In her first public comment since being fired by the Indiana Fever, WNBA coach Christie Sides kept it short and sweet.
Hours after the team announced it had dismissed Sides, who led Indiana to the WNBA Playoffs for the first time in eight years to end the league's longest-ever postseason drought, the coach posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“Leave it better than you found it,” Sides wrote with a peace sign emoji.
Hired in November 2022, Sides coached the Fever for two seasons. In her first year, Sides oversaw Indiana extend its streak of seasons without a playoff appearance to seven after finishing 10th in the 12-team league with a 13-27 record.
The team, quite fortunately, won the WNBA Draft lottery for the second consecutive year, though, and used the No. 1 overall pick to select Caitlin Clark, the consensus national player of the year after a historic senior season at Iowa. Although Clark struggled early in the season, she eventually found her stride and broke numerous league records en route to her nearly unanimous selection as WNBA Rookie of the Year.
The Fever, in small part due to the play of Clark, as well as second-year player Aliyah Boston and veteran Kelsey Mitchell, also began to improve. After a 1-8 start to the year, Indiana won more than 60% of its remaining games to finish sixth in the league and secure its first playoff appearance since 2016.
A long run in the postseason was not meant to be, though, as the Connecticut Sun, who won two of the three regular-season meetings against Indiana, swept the Fever in two games in the first round. In the pair of playoff games, Clark struggled from three — the ROTY, who shot 34.4% on three-pointers in the regular season, made just 5 of 25 shots from the perimeter against the Sun.
Sides, the first-ever Fever coach to win WNBA Coach of the Month and the first Indiana coach to lead the team to a .500 record since current Connecticut head coach Stephanie White in 2016, finished third in WNBA Coach of the Year voting behind winner Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty's Sandy Brondello, both of whom ultimately led their teams to the WNBA Finals this season.
Before becoming the Indiana head coach, Sides, a graduate of Louisiana Tech, served as an assistant for the Atlanta Dream in 2022. She had previously worked on Pokey Chatman's Fever coaching staff from 2017 to 2019. Sides also worked on Chatman's coaching staffs with LSU and the Chicago Sky.
In their statement announcing Sides' dismissal, the Fever indicated it will “remain bold and assertive in the pursuit of [their] goals.”