INDIANAPOLIS – Natasha Howard knew one thing when she went through WNBA free agency — she needed to be selfish.
Howard knew she could go wherever she wanted as long as the team wanted her, too. And her wife, Jac’Eil Duckworth Howard, emboldened her to think of herself first.
Howard has been traded four times in her 12-year career, dictating where she would go next. This time around, as an unrestricted free agent, Howard wanted a team that would give back as much as she gave. With encouragement from her wife, Howard made that a priority in her search — she wanted a place she could feel valued as a person first, just as she is outside of work.
“It’s just amazing to have someone that understands me as a person first,” Howard told IndyStar of her wife. “… She told me, ‘This is your year to be selfish,’ and I see it now because I’ve been selfless long enough when it comes to my career for other teams, and I never got the return back.”
She believes she’s found exactly what she was looking for with the Fever. Howard signed a one-year, max deal of around $215,000 with Indiana, putting her back with the team that drafted her and a front office she knows.
Fever president Kelly Krauskopf and coach Stephanie White were with Indiana when Howard was a rookie. Fever general manager Amber Cox was the Wings’ GM when Howard was in Dallas. She trusts the Fever front office to treat her well, just as the front office trusts her to help make Indiana a championship contender.
Howard has been on three championship rosters and knows the secret ingredient: trust.
“Without trust, you have nothing on the team,” Howard said. “You have no team, you have nothing. So it’s trust.”
How experience allowed her to be ‘selfish’ in free agency
The Fever drafted Howard No. 5 overall in the 2014 WNBA draft, then traded her to the Minnesota Lynx ahead of the 2016 season. She won a championship with the Lynx before being traded to Seattle in 2018.
Howard enjoyed the best years of her career in Seattle, signing an extension with the Storm, winning two championships in 2018 and ‘20, plus 2019 Defensive Player of the Year. Howard was then cored by Seattle and sent to New York on a four-year sign-and-trade contract.
After two seasons with New York, Howard was traded to Dallas for the final two years of her contract. Dallas advanced to the playoff semifinals in her first season there, but missed the playoffs in 2024.
The Wings’ 2024 campaign, though, was marred by injuries. Dallas star Satou Sabally was out for over half the season with a shoulder injury, part-time starter Maddy Siegrist missed significant time with a broken finger, and Howard herself missed 13 games at the beginning of the season with a broken foot.
Following last season, Howard was a true unrestricted free agent — she couldn’t be cored again and didn’t have anything tying her to the Wings.
Howard already knew she wasn’t going to return to Dallas before the 2024 season ended. One day after Dallas finished its season, Howard posted to X thanking the Wings and making clear she was looking forward to a new chapter in her career.
“I just wanted to be somewhere different,” Howard told IndyStar. “It’s not no hard feelings toward Dallas at all, nothing like that. I just wanted to be somewhere like, where I’m gonna be happy at.”
The Fever front office made sure she was going to find that happiness in Indiana.
Bringing Howard back to Indianapolis was one of the first orders of business for the Fever’s new front office, which was completely restructured after the 2024 season. Still, the Fever’s seasoned executives had clear goals when they started.
“I think it was Day 1 when I got this job, Kelly and I were on the phone, and we had two things on our to-do list: re-sign Kelsey Mitchell and bring back Natasha Howard,” Cox said. “We have been focused on this day and this moment since the day we started this process .”
Howard could’ve gone to almost any team in the league. The 33-year-old is a three-time champion, two-time All-Star and two-time All-Defensive First Team member. Her EuroLeague accomplishments only add to the list.
She chose to go back to where she started.
“I’m really happy that they see my talent and they appreciate me as a person, so they’re doing everything to put my face out there,” Howard told IndyStar. “So, I’m just really, really happy and just grateful that I’m just a part of Indiana again, the Fever again, it’s just like a whole 360. And it’s just amazing to be back where I started.”
Returning to her roots
Howard is returning to Indianapolis as a seasoned veteran, one that can take Indiana’s young core to new heights.
Over 10 years ago, she was that young player walking into Gainbridge Fieldhouse, looking for a veteran to help her make the jump from college. She found that veteran in Fever legend Tamika Catchings, who played for Indiana from 2002-16.
“Thinking back to Tash that first year, she was like a fish out of water,” Catchings told IndyStar with a laugh. “You know, just having to learn the new system, learn the professional way and all that it was. It was hard, a lot of learning, a lot of adjustments.”
Howard, a rookie on a team of talented, veteran players at the time ,didn’t get many minutes in her first two years. She started 15 of the Fever’s 34 regular-season games in 2014, but only started two of 30 games played in 2015.
