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

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Yahoo Finance Sports Report with Joe Pompliano, a vodcast brought to you by Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, looks beyond the latest sports business headlines and analyzes all the need-to-know news—the teams, trades, and billion-dollar deals—so you and your portfolio will win BIG. Welcome to Yahoo Finance Sports Report, a unique look at the business of sports brought to you by Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. I'm your host, Joe Pompeiano, and I'm here to coach you through the financial game. Today we've got Yahoo Sports senior writer Jordan Shusterman coming on the show to discuss the latest coming out of MLB, as well as Washington University and Saint Louis's sports Business program executive director and sports impact founder and CEO Patrick Ribb to break down some of the latest headlines. Let's huddle up and get right into kicking off this week with Pop's Playbook, where I take a look at some of the biggest headlines in sports that you and your portfolio need to know. 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We've made it to one on one, a conversation where I get to break down news and sports with the key player in the industry. This week we're speaking with Patrick Risch, executive director of the Sports Business program at Washington University in St. Louis and founder and CEO of Sports Impact. Patrick, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. Now, I want to talk about a few different topics and a few different sports.I think the most logical place to start with is the WNBA. I think everyone saw last weekend, the players protesting during the middle of their CBA negotiations, wearing shirts that basically said, go pay us what we're worth. Now, you've probably, I assume, looked at this economic model for a long period of time as the league has grown with Caitlin Clark entering the league. What can you tell us about some of the challenges or what we might eventually see during the CBA negotiation? 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I don't know if they're gonna get to a 50/50 split on this particular round of negotiations, but I do anticipate that the players will, at the, at minimum, probably get up to 40% share of league revenues after this round of negotiations. Very interesting. I want to change gears here for a second and roll over to the House for NCAA settlement. I mean, this was a groundbreaking moment in sports history and certainly collegiate sports history, where through the House versus NCAA settlement, there's now going to be essentially this revenue sharing program with the schools and their athletes. Schools are going to be able to spend up to $20.5 million starting this year on their student athletes. They're gonna be able to sign of that stuff. There's also going to be a clearing house that's gonna kind of monitor all the existing and future NIL deals to make sure that they're actually NIL. So theoretically we should see, uh, you know, some of these collectives take a step back and more traditional NIL with revenue share mixed in. Now, that is to be determined what that looks like, but I'd love to get your opinion on just sort of the rollout, what that might look like, and sort of where we go from here. The lawyers are licking their chops. Uh, you know, look, I think there should be a clearing house, and I do like the fact that there is more, you know, kind of monitoring the types of engagements that are taking place and partnerships that are being done we opened this era of name, image and likeness, the part of the perspective was players have to do deals where they're actually receiving, uh, and providing services in return for, uh, the resources that they're being given. Uh, I think we got away from that and we got back to kind of this old school under the table collectives were creative way of getting around more traditional sponsorships and endorsement deals just to find ways to kids money. Uh, I, I, I really hope that we can, can kind of rein that in a bit. However, uh, I think that the house settlement obviously is changing and professionalizing collegiate sports in a way that we've never seen in the I do think that, uh, some of these schools where football is their main sport, they're gonna have to make some very interesting resource allocation decisions, right? Because most of that money, reports that I'm reading, you know, of 20.5 million, 1617 million of that may be spent on football. So now the non-football schools, uh, may have the opportunity to be a little bit more competitive in, let's say men's and women's basketball, because they can allocate those resources more so to those particular, uh,Revenue drivers for their school. Joe, it's gonna be absolutely fascinating as I, as I let off. There are going to be some legal challenges because lawyers typically with respect to student athlete rights, they want to give their athletes freedom to be able to choose and earn as they wish. So I, I, I, I think it's going to be still a degree of wild wild west, and we'll see if the government is gonna step in and create some kind of national legislation. I think that's gonna be more trouble than it's worth. Yeah, to your point, it's gonna be interesting to see when that first school sort of goes over that bumper and tries to navigate the rules, uh, in a different manner and what that punishment is, because I think that's gonna be sort of a watershed moment for the, for the industry as a whole to really see what the punishment is. But time will tell, probably in the next couple of years here, if I had to imagine. But Patrick, you recently released a study, uh, an economic study on the 2025 NFL draft in Green Bay. And I want to dig into this a little bit if we these events are really interesting from a finance perspective, because everyone looks at events and they say, oh, it brings this huge economic impact. And sometimes maybe that's true, a lot of times it's probably not. But Green Bay is sort of a unique area where they weren't going to be able to get a Super Bowl. They built out this Title Town district, basically an entertainment district around the stadium. So then they were given the NFL draft. Now, this is still a big event in a small market. Tell me a little bit about what you were able to determine through this study. Sure, you know, the NFL draft is interesting and, and yes, you're bringing in a lot of fans. Now granted, you're bringing in a lot of, let's say regional fans or fans from bordering states, unlike, let's say the College World Series in Omaha, where you truly are getting people from all over the country and it's a higher percentage. For the NFL draft, and I've done the study now the last couple of years, last year in Detroit, this year in Green Bay, you are still getting a lot of non-locals, people that are not from the immediate, let's say, surround uh the host city, but it tends to be more regional in the sense that maybe you'll get people from other parts of the state, Milwaukee, Madison, and then bordering states like Minnesota, Michigan, uh, Illinois and the like, but they're coming in, regardless of how far away they're coming. They are coming in, they're spending money at hotels, and they're also getting a chance to kind of, in in some