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Kelsey Mitchell remembers a time when the Indiana Fever, well, weren’t at the level the team is at now. When she arrived in 2018 after the team drafted her No. 2 overall, the Fever won just six total games. It was a time in her career that the now-veteran guard refers to as a “roller coaster” ride of highs and lows. As a rookie, Mitchell started 17 games but also had to come off the bench. In the years that followed, the Fever had several coaching changes while failing to reach the postseason.
Even Gainbridge Fieldhouse, where the team plays, has changed over the years. At one point, while the arena was being renovated, the Fever had to play at Corteva Coliseum at the Indiana State Fairground, which also hosts cattle competitions.
“I remember the Fever used to play at the [Indiana] State Fairground, where cow manure was at—with the cows and the horses and stuff like that. Tickets used to be five bucks!” Mitchell says. Yesterday, Indiana beat the Chicago Sky, 113-90, and Mitchell, who recently broke the League’s all-time record for the most consecutive games with at least 20 points, is rallying energy-wise for her first-ever SLAM cover shoot. All afternoon, R&B and hip-hop tracks have been blasting through the speakers, and Mitchell has been posing and smiling at the camera while members of the Fever organization hype her up in the background, beaming with pride.
It was only a matter of time before the Fever’s vet got her flowers. Mitchell is currently averaging a career-high 25.0 ppg and, as we go to printers, leading the League in total field goals made (352), three-point field goal percentage (45.5 percent) and total points scored (1,001). While she is a special piece of the Fever’s history, Mitchell is also actively helping them re-write it this season. The team sits at second in the East with a 26-14 record, and Mitchell is second in the League in scoring.
And yet, it was those early years of losing that Mitchell believes helped prepare her for this moment she’s in right now. “I think the one thing about being a winner that I’ve learned is that I had to lose first. I think that goes over a lot of people’s heads, but I think God shaped it that way for me,” she says. “You take it personal that people don’t respect you…Those losses and that mindset kind of help build you to be a winner.”
It’s no secret that Mitchell doesn’t like stats, but her numbers this year don’t lie. The 5-8 guard is playing her best basketball right now and on the verge of breaking even more records. With four games left in the regular season, she needs just 21 more points to shatter the all-time record for most points scored in a single season, which was set by A’ja Wilson in 2024 (1,021).
But then again, it’s not like Mitchell is keeping score. “In order for me to be the greatest that I can ever be, I can never be limited to a stat,” she says. “I can’t operate that way. I can’t live that way. I don’t go into games like that. The work that you put in, you let it fester.”
For nine years, Mitchell hasn’t stopped working, grinding and optimizing her game to get to this level. Spend an hour talking to her about basketball, and you’ll start to understand how her mind really works. As a visual learner, Mitchell has always been obsessed with the ability to create, even from a young age. She mentions legends like Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James as players who amazed her with their ability to do different things with the ball, like a form of creative expression. “I don’t know if this makes sense, but in my opinion, I think that that’s like an art,” she explains. “It’s an art form to be able to use this basketball and create something. The rhythm and the movement that the game is always giving me, it’s just super cool.”
When it comes to her approach to shooting, Mitchell says that she used to focus on seeing the ball in her hands and hand placement, like making sure her thumbs were aligned and the rest of her fingers matched up to the lines on the leather. As her confidence has grown over the years, so has her ability to trust herself as soon as she has the ball in her hands. “I don’t need to feel the lines anymore,” Mitchell says. “I [can] just trust what my hand placement [is]. As a shooter, after a while—and as a pro—you just get used to the instinct and the feel and less of what it looked like. And I think that’s maturing as a person, too, because I wasn’t always like that.”
For Mitchell, this is all new: the record-setting performances, the praise, her name being mentioned in the MVP conversation. In the past two years, she’s been ushered into another stratosphere of attention and popularity as the team has welcomed new additions. The Fever drafted Lexie Hull in 2022, then used back-to-back No. 1 picks to select Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark. Last season, Sophie Cunningham joined the team via a trade from Phoenix.
For some, the publicity the Fever get could be hard to manage, but Mitchell has admired how her teammates, including Clark, have handled it all.
“I think CC, when she first got here and we had to go play the preseason game in Iowa, I was like, Bro, this is like some LeBron shit. I couldn’t believe it. Hats off to the GOAT, LeBron James, [but] I’m just saying! To see the line and the people and the stuff, I’m in awe of CC every time because she [handles] it so well,” Mitchell says.
