'We beat up on each other, too:' First Fever team looks back, talks Caitlin Clark-era of WNBA

Indianapolis Star

6 days ago

Chantel Tremitiere works in the elite, high profile space of global athlete brand marketing for Nike, striking big-dollar deals and battling to make the "swoosh" the logo of the stars. She is also a former WNBA player who watches the league closely. And she watches the Indiana Fever even more closely.
The Fever were Tremitiere's team, the expansion team she helped launch in 2000 as the original point guard, the Caitlin Clark for the first year of the Fever franchise.
And she's only half joking when she says she'd love to see her original Fever roster, players now in their late 40s and early 50s, take on the 2025 team at a practice. Those original Fever players, all in the WNBA at the beginning, for that matter, were tough as nails, she says.
"About 80%, 85% of that league wouldn't have got through practice back in (the day). If you say they're hitting now, like nah, get an elbow by Lisa Leslie or Teresa Witherspoon," says Tremitiere, 55. "There's not a single player in this league that would have yanked anyone down or cussed someone out against Latasha Byears. So it's just, you know, it's different."
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It was all different 25 years ago when the Fever came to town. There was excitement in the city for a brand new women's pro basketball team. But the excitement was tame compared to today's Clark-infused WNBA era. And the players had one thing on their mind, Tremitiere says.
"Back then, it wasn't about money. It wasn't about collective bargaining agreements or anything like that. It was just about hooping," said Tremitiere. "We just wanted to hoop and we banged against each other. We beat each other up, too, and then we went to go eat afterwards."
Not just players from the same team, but players from the opposing team would pick a spot to wind down together postgame with a steak and a glass of wine. The WNBA was its own sisterhood, a group of women who loved basketball and desperately wanted to see their league reach success.
But those players 25 years ago had no idea. And they certainly never dreamed just how explosive the WNBA would become, mostly because of a player named Caitlin Clark, but only because of the trail they blazed.
"If you just look at the history of where sports started, men and women, it's always that trajectory of it possibly taking off, right? So it's all you have," said Rita Williams, a guard on the first Fever team. "If you look at the NBA, you have the pioneers that started it. And if you look at the WNBA, you have those pioneers as well. And I'm one of them.
"And now you see where it is. And of course, you're like, man, I would love to be playing right now. But also, when you're the pioneers, you have to get it off the ground. And so there's also some nostalgia to it, too, to be a part of."
It was June 2000 and the world hadn't ended when the clock switched from 1999 from the feared apocalyptic phenomena called Y2K. And so the world moved onward, Nintendo announcing it would launch the GameCube and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston tying the knot and the dawn of reality TV with a quirky show called "Big Brother".
In Indianapolis, a brand-new basketball arena had opened to great fanfare, a shiny modern-day fieldhouse boasting all the bells and whistles wrapped in a retro feel. It was perfect timing for Conseco Fieldhouse to open its doors. The Indiana Pacers made the NBA finals in 2000, getting to host home games at a place national media raved about.
But this year, for the first time, the Pacers weren't the only professional basketball team to take the court.
Ads were splashed all over the city -- "In 49 states it's just basketball. But this is Indiana" -- of a WNBA expansion team named the Indiana Fever. A team that would fight and claw and battle just as their NBA counterparts did. They didn't get exactly the same citywide fanatical response but in their world -- women's basketball -- this was big.
"When we got here, the city was electric. Everybody was excited. It's kind of like what you see now. We were on the sides of buildings, and there was Fever stuff everywhere around the city," said Monica Maxwell, a forward on the first Fever team. "It was just a buzz about our team that really reminds me a little bit of what's going on now."
As the team made its home debut in front of a sellout crowd at Conseco on June 3, 2000, players stood in awe of what was in front of them. All these people there to watch them play.
The year before, the team had to sell 5,500 season tickets to secure a WNBA franchise. Former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh — also the author of Title IX — bought the 5,500th ticket. He was honored at the opening game, alongside Kelly Krauskopf, the president and general manager of the Fever.
