It’s safe to say that Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides doesn’t want to talk about what’s been going through fans’ minds lately.

“We could be talking about championships in three or four years,” Sides told Yahoo Sports last summer, with the team still months away from winning the draft lottery and six months away from drafting generational talent Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston, their 2023 No. 1 pick, hadn’t even won her Rookie of the Year trophy yet.

The Fever were in the midst of the second year of general manager Lin Dunn’s three-year plan to rebuild the league’s decades-old basement player, a plan that finally came to fruition this season.

The Fever (17-16) clinched their first playoff spot since 2016 on Tuesday night, breaking the tie for the longest playoff drought in league history. They rose to sixth place over the weekend and will play for position between the Seattle Storm (20-13) and the Phoenix Mercury (16-17) heading into the final two weeks of the season.

As the league’s best offense coming into the All-Star/Olympic break, and arguably the most prominent franchise this season, with millions tuning in to watch Clark regularly, many fans are talking championships now.

But how realistic is that? Let’s take a look.

Fever peaks at the right time

Indiana is peaking at the right time, going 6-1 after the break and boasting the league’s best offensive rating (111.0) and scoring average (91.4 ppg). Kelsey Mitchell and Clark have been the most formidable backcourt duo since the regular season resumed last month, ranking second (25 ppg) and third (24.5 ppg) in scoring, respectively. Lexie Hull is shooting 62.1 percent from 3-point range in key opening minutes after shooting 28.1 percent before the break. The team leads the league in 3-point percentage (38.9) and 3s made (11.1; the Liberty is second with 9.9) over the past month.

It’s the clearest reason the Fever could compete with the best in the playoffs. Everyone is working better together and presenting opponents with a much different team than they faced in the first half. And the Fever are coming off wins over some of the best teams in the league: New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Seattle and Phoenix. The only team they haven’t beaten yet this year is the reigning two-time champion Las Vegas, but they still have two chances.

Historically, champions in the WNBA have been either a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. That’s partly because playoff formats that once heavily favored the league’s best players with rest now tilt toward them with home-field advantage. (Which could also favor the Fever, who would likely travel for the first two games of a three-game first-round series but whose road games have been heavily attended by Fever and Clark fans.)

Chicago broke the top-seeds-win-it-all pattern in 2021 when, as a .500 team in the regular season, it raced to a No. 6 seed and defeated the No. 5 Phoenix Mercury for the franchise’s first and only title. It was an Olympic year, and Candace Parker’s first in Chicago. There were no Sky players on the Team USA 5×5 roster, allowing them to train together in the U.S., much like the 2024 Fever.

Pace can trump physicality and size

The Fever are one of the best teams in the league in terms of pace, sitting fourth overall and playing faster than any team currently in playoff position since the break. That’s what would make four-time champion Sue Bird wary of facing Indiana if she were still playing.

“What I’ve learned in my WNBA experience is that pace of the game is more important than physicality,” Bird said on her podcast “A Touch More.” “It’s more important than size. It can be more important than experience, because a lot of times when you’re experienced, it’s really code for, ‘You’re a veteran,’ which is code for, ‘You’re old.'”

Bird said Storm’s “whole mantra was ‘pace, pace, pace, pace, pace'” as the franchise won titles in 2018 and 2020.

“What I see with Caitlin (Clark and), what I see with Kelsey Mitchell, is they’re just shoving it down people’s throats,” Bird said. “And it’s really hard. It can make your head spin.”

An example of this:

And that play, while productive, is no anomaly. Clark’s ability to fire full-court passes in transition and slide the ball past multiple defenders in the paint led Iowa to back-to-back national title games after the program had never reached one before her era. The Hawkeyes ranked in the top 15 in pace in both seasons and 26th or better in all four seasons of Clark’s collegiate career.

Of course, pace isn’t the be-all and end-all of a WNBA champion. Las Vegas has ranked in the top three in pace for the past seven seasons. Last season, they finished second in pace, while second-place New York finished fifth. The Aces were in first place in 2022, but which team was in second place? The Fever, who raced the other way to get the best lottery odds. Bird’s Seattle teams banked on pace but fell to the top of the league in that category in the second half.

Youth can also be a disadvantage

While the youth factor can be an advantage, historically it has not been enough to lead a team to a championship. can Trump experience, but it takes a lot more to do that in a postseason series than in a single game.

The Fever’s recent starting lineup is one of the youngest in the league. Mitchell is the elder stateswoman in her seventh season in Indianapolis. Clark is in her first year, Boston is in her second, and NaLyssa Smith and Lexie Hull are in their thirds. None of them are familiar with the WNBA postseason.

Their top competition does, and in some cases, they carry the heartache they’d like to replace. New York (27-6), last year’s runner-up, has four players with at least seven years of experience and all have more than four. Breanna Stewart won two championships in Seattle with Bird. Vandersloot led the 2021 Sky champions. Jonquel Jones is well acquainted with the pain of losing a finals, first with the Connecticut Sun and again last fall.

Las Vegas struggled deep into the playoffs for years, including a finals loss in 2020, before breaking through. Stewart and Jewell Loyd learned from two-time champion Bird in Seattle, falling in the first round in two straight seasons before winning their first. Washington lost in the finals in 2018 before lifting the trophy the following season.

A run to the Finals would be historic for Clark and Co. Only two No. 1 overall picks have played in the Finals in their first seasons: Tina Thompson, the original top pick in 1997, started for the Houston Comets in the first of their four consecutive titles; and Maya Moore won the 2011 championship with Minnesota the year she was drafted first overall.

2024 WNBA Title contenders

There are still five teams above the Fever in the standings and most of them have better chances to become title contenders.

New York has all five starters back and has bolstered its bench in an effort to win the franchise’s first WNBA title. The Liberty have been the most consistent team with the best offense and have won all season with starters on the bench due to injuries. Indiana is 1-3 against New York, but all three of its losses have come in the first month of the season (two in the first week).

Minnesota (24-9) has the best defensive rating and 3-point shooting, led by a seasoned and experienced group. The Lynx faltered without MVP candidate Napheesa Collier before the break, but have returned to winning ways with the league’s best record (7-1). Head coach Cheryl Reeve is a three-time Coach of the Year and led the Lynx to four titles in seven years in the 2010s. Indiana is 1-1 against Minnesota with a final meeting on Friday in Indianapolis.

Connecticut (24-9) was on the verge of its first title in the past decade and strengthened itself before the break by adding 3-point shooter Marina Mabrey. The Sun have the second-best net rating behind the Liberty. Indiana is 1-3 against the Sun, but again all three losses came in the first month (and two in the first week).

Seattle is in the first season of its superteam, adding former champion Nneka Ogwumike and All-Star point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith to complement Loyd and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Ezi Magbegor. The Storm came off the break with one of the league’s worst records over the past month, but they have Olympic silver medalist Gabby Williams back on the roster. Indiana is 1-3 against Seattle. All three losses came before June 27.

And yes, the Las Vegas (20-12) season is shakier than usual. But the Aces are still two-time reigning champions with a dominant MVP in A’ja Wilson leading the same starting five they’ve had in two championships. They can’t be written off. And they lead the league in pace. Indiana lost away games in Las Vegas in May and early July; the Fever host the Aces at home on Sept. 11 and 13.

If the season were to end Wednesday morning, the Fever would cling to the No. 6 seed and travel to Minnesota for the first two games of a best-of-three first-round series. While there are factors working in the Fever’s favor at this point in a unique Olympic season, there’s a reason Sides is still a few years away from championship talk.