“Two minutes ago” panic tore through timelines with a claim so combustible it practically wrote itself: the Indiana Fever had just replaced Caitlin Clark—not with a proven floor general, but with the “worst” player in the WNBA—and the season was spiraling into disaster. A clipped tunnel video, a slapped clipboard, a hissed “This can’t be the plan,” and suddenly the algorithm had its villain, its victim, and its viral certainty. Except the reality on the ground in Indianapolis is far less theatrical and far more mechanical: a battered depth chart, a star guard still rehabbing, and a front office using every inch of the WNBA rulebook to keep the season from buckling. As of Monday, head coach Stephanie White has been explicit that Clark, who injured her right groin on July 15, still hasn’t been cleared to return to practice; she’s missing games, yes, but she hasn’t been replaced, benched, or buried—she’s simply not ready, and the team is proceeding accordingly. In the span of a single, brutal night in Phoenix, Indiana’s ball-handling problem mutated into an emergency when veteran Sydney Colson tore her left ACL and Aari McDonald fractured a bone in her right foot; by the next afternoon the team confirmed both guards were out for the season, an announcement that detonated across the roster like a depth-charge and left the Fever without a healthy point guard on the active list.

What came next was not some cloak-and-dagger coup against Clark but the only move a front office can make when the position group collapses: Indiana signed veteran Odyssey Sims to a hardship contract on Sunday, a temporary roster mechanism that exists precisely for this scenario, and did so in broad daylight with an official release.

Sims is nobody’s “worst”—she’s an 11-year pro, a former All-Star and All-WNBA pick, and the sort of stopgap adult-in-the-room who can steady a half-court possession, eat second-unit minutes, and keep Kelsey Mitchell from having to do every single job at once while Clark heals; Indiana signed her because the rulebook allowed it and the situation demanded it, not because the franchise decided to replace its biggest star with a scapegoat. umors thrive in the gaps between what we can see and what we can prove, and on a modern game night there are always a hundred angles to misread—an icy walk past the cameras, a slammed door, a terse aside that sounds like a civil war when it’s really just professionals snapping under ordinary pressure—so when a hardship jersey appears the same weekend that two guards vanish for the year, it’s easy for an out-of-context clip to morph into a conspiracy. But the Fever’s reality is plainer and tougher: they need to survive the next stretch without their best table-setters, defend without fouling, and grind out enough fourth quarters to stay on the right side of the standings while waiting on a green light that only the medical staff can give. Clark’s return will be a headline when it’s real, and White has left no wiggle room about her status in the meantime; until the words “cleared for practice” land on the record, every tunnel video and “2 minutes ago” upload is just noise layered on top of the same, stubborn fact

If you want the story that actually decides the Fever’s season, it’s not whether they “replaced” anyone—it’s whether their defense and late-game poise can hold while a proven veteran handles the boring, precious work of getting them into sets, whether Mitchell’s usage can stay sky-high without cracking, and whether Clark’s green light arrives soon enough to matter; when it does, the hardship contract dissolves, the rotations snap back toward normal, and all those incendiary thumbnails evaporate in the only solvent sports have ever respected: the official transaction wire and the coach’s availability.