It’s time for another episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball and host Howard Megdal has Indiana Fever president of basketball and business operations Kelly Krauskopf on to talk about her return to a very different looking WNBA landscape.
Krauskopf served as the WNBA’s first director of basketball operations and then led the Fever from 2000 to 2018, which Tony East discussed in his recent piece, before shifting to the NBA’s Indiana Pacers.
The conversation starts with the differences between the two leagues and growth of the WNBA in her absence, then continues on to the decision to hire Stephanie White and Krauskopf’s hopes for the future of the Fever.
“In 1996 when we were sitting in New York talking about building the league, you know, this is a point where we wanted to be and and then certainly coming to Indiana and starting this team,” Krauskopf said. “I mean, we’re all, “All of us who have been in it for a long time, we’re at that next level, and you can’t get comfortable because we’ve had incremental growth along the way. This is a bigger step, a much bigger step. So, you know, you have to make sure you shepherd that the right way and and move in the direction where you’re really capitalizing and maximizing the opportunities that are, that are sitting right here.”
Ironically, White is also returning to the Fever where she coached in 2015 and 2016. White left for Vanderbilt and most recently spent two years leading the Connecticut Sun before parting ways last month. The Indiana native now inherits another WNBA playoff team which features one of the league’s most-intriguing rosters with both the 2023 and 2024 rookies of the year in Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark.
“Stephanie’s part of our history, part of our franchise, the fabric of our franchise,” Krauskopf said. “She’s a proven winner. She’s a proven leader and and she has the kind of experience, really, that we felt was necessary to kind of lift us through this next three to five to seven years of kind of being on this expedited path.”
They ended the discussion with a potential free agency Easter egg when Megdal asked about the approach to re-signing veteran guard Kelsey Mitchell when most players will be looking for short-term deals ahead of the WNBA’s new CBA next year.
“It certainly doesn’t change our opinion of of how important Kelsey is and how important you know she is to returning to this team so so that she’s our number one priority,” Krauskopf said. “Yes, we do have the opportunity to core her, and it would be sort of irresponsible of me if we didn’t utilize that opportunity.”
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