Mitchell’s game compliments Clark’s seamlessly. It is a meeting of two basketball savants in the backcourt. Rather than operating as separate entities, Mitchell refers to them as having a “connection” when reading the game and finding a flow that allows them to jell.
The result? An all-time great scoring duo that is on the cusp of greatness. Mitchell is ranked second on the Fever’s all-time scoring list and is also the first guard in WNBA history to score over 1,000 points in a season. She’s also perfected the art of off-ball cutting, which is a scary sight for opponents. Now add in the fact that Clark has climbed to No. 8 on Indiana’s scoring list in just two seasons, can shoot from deep and also possesses the ability to thread the needle with ease, and the Fever’s backcourt is an equation opponents are constantly left struggling to solve.
With only a few games left in the regular season before the playoffs, it’s obvious that the Fever aren’t letting their foot off the gas. In a dominant win over Connecticut, Mitchell had 29 points with 2:01 left in the fourth when she attempted a jumpshot that bounced off the rim. It took her just four seconds to get another bucket as she grabbed the offensive rebound, waltzed her way to the corner and knocked down a step-back three over rookie Raegan Beers. At that point, the Fever were up by 23. Twelve seconds later, Mitchell stole the ball from guard Hailey Van Lith and made her way back down for another bucket. The Fever won, 111-91, and Mitchell and Clark combined for 68 points to extend their WNBA single-season record to a total of four games where they’ve each scored at least 30 points (they both had 34).
It’s performances like the above that have earned them an apt nickname: “MVP squared.”
“I’ve never talked to SLAM Magazine before. I’ve never been a part of the MVP conversation before. All this is kind of, like, in a way, gracefully new. It’s humbling. I don’t know how I feel a little bit more about people kind of noticing who I am,” she says, later adding, “I wouldn’t really say that I care about the MVP [and] who wins it, but I would say that I’m glad that this is just about basketball for me…There are so many great players in this League, man. Whoever wins it deserves it, but for me, it’s just about being able to be recognized for basketball, and I want to keep it like that.”
It was Mitchell’s late father, Mark, who instilled the work ethic and “go get it” mentality in Kelsey. A former Eastern Kentucky football player, Mark and Mitchell’s mother, Cheryl, who played basketball at EKU, raised Mitchell and her siblings—twin older brothers Kevin and Cameron and her twin sister Chelsea—in a sports family. Mitchell originally played soccer as a striker, and her time on the pitch ultimately helped her develop her footwork. Going into high school, Mitchell decided to focus entirely on basketball and became a star at Princeton High. As Mark helped guide and nurture her talent, the gym became a “safe haven” for Mitchell and a place where she and her father truly connected.
Mark went on to coach his twin daughters at Ohio State, where he served as an assistant from 2013-18. The night before the 2018 Draft, Kelsey was feeling unsure about what was going to happen when Mark suggested that they go work out at a gym at Columbia University. Being in the lab helped Mitchell feel better, and the very next day, she heard her name called as the No. 2 pick.
When asked what her father would think of all of her success now, Mitchell instantly honors him for his endless support. “I think my dad believed in me more than I did when I first started my career and when I first became a pro,” she says. “I think he poured into the belief and the mindset that I could be in this position more than I did, and that was big for me because it was a time when the Fever wasn’t what it is now. It was easier to give up, and my dad was constantly the reminder, like, Nah, not yet. Wait your turn. And so I kept waiting my turn.”
Last season, the world saw Mitchell help lead an “underdog” Indiana team all the way to Game 5 of the semifinals against Las Vegas. This year, the Fever are set to return to the playoffs for the third season in a row—a feat they haven’t achieved in a decade. It’s evident that Mitchell can not only hold her own in the League, but she’s one of the best, period.
As she continues to leave her mark, Mitchell is just as excited about how the League is growing and the emergence of a new generation of stars, many of whom she gets to play with and against.
“If there’s a generation of greatness coming through these doors for hoops, man, you gotta let them in. You can’t gatekeep—it would only pigeonhole our game. To see [players like] Flau’jae [Johnson], Olivia Miles. When Angel Reese and CC came in, it opened up so many doors for us: resources, financial, all of it,” she says. “You kind of embrace who they are without losing you, and I think that’s important for where the League can go.”
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