Caitlin Clark’s Fever outlook
Caitlin Clark remains the central piece for the Indiana Fever but is one of only three players currently under contract for 2026, which leaves the team’s roster suddenly unsettled and primed for big moves. That uncertainty is amplified by the Fever losing two teammates in the WNBA expansion draft and the team entering free agency with significant cap space — meaning Indiana’s supporting cast is still very much being built around Clark. ( )
Caitlin Clark is still the axis of the Indiana Fever. That part is simple. The strange part is everything around her. As of April 7, Indiana has only three players under contract for the 2026 season: Clark, Aliyah Boston, and 2025 first-round pick Makayla Timpson. That is not a normal amount of churn for a rising contender. It is the result of a new WNBA labor deal that blew open the market just as the Fever were trying to turn a breakout era into something stable (indystar.com, wnba.com). That labor deal changed the economics of the league all at once. The WNBA and WNBPA announced a tentative new CBA on March 20, with a 2026 team salary cap set at $7 million, up from $1.5 million in 2025. The league said average salaries are expected to top $583,000, and maximum salaries in year one can reach $1.4 million. Indiana suddenly has room to spend because almost everyone in the league is re-entering the market under those new terms, including much of Indiana’s own rotation (wnba.com, pr.nba.com, justwomensports.com). That is why the Fever’s offseason looks less like maintenance and more like reconstruction. Kelsey Mitchell, Lexie Hull, Sophie Cunningham, Natasha Howard, Damiris Dantas, Brianna Turner, Sydney Colson, and others are all out of contract in one form or another. The official free-agency calendar only started this week, with the designation period running April 6-7, negotiations opening April 8, and signings allowed beginning April 11. Indiana is not tweaking the edges of Clark’s roster. It is rebuilding most of the roster around her in real time, less than a month before the regular season opens on May 8 (indystar.com, wnba.com, wnba.com). Then expansion made the picture even messier. On April 3, the new Toronto Tempo selected Kristy Wallace from Indiana’s unprotected pool, and the Portland Fire took Chloe Bibby. The losses were not catastrophic, but they mattered because Indiana was already short on certainty. The Fever were allowed to protect only five players in the two-team expansion draft, part of a process the league said would let the Tempo and Fire select from each current team’s unprotected list before entering the league this season (indystar.com, wnba.com, wnba.com). The odd twist is that Clark herself is now cheap by superstar standards. Under the new CBA, her 2026 salary jumps to roughly $528,846, a huge raise from the old rookie-scale structure but still far below the new supermax tier. Boston’s salary also rises, and Timpson remains on a rookie deal. Spotrac’s cap sheet shows Indiana with just over $1.38 million committed to those three players, leaving more than $5.6 million in cap space. That is enough to chase stars, keep key veterans, or both. It also means the front office has very little excuse if Clark opens training camp with a thinner supporting cast than she had last fall (usatoday.com, spotrac.com, indystar.com).
