New Indiana Fever president on Christie Sides: 'Hard to not be impressed' by progress

INDIANAPOLIS -- Returning Indiana Fever President of Basketball Operations Kelly Krauskopf was well aware of the gauntlet of a schedule the Fever went through at the beginning of the 2024 season.

Eleven games in 19 days, with seven of them on the road and five of them coming against the top-3 teams in the league was a tall task for a team that had just drafted a new point guard and had a team full of young players.

Predictably, the Fever struggled in that stretch; they started the season 2-8, near the bottom of the league. The difficult start had some questioning coach Christie Sides' job and whether the first-time head coach in her second season was capable of righting the ship.

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But Krauskopf, who was watching from afar as the Pacers' assistant general manager at the time, didn't see any reason for concern.

Then, the Fever went 18-12 in their last 30 games to end at 20-20 for their first playoff berth in eight years — their best season since 2016, Fever legend Tamika Catchings' final season.

"What a roller-coaster ride for (Sides)," Krauskopf said Tuesday. "I was smart enough to know that the schedule was stacked against a young team early in the season, and the way that the they weathered the storm, got into a groove after the Olympic break, I mean, I think she finished 18-12, you know, after those first 10 games... for a young team to make that kind of progress, I mean, it's hard to not be impressed."

Krauskopf is an experienced basketball executive — she built the Fever from the ground up as their president and general manager from 2000-18, and then went just across the street to the Pacers for six years.

She knows what it takes to build a successful franchise. Most importantly, she knows it takes time to build a successful program.

"It takes time," Krauskopf said. "It took a long time for for teams that I've had to gel and to get together, I mean, years. It doesn't happen in four months. It takes a few years. I was really impressed with the progress that they made and how Christie is a resilient leader. You know, she's a culture-builder. I know just that she's got that kind of, you know, stamina to stick to it and stick to her plan, and she's a good person, and she's a great leader. I was impressed with the way they finished."

Still, Sides is ahead of schedule in what she wanted to accomplish. When Rick Fuson, the Pacers Sports and Entertainment CEO at the time, hired her ahead of the 2023 season, he asked her how long she thought it would take to bring the Fever back to the playoffs.

"I said, 'Rick, I think I could do it in four years, possibly three,'" Sides said after the Fever made the playoffs on Sept. 4. "He was awesome, gave me a four-year contract."

Now, in the second year of her tenure as coach, they made it to the playoffs.

"There's just some people who, if you've not sat in the seat that I'm in or with the players, you don't understand the process that it takes to rebuild a team," Sides said on Sept. 4. "And second year of a rebuild, that's where we are right now, second year of a rebuild ... we've (made the playoffs) in two, which is incredible. It has a lot to do, has everything to do with our players, the people that we brought in."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: New Indiana Fever president on Christie Sides: 'Hard to not be impressed' by progress