r/indianafever

This is long and could be a blog post but it's the offseason and I have nothing better to do.

For the most part the universal opinion seems to be that Lexie didn't do much to help the team this season. 5.2 points per game, 33% from 3, 3 rebounds per game, virtually nothing in the counting stats. Really that's not anything new (outside of her absurd stretch a couple years ago that was on low volume).

But there are a few weird things going on.

1. She has won a championship at every level (besides the WNBA so far): She led her team to a surprise national title in the Geico high school basketball nationals as a senior. NCAA champion. Unrivaled champion. It's not crazy that someone could rack up those titles and not be great in the WNBA but it's something to note.

2. The people within the WNBA seem to be high on her: She was the sixth overall pick (granted in a draft that hasn't shown a lot of promise). She keeps ending up as a starter despite not putting up stats and with coaches that don't seem to be afraid of changing starters. She landed that big contract. She keeps getting pretty good minutes.

3. (This is the big one and what matters most) The team shows all the signs in the stats and from the tape of being better when she is in the game.

First the stats. I'm a believer that you can't tell a story with the stats. They can point things out, give you hints on where to look, and confirm what the eye test is showing. but that's really all they are good for.

(a) The first thing that caught my eye was looking into 5-player lineups and 4-player lineups. The 4 other starters + Lexie were +11.7 while they were -2.0 with Sophie. That's a pretty drastic difference. A smaller difference with the first half of season starts but still there (+3.9 vs +3.4). You can see it in the 4-player lineups too. Overall, Big 3 + Timpson and Big 3 + Mo were fairly significantly better with Lexie in the game then when she was out of the game.

In general, the starting lineup is going to see the other teams best lineup. If Sophie and Lexie were totally interchangeable I would think that Sophie's lineup would have a better +/-. But maybe I'm overthinking it so lets move on.

(b) Lexie's +/- stats are impressive. She ended up right with Ty for best +/- on the team (+10.2) and was only behind Kelsey for best On-Off (+6.4). Smaller sample size but also a pretty significant + in both against the Aces this playoffs. Kind of similar results in 2024 and 2025. 3 seasons of top tier +/- and on-off +/- compared to her teammates.

Lexie has a net positive on-off in just about every stat that basketball reference has. Most are minimal but one that really jumps out to me is rebounding, which is weird because she doesn't get a lot of rebounds. The Fever had a wild 8 percentage point improvement in rebounding when Lexie was on the floor. That's way better than any of her teammates. That's better than Angel Reese (+1.7%) and most other bigs (but worse than A'ja). We were the second best rebounding team with her on the court and one of the worst with her off the court.

From watching the tape (as a biased Lexie fan) I think a lot of the above makes sense. She relentlessly crashes every single board on jump shots and seemly 10 times out of 10 that crash doesn't result in a Lexie rebound. It does sometimes result in her tipping the ball to someone else. It also, and maybe more importantly puts pressure on an outlet passer. A little tangent, the 2025 Pacers were notorious for playing FAST. The Knicks were not. The solution they went with to slow down the Pacers was to play Mitch Robinson (one of the slowest guys in the league but one of the best rebounders). It actually worked really well as it meant the Pacers had to put more pressure on the glass and prevented the run-outs after misses. Hull pressing the Offensive boards can have a similar effect, even when she isn't getting rebounds she is forcing the opponent into the half court.

Another thing I notice is that she doesn't get open as much as Sophie. On the surface that sounds like a bad thing but it's possible that openness comes at a price. Virtually all our points come from 3 players. Is it really all that bad (Again, as a biased Lexie fan) that one of the players that isn't in the big three is getting attention? If Sophie loses her defender how often is the consequence of that an unintentional double team on Kelsey?

I'm not sure what else I'm seeing from the tape except I think the effects of hustle matters a lot more than is apparent to someone casually watching the game (look at the impact Hull and Raven had in game 2). It's entirely possible that Sophie is just really really bad so Lexie being just a little bit bad comes across as really really good on the team stats. There is probably more to the "story" that I'm missing, but as I led off with, she has team accolades and people who know a lot more than me about basketball keep giving her the treatment of someone who does have real impact on the game despite the box score saying otherwise.

(side note: Lexie ran a 2:19 in the 800 as a freshman in high school which is really really good and would be a sign that she may have the most natural endurance in the league.)