"We are standing off to the side before we walk out on the court. It's a sellout and I'm standing there with him and we're looking around and there's 16,000 people, standing room only," Krauskopf told IndyStar. "And I said to him, 'Look at this place. Can you believe this? This would never have happened had it not been for you.'"
Krauskopf wouldn't have been running a professional women's basketball franchise. She took that moment to say thank you to Bayh.
"He looks at me and he has these big tears in his eyes," she said. "And he said he had no idea (Title IX) would have this kind of impact. It was just one of the coolest moments."
The moment wasn't lost on the Fever players who were there, either.
"I just remember running out that very first game and the crowd at Conseco Fieldhouse was just bananas," said Tremitiere. "You could tell they loved basketball. The ownership was excited. We had a lot of fans."
And the team had a lot of hope that this historic sports franchise they were launching would one day be bigger than they could even imagine.
That first Fever team was led by interim coach Anne Donovan, beloved by the players as a caring leader with a wicked basketball IQ. Donovan, who died in 2018, was filling in for Nell Fortner, who sat out the Fever's 2000 season to coach the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team to a gold medal.
The Fever's first season wasn't necessarily pretty. The team went 9-23 and finished 7th in the Eastern Conference.
"The Fever was an expansion team so our roster, it wasn't the strongest roster in the league," said Fortner, who now coaches the Canadian Olympic women's basketball team. "It was just a struggle, just getting the amount of talent that you needed to play at that level. And to me, that's the biggest difference between now and then is there's just so much more depth of talent to go around the league right now."
Usha Gilmore, a guard on the inaugural Fever team, was coming off a college career that ended in a Final Four appearance with Rutgers.
"It was rough, especially after you're so used to winning," said Gilmore, athletic director at the Illinois Institute of Technology. "Now you're on a team that's starting for the first time, and it has to go through growing pains, and you have to be a part of that."
But the record didn't really matter in the whole scheme of things, she said. What happened that first season was magical -- because just having a WNBA team in Indy was magical. The Fever ranked second in the league for attendance their first season.
"We were playing in very full arenas and they were excited," said Maxwell, director of sports for the National Federation of State High School Associations. "It wasn't like people just coming in. We're talking Tuesday and Wednesday night, midweek. I mean, there's 10,000 people in there."
This was an era where, for the first time, little girls could dream of playing pro basketball in the United States. This was a time when the players of the WNBA -- some born before Title IX was even passed -- were living out a career they didn't even know was possible.
"I loved playing for the Fever when I got there. Anne allowed us to play free. It was like everybody was coming in trying to earn their spot," said Williams, who runs Elevate Sports Academy in Sandy Springs, Georgia, and is also an athletic director at a private school. "So everybody's just coming in fresh and new."
In 2000, players weren't expecting superstar treatment in this fledgling league, and they weren't complaining. The average salary in the WNBA at the time was $55,000. There were no charter flights or multimillion-dollar sponsors clamoring to sign players.
"And, you know, kids these days, they're complaining, something about we're tired," said Tremitiere. "Like, nah. I was playing 38 minutes a game. And there'd be days where we played L.A. on Friday, had to get on a plane on Saturday morning and play Houston on Saturday night. There were back to backs when we had to fly commercially. So the accommodations are nowhere near the same. Yeah, they're spoiled these days."
The players of the original Fever roster were put up in apartments. They had their own place to live, but transportation was shared. One car for two players. There were a lot of runs to fast food for dinners and a lot of stops at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop, which was across the street from Conseco.
"And I hated it. When that damn 'Hot' sign went on, we had to stop," Tremitiere said. "It's probably why we didn't go to the playoffs the first year, because maybe we were eating too many Krispy Kremes."
On the court, the players were treated like stars and they were embraced by their male basketball counterparts of the Indiana Pacers.
Williams remembers the "really great seats" the Fever team was given for the Pacers' playoff games. They felt like they were truly a part of the community. The Pacers, too, were showing up for the Fever.
