RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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In the lead-up to the Bears’ season — have you heard that it’s football season? — coach Ben Johnson set an audacious goal for his offense.
He doesn’t just want it to be good. He wants it to be one of the best of all time.
The Fever are already doing that in the WNBA.
They are averaging 96.2 points per game, on pace to break the record set by the 2023 champion Aces. But Fever coach Stephanie White didn’t enter the season sounding anything like Johnson.
“I always talk about defense,” she said. “We know we can score, but so can other teams, right?”
That’s the irony of the Fever: A defensive-minded coach, hired in part to turn around their defense, wound up overseeing one of the greatest offenses ever.
So in honor of the final Sky -Fever matchup of the season, in which the Fever rolled to a 113-90 victory, here’s a question with an obvious answer:
What does it take to build a historically good offense?
Historically good players.
So says Sky coach Tyler Marsh, who was an assistant on that 2023 Aces team.
“They’re loaded, so there’s no surprise,” he said. “They’re extremely talented individually. They run with great pace. They can hurt you in the half court. Steph is a great coach. Put all those things together, it’s no surprise where they are.”
For all White’s pleading about defense — the Fever rank only 11th in defensive rating — she admits it’s pretty fun to coach a group this loaded.
The Fever have not one but two MVP candidates: Caitlin Clark, one of the most perceptive passers the league has seen, and Kelsey Mitchell, one of its most unstoppable scorers.
Ask almost any WNBA player who the toughest cover in the league is the answer tends to be Mitchell. This season, her efficiency has elevated her into historic company. Mitchell is averaging 24.7 points on 50/44/85 shooting splits, numbers comparable to all-time great Diana Taurasi in 2006.
Asked whether it feels like the Fever are producing a historically good offense, the nine-year veteran said not really.
“There’s always progress to be made, honestly,” Mitchell said. “People see that it’s been good. Imagine what it could be if you actually cleaned up some things.”
There's another irony. For all their offensive prowess, the Fever are still frustratingly turnover-prone.
Cleaning that up would make them even scarier. But whether the fifth-place Fever make a serious championship run will depend more on whether they can defend.
White is right: They aren’t the only team that can score.
The third- and fourth-best offenses in WNBA history belong to the 2026 Lynx and Aces.
“We can’t get caught up in thinking we can outscore everybody,” White said. “We can outscore some people, but we can’t outscore everybody. When you’re trying to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish, we can’t be lulled into thinking that’s going to be enough.
The Fever’s record-setting pace isn’t happening in isolation. The WNBA is simply a higher-scoring league in 2026.
There are plenty of explanations: a greater emphasis on three-pointers, a sharper focus on analytically valuable shots and more free-throw attempts as the game is officiated more tightly.
The Fever, and Clark in particular, sit at the intersection of it all.
Clark represents a new kind of point guard: a great playmaker who also takes half her shots from three. Players like Sabrina Ionescu foreshadowed her arrival, but Clark has stretched the combination to its extreme.
Loaded indeed.
Before the game, White called Clark and Mitchell two of the most gifted guards in the league. She also did not, as this column nearly did, forget to mention Aliyah Boston, one of the league’s premier post players, who missed the game against the Sky.
But White always returns to where her heart is:
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to defend in our sport to be able to compete for championships.”
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