hold an executive basketball management role. During her first stint with the Fever, Krauskopf built one of the most consistent organizations in the league. The Fever made the playoffs 13 times in her 19 seasons, including 12 consecutive seasons from 2005-16, which remains a WNBA record. Under Krauskopf’s leadership, the Fever won their first and only title in 2012, and also reached the Finals in 2009 and 2015.
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Krauskopf returned to the Fever in 2024 and was part of the organization’s decision to hire Cox as chief operating officer and general manager. That was the same year Caitlin Clark arrived and the franchise’s worldwide popularity exploded. The Fever made the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, but never advanced past the semifinals, and Krauskopf and Cox have both faced criticism for failing to build a better team around Clark, Aliyah Boston, and Kelsey Mitchell.
The organizational shakeup comes as an important offseason for the franchise is underway. Mitchell is an unrestricted free agent, but now the Fever are without a president and general manager. Krauskopf informed the organization of her decision prior to the end of the season, so you’d assume the organization has been working on a succession plan, but the Fever will need to make some decisions quickly.
This is a critical offseason for the franchise, and whoever replaces Krauskopf and Cox will immediately be thrown into the fire.
Why is this such an important offseason for the Fever?
After a first-round exit to the Las Vegas Aces, the Fever have some major items on the agenda this offseason. First and foremost, they want to re-sign Mitchell, who is an unrestricted free agent. Cox said Mitchell will be a “major priority,” and it’s fair to assume the new front office will feel the same way. Clark, for her part, said that she and her teammates will recruit Mitchell “as hard as we can.”
Mitchell, however, is unsure of her future with the Fever, who drafted her No. 2 overall back in 2018.
“I have to be selfish,” Mitchell said during her exit interview. “I think that’s where I am in my career … what I probably need and what’s probably best for me. So I have to be selfish in that room. “But I think, ultimately, being on the Fever and being a part of an organization that does come with a lot of ups and downs, what factors in and what is important for me is, obviously, having a good chemistry on and off the floor. I’ve only been with one team my entire career, so it’s all kind of like figuring this out. It’s hard, man.”
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Clark, meanwhile, is eligible for an EPIC (Exceptional Performance on Initial Contract) extension, which allows players to renegotiate the fourth year of their rookie contract and sign a three-year extension. During her exit interview, Clark hinted at being willing to take a discount, but did not say whether she’ll sign an EPIC deal.
“I think for myself, my focus is on winning. I certainly know what I deserve and what I’m worth, but at the same time, sometimes you have to make sacrifices,” Clark said.
The Mitchell and Clark contract decisions will complicate an already messy cap sheet for the Fever. Even if both were willing to take a slight discount to return, the Fever would still have three players — including Boston, who signed an EPIC extension last offseason — taking up about 60% of the salary cap moving forward, and it’s not easy to build a championship roster with so few resources for everyone else. That’s especially true when the Fever still have Monique Billings and Lexie Hull on the books for $800K apiece next season — the result of a pair of disastrous deals Krauskopf and Cox handed out last offseason.
Stephanie White expected to remain as coach
Ahead of the 2025 season, Krauskopf and Cox fired coach Christie Sides and replaced her with the veteran Stephanie White, who played for the Fever from 2000-04 and previously served as an assistant coach from 2011-14 and head coach from 2015-16. White has one year remaining on her contract and is expected to remain in her role, according to The Athletic.
White has made the playoffs in each of her two seasons in charge, and the Fever’s 24 wins this season were a franchise record. However, the team has not advanced past the semifinals, and White has faced steady criticism for how she’s handled Clark and the team overall.
Clark has routinely backed White, though, and did so again at her exit interview.
“I really appreciate Steph. I like to say this is the best job in women’s basketball and possibly women’s sports, getting to lead this franchise that has so much notoriety, but at the same time, it can come with some negatives and people are gonna criticize everything that you can do. That’s just the reality, people expect greatness,” Clark said.
“Personally, my relationship with Steph, she’s somebody that’s always supported me. It’s been really fun getting to play for her,” Clark continued. “She just tries to win, she’s competitive. She expects great things out of us. She has a fiery passion about her that I really, really admire. I think I have a lot of that in myself too. One of my most special memories of this year is getting to win a gold medal with her in Berlin. That’s not something anybody can ever take away from us.”
New front office has work to do to repair reputation
During Game 2 of the Fever’s first-round series with the Aces, MVP A’ja Wilson confronted a fan sitting along the baseline, who she felt had been disrespectful. Wilson received a technical foul for the incident, which became a national talking point and reignited the discourse about Fever fans and the organization’s reputation.
During her exit interview, Cox said that “attacks on our fanbase have no basis in reality, and they need to stop.
“Every organization in the league, every organization throughout professional sports, all the way down to youth rec leagues, have to deal with occasional bad behavior from spectators. And anyone who crosses the line in an arena or online needs to be held accountable. I want to be really clear about that. There is a line, and people need to be held accountable if they cross it,” Cox said.
“But here’s the fact: We did not have one fan pointed out by a player who violated the WNBA code of conduct this season. Not one fan was removed from a game. … Our fans love this team. They’re going to cheer, they’re going to boo, and sometimes they might point. It’s a home-court advantage for a reason, and it’s the same for the Pacers. And all of that is within the code of conduct.”
That same day, however, Mitchell admitted that she didn’t always enjoy playing in front of Fever fans.
“Showing up every day to compete for fans that may or may not like you is hard,” Mitchell said. “I think this organization is unbelievable, man, but I think that when it comes to, like, really trying to be yourself, it hasn’t always been easy.”
Early on Friday, prior to the changes in the Fever’s front office, The Athletic published a report in which one agent said that multiple of their clients had been called the N-word in Indianapolis. And earlier this season, Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner said they received death threats and had their addresses leaked after Thomas was retroactively assessed a Flagrant 2 foul and suspended for one game following an in-game altercation with Clark.
During her exit interview, Clark once again denounced fans who use her name for the wrong reasons. “As far as people that have used me to demonstrate racist rhetoric or hate or discrimination, that’s not something I stand for,” Clark said. “That’s never been something I’ve stood for. For those of you that know me, that’s not what I’m about, that’s not how I was raised, so that’s really disappointing when people do that.”
In addition to recruiting Mitchell and figuring out Clark’s extension, the Fever’s new front office will have to repair the franchise’s reputation around the league.
