Christie Sides defended her decision to bench Caitlin Clark in the third quarter of the Indiana Fever’s 72-89 loss to the Connecticut Sun on Monday night.
“We were down 28 and I wanted to put a group in there that would come out and play a little defense,” he told reporters when asked why he took his starters off the court midway through the third quarter.
“I’m very proud of that group that went out there…they played hard,” she added.
Sides also publicly criticized his team for a perceived lack of effort throughout the game at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“I’m going to start by saying that at this level, you can’t train effort,” Sides explained.
Christie Sides defended her decision to bench Caitlin Clark amid the Fever’s 72-89 loss.
Sides pulled his starters off the court midway through the game’s third quarter.
“I felt like we were just trying to ask them to keep playing hard, play hard.” You can’t start there. You can’t play in this league if you have to train hard. It’s too difficult.’
Clark finished with his fourth-fewest points of the season, going 3 of 8 from the field for 10 points, all in the first half. He committed his fourth foul with 4:41 left in the third quarter and did not play in the fourth quarter.
After the crushing loss, Clark admitted that he thought they “could have played with a lot better energy.”
“This is a team that you can’t go out against and be indifferent, they’re that good,” the top draft pick told reporters.
“You’re going to get punched in the mouth, and I don’t think we knew that from the beginning, and obviously that’s a little disappointing,” he continued.
“I thought we let little things on the offensive end frustrate us and we didn’t play well on defense… it’s not a recipe for winning a lot of games.”
“You can’t play in this league if you have to work hard,” the head coach told reporters.
Meanwhile, Clark admitted he thought the Fever “could have played with a lot better energy.”
Sides also came under fire for revealing a private text message exchange between her and Clark this week.
However, fans on social media took issue with Sides’ coaching and the fact that she publicly criticized her team in the post-game press conference.
“You can’t train effort, but you can inspire it,” wrote one fan on X.
Another chimed in: “Teams don’t take any responsibility,” while someone else echoed the sentiment: “I wouldn’t be excited about playing for her or this team either.”
A fourth fan wrote: “Their team is unmotivated and with little confidence, they lost the locker room.”
Sides also came under fire for revealing a private text message exchange between her and Clark after the rookie superstar was snubbed from the US women’s basketball team heading to Paris this summer.
“He got the call on the bus and he texted me to let me know,” Sides told reporters.
‘I just tried to keep his spirits (up). What she said was, “Coach, they woke up a monster,” which I thought was incredible.