"They talk about NBA fan support now? No, Reggie Miller, Jermaine O'Neal, they were repping since 2000 and early on," said Tremitiere. "So it was just a really, really good environment."
But where the WNBA is now, standing alone as its own pro basketball entity, doesn't compare to what Gilmore was a part of.
"And I think that's what gives us all the warm and fuzzies because it's finally reaching a level it needed to reach," she said. "This is the level that we've been praying for and fighting for. I'm not saying it was lackluster. You still had your superstars. You still drew your crowds when you played. So I think it was where it was supposed to be during that time."
The decades that followed after the Fever's first season, the WNBA had its moments. It had incredible players -- Tamika Catchings, Sheryl Swoopes, Maya Moore, Teresa Witherspoon, Lisa Leslie, big names who electrified the fans.
But for some reason, the past star players of the league didn't capture the attention of the nation like Clark, who debuted in 2024. And with Clark's arrival, the league has come under a major spotlight, both good and bad.
"There's a media narrative out there that certain players in the league are getting beat up on purpose. And that's more than Caitlin, right? The media is mostly about her, which is unfair for her," said Tremitiere. "But I don't think the players see a racial divide in the league. I think that it's a media thing."
Clark is a "hooper," Tremitiere said, just like the original players of the WNBA.
"I think Caitlin is an amazing player. And, you know, I'm glad she plays for the Indiana Fever," she said. "I don't know that there are many people who wouldn't want to be her teammates on the floor. I respect what she's doing. I respect any player that has that much media attention on them. I respect any player that doesn't fold and she hasn't folded.
"The scrutiny is on her. I just wish the magnifying glass that the media puts on Caitlin, they would start using to amplify some other players in the league."
What Clark is doing for the league, Gilmore said, "is phenomenal. Just to see the growth is a beautiful thing. And I'm proud to say that I was one of the ones that got us kicked off and started."
The explosion of Clark and other players in the league, Maxwell attributes to a platform that she and other WNBA players 25 years ago didn't have.
"They are marketing themselves. They are a brand outside of the WNBA which brings more attention to the games because, 'Hey, I saw her in a commercial,' or 'I saw her on social media,' or 'I heard her on a podcast,'" Maxwell said. "They see them outside of the sport and they're like, 'Oh, I want to go see them play.'"
When Maxwell goes to Fever games now, she sees a whole new wave of fans who look different from the fans who watched her play.
"They're younger. You have boys, little boys, wearing jerseys. You have dads bringing (their kids)," she said. "We had women who were primarily out of that Title IX wave, just super excited that we finally have professional women's basketball in the United States. And they came out and supported in droves."
When she's in Gainbridge watching the Fever these days, she might run into four or five people who remember her. "And I'm like, 'Wow, you've been around for a while.'"
And it's those fans who hold a very special place in Maxwell's heart. Those fans who have been there from the beginning.
Fortner wishes what is happening now in the WNBA would have happened a long time ago, decades ago when she could have been part of it as a player.
"But I'm fortunate to even just be here to watch it," she said. "Just the level of play has consistently gotten better and better and better. And that's been really fun to watch."
Fortner credits the growth of talent in the WNBA directly to the league, which has worked tirelessly for nearly three decades to put out a product to help young girls aspire to be professional basketball players.
"They see them on TV all the time and so it's just a normal thing, just like little boys growing up and seeing football and basketball on TV all the time," Fortner said. "Well, now, for the last 25 years, little girls have seen women playing basketball and now we've just got a lot more kids who want to do it."
Gilmore thinks back to her days in the league, to her days on that first Fever team and compares it to today's game.
"It's a beautiful thing and I'm so happy for the success," she said. "Now, hopefully we can get to that point of competitive salary. It's getting better but it's not where it needs to be. We've still got a lot of growing to do. But I'm really impressed at where we are."
For Maxwell, she said she is proud to have been a part of that inaugural Fever team, a roster of players who paved the way for today's WNBA.
"We had a lot of fun," said Maxwell. "We didn't win a lot of games, but we had a lot of fun."