In those two years, though, she had ample opportunity for development. She was playing behind one of the best forwards in the league in Catchings, learning what it was like to be on a playoff-caliber team — the Fever went to the Finals in 2015, losing to the Maya Moore-led Lynx.
“I think that her development, a lot of it came from maybe not having the minutes that she wanted,” Catchings said, “but every single day she was coming in and working as if, you know, like when I always say, when your time comes, you have to be ready.”
Those first years, as a wide-eyed rookie, were still some of the most formative of her career. Those were the years she developed her habits, learned what it took to be successful, and bettered her game in multiple facets.
Even to this day, one thing Catchings told her set the tone for her entire career.
“What Tamika told me is to work hard, practice how you play, and everything just stuck with me,” Howard said. “And on top of that, she also told me to just be patient. Like, be patient, then just let the game come to you and just have fun.”
Howard knew if she practiced like it was game day every day, then game day would come easy. If she stayed consistent in her development and didn’t try to skip steps, her time as a star of a team would come.
Four years into her career, that happened.
She became a star in Seattle as a pivotal part of two championship runs, along with her 2019 DPOY. She got cored in 2020, earning a supermax contract for the first time in her career.
It was because she paid her dues in Indiana, then Minnesota. She didn’t skip steps in developing or learning from players like Catchings or Moore, both now revered legends in the sport.
“A lot of people want to go from starting in this league as a rookie to winning championships and winning MVPs and winning all these things,” said White, who coached Howard in 2014-15. “And she took every single step and has accomplished every single thing. And that’s really a credit to her work ethic and her desire to become elite.”
Howard has different priorities from when she first came to Indiana as a 22-year-old. She and her wife have a 15-year-old son, Prince, and they wanted to make sure that they, as a family, were included in the process.
It was never a problem for the Fever, who have a family-first mindset.
Assistant coach Karima Christmas-Kelly had her son, Zayn, in July 2023, when she was on the Fever staff and her husband, Austin Kelly, was an assistant on Connecticut’s staff. Throughout the 2024 season, Zayn became a mainstay at home and away Fever games, getting showered with attention from the players in early warmups. Christmas-Kelly was also able to bring someone with her on road trips to help with childcare.
Now, Christmas-Kelly and Kelly will be together all season, as White hired them both on her staff in Indiana.
White came to Indiana to be closer to her four children, who are based in Nashville, Tenn., throughout the WNBA season. DeWanna Bonner, another free agent signee for the Fever this offseason, is looking forward to being closer to her Nashville-based children as well.
The Fever have not only welcomed Howard back to the franchise, but her entire family.
“With us coming to the Fever, it was just that they all included us all the time,” Duckworth said. “It was always Prince, me and Tasha. It was never just Tasha. They made it always a family thing, and that made me feel more comfortable that they always included us. So that’s one thing that was really important to me, that our son was included, and that I was included in this move.”
How Natasha Howard fits into Indiana’s locker room culture
Howard is walking back into the building she started her career in as a seasoned veteran, ready to be that prominent voice for young players like Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston and Lexie Hull. Most importantly, she fits into the locker room culture Krauskopf and Cox have been trying to build for their young core.
“The young group that we’re bringing back, you know, asked us to protect our locker room, you know, protect the culture that we’ve got started,” Krauskopf said. “That was very intentional. And so, you know, Natasha, knowing her when she was a young player, and then watching how when you go to other teams, and you help other teams win championships. That’s really something special.”
Howard, Krauskopf said, has been the same determined, passionate person since she and former coach Lin Dunn went to meet her at the ACC championship in 2014. She didn’t change when they eventually drafted her following the season, or when she was traded to Minnesota.
When she headed to Seattle, she kept that same mentality on her third team in five years.
“I loved, loved playing with Tash,” Seattle Storm legend Sue Bird said on her ‘A Touch More’ podcast with Megan Rapinoe. “I can’t say enough about Tash. She’s just this glue player that doesn’t get enough shine for what she does, because a lot of what she does doesn’t show up in the box score, but she’s just always in the right place at the right time. A player like that complements what Indiana is building.”
And, because of the culture the Fever are trying to build with their young core, they have high standards for who they’re going to bring to Indianapolis.
Just as Howard wanted a team that could pour into her, as a person and as a player, the Fever wanted the same thing. They made sure they got that with Howard.
“I think every person you ask in this league, past teammates that they’ve had, they only say good things about them, and that’s the reason all the top teams were going after these type of players, because they know what type of person they are in the locker room,” Clark said of Howard and Bonner. “From the type of player they are, but more so their leadership, their knowledge of the game, how hard they work, and those were the only people that we were going to add to this.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: WNBA free agency: How selfish approach led Natasha Howard to Indiana Fever
