Roster building in any professional sport is a science that many have tried to study, but only a select few have ever figured out. The WNBA is no different. With roster cuts, a salary cap, and young talent oozing from the collegiate level, roster management has never been harder than it is right now.
The Indiana Fever, who feature young stars such as Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston, began building through the WNBA draft while also exploring free agency to show the constant balancing act required to find success.
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Their current roster is young, but it is also very talented. That combination puts the Indiana Fever atop ESPN’s rankings of the best young cores in the WNBA.
Indiana Fever (3-4)
Average age (league ranking): 28.5 (6th youngest)
Key players to build on (age): Caitlin Clark (23), Aliyah Boston (23), Lexie Hull (25)
It’s no surprise to see the Fever here with the brightest group of young stars in the WNBA. With Clark and Boston, Indiana has the No. 1 picks from the 2023 and 2024 drafts — each of whom went on to win Rookie of the Year in back-to-back seasons as well. When healthy (and both have been extremely durable throughout college and the pros, up until Clark’s recent injury), no team has a dynamic duo this good and this young.
That’s particularly true when you consider how well their games complement each other’s, with Clark serving as the WNBA’s ultimate heliocentric perimeter creator and initiator, and Boston scoring inside the arc with high volume and efficiency. The two took some time to figure out how to mesh in Clark’s rookie season last year, but both were improving their numbers early this season before Clark got hurt. Boston has a sky-high 65.7 True Shooting % (TS%) this season, for instance, while scoring 16.8 points per game.
Don’t sleep on Hull, either; the fourth-year guard out of Stanford has improved each year of her WNBA career and is tracking for a breakout performance. – Neil Paine, ESPN
It isn’t overly shocking that the Fever have found their place at the top of this list. They have the last two WNBA Rookie of the Year winners and are arguably the face of the entire league. Caitlin Clark has transcended the WNBA and is barely in her second season.
Aliyah Boston is only getting better, and the rest of the Fever are going to be forced to develop alongside Clark, who makes life easier on everyone with the attention she demands from other teams.
If the Indiana Fever can avoid major injuries or catastrophic departures in free agency, they are as primed as any team in the league to be contending for titles over the next decade.
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This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever rated as ESPN’s best young WNBA core