cases, experiencing Green Bay for the first time, and that could lead to future tourism. Uh, you, always fascinating when you're doing the survey research as we do on site, and then you just have these anecdotal conversations with people. Man, I've never been up here before. I look forward to coming back at some point, whether it's for a Packers game or, oh wow, this title town was amazing. Uh, I'd love to come back here when there's not a football game. So it's that kind of anecdotal feedback that shows you, yeah, yeah, there's, there's a lot of value, um, that these communities receive from hosting these events, and it also builds up a profile, uh, so it serves as a great marketing pitch for the community. Yeah, I think that's, uh, spot on, and we saw it in Detroit, and we certainly saw it in Green Bay as well. Switching gears to, uh, FIFA. FIFA did the Club World Cup this past, uh, summer, this summer, and we're going to be hosting the World Cup across North America next year. What was your general feedback on sort of how the Club World Cup was run and what do you think that says for the future with the World Cup coming next year? Well, I think we need to understand, uh, they got a lot of bad press because a lot of the matches were not well attended. And uh people have to understand, I think part of the whole reason why this was put on was it was a dry run for next year's World Cup in terms of logistics. And yes, maybe you can't gauge the logistics of how you're gonna operationally run a World Cup match when you have only half the audience that you're going to have next summer, but it' a dry run to ensure that, OK, when we host the World Cup in 2026, what are the things operationally, logistically on site we need to think of day of security, entry, flow, all these logistical operational issues, uh, that you just have to think about when you are running an event at a particular property. So I, I think that's the main takeaway from, from the Club World Cup is, you know, it's hard to it's apples to oranges in terms of the magnitude and the, and the crowd sizes and so forth. But I think at least hosting this, you at least have an initial sense and a feel for what groups, when I say groups, uh, a venue and property owners are gonna have to do to run those events at SOI in Miami, in Kansas City, at, at the GHA Field, uh, all these places that are hosting World Cup matches next summer. Yeah, and the last thing I'd like to talk about is just kind of overall the sports industry and where things head over the next few years. As someone who looks a lot at, uh, virtually every sports league, I imagine, and certainly the ones here in North America, are there any specific sports leagues, uh, that stand out to you, maybe one or two of them that you think are poised for growth over the next couple of years? You know, there's been so much focus on the WNBA and NWSL and of course, of the women's professional sports leagues, those are the leagues that, you know, arguably carry the most gravitas and most attention, uh, for a variety of reasons. But I think that when it comes toTo the the love volleyball league as well as women's softball, you know, women's sports generally, as we all know, has really picked up momentum in the last several years for a variety of reasons, more love from media, more love from corporate partners, and those two kind of flow I, I, I actually think that women's softball is going to be a growth sport because if you look at the women's College World Series, all the ratings continue to grow, uh, the attendance is usually sold out there in Oklahoma City, but I think that's an area where, you know, the games are faster, the action is fast, and that and volleyball, I are two areas that are going to see more growth, more expansion, as more people want to get into the ownership of pro sports but are priced out, you know, there, it used to be that people would get into, uh, the NWSL and the WNBA because they were priced out of being in the NBA or in the NFL. Guess what? Those franchise increased so rapidly in women's basketball and women's soccer that now the next tier of ownership could be those sports volleyball and softball and, and quite frankly, again, we've seen the ratings, the college level have grown, so I do think this is a growth opportunity for many, uh, for many markets and also many people that want to invest in women's sports. Very interesting. I love those two picks with uh softball and volleyball, but thanks so much for joining us, Patrick. I had a great time talking to clock is winding down here, but we have just enough time for some final buzzs. So let's talk about Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg famously keeps his mind on his money and his money on his mile, and now he's putting some of that money toward a new ownership stake in soccer club Swansea City. Last week, Swansea City confirmed that the American rapper is joining its ownership group as a co-owner and investor, but financial terms were not disclosed. The 53 year old will join an all-American ownership group led by Andy Coleman, Brett Kravitt, and Jason Cohen, who collectively own the Football LLC. Snoop Dogg said in a statement released by the team, quote, The story of the club in the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud working class city and club, an underdog that bites back, just like me, end quote. Snoop also helped Swansea City launch its 2025 26 jersey kit a few days before the official announcement by wearing its home shirt in a social media post from the club. Now Swansea City competes in the EFL championship, which is the second tier of the English Football League behind the top flight Premier club last played in the Premier League in the 2017-2018 season before being relegated to the championship, where the team has played for the last seven seasons. But this coming season, Snoop Dogg will have fellow American celebrity owners to compete against. Wrexham AFC, the now famous Welsh club owned by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElaney, were promoted to the EFL championship after finishing 2nd in the 3rd tier EFL League One last and Swansea City will also battle against seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady, who is a minority investor in Birmingham City, which secured promotion to the championship with Wrexham after winning League One in 2025. Now it's time to see if Snoop Dogg, Macklin, Reynolds, and Brady can have their soccer investments pay off bid by securing promotion to the Premier all out of time, so it's officially game over for this week. Thank you so much to Jord Patrick and all of you for joining us. Please make sure to scan the QR code below to follow Yahoo Finance podcast for more videos and expert insight and catch us every Friday wherever you get your podcast. I'm your host, Joe Polianaa. See you next time. This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services. Related Videos VW CFO on US Auto Tariffs, Electric Vehicles, Earnings Tether CEO on US Stablecoin Policy, US Dollar Hegemony, Staying Private Alphabet posts Q2 earnings beat, but boosts spending outlook German Exporters Can Live With 15% Tariff, Ifo Says Yahoo Finance Sports Report is developed and produced by Lauren Pokedoff. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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