The Fever's front office shakeup is overdue. Now they need basketball people

Can you fill arenas across the league and still be a badly run basketball team? The Indiana Fever are making a decent case that you can.

In one Friday, the organization lost its president and its general manager. Kelly Krauskopf stepped down, and hours later The Associated Press reported that general manager Amber Cox had been fired, according to a person familiar with the move. Cox arrived in 2024 as both GM and chief operating officer, the same year Caitlin Clark came in as the No. 1 pick. Coach Stephanie White is expected to stay for now, per ESPN's Alexa Philippou, as relayed by Sports Illustrated.

The scoreboard never matched the box office

The record crowds and viewership records are real. The Fever became one of the league's most popular teams, and Cox was around for all of it. But in our view, that popularity was handed to the franchise by Clark. It wasn't built by the front office.

The basketball results are the part nobody can spin. As Sports Illustrated notes, the 2026 season ended in a first-round loss to the Aces, the second first-round exit since Clark arrived. Clark has won one playoff game and played in five in her career. Her draft-class contemporary Angel Reese is in this year's Finals.

We think that is the real indictment. A franchise that lands a generational draw should convert that leverage into depth, shooting, defense and a roster that can survive a bad-luck year. Instead, Indiana is entering a pivotal offseason with its star's extension unresolved and her backcourt mate, Kelsey Mitchell, an unrestricted free agent.

Cox's dual role looks like the structural problem

Combining GM and COO duties sounds efficient. In a market where the business side is exploding, it also means one person is expected to run commercial operations and build a contender. It looks to us like the first job may have swallowed the second. We can't prove that from the documentation, but the outcome fits.

There's also the matter of tone. Three weeks before her firing, Cox said at exit interviews that "the attacks on our fanbase have no basis in reality." She also said anyone who crosses the line must be held accountable. Former Fever player Brianna Turner replied that the statement was "unequivocally false." We wouldn't claim that exchange got Cox fired, and nothing reported says it did. But to us it read like an executive more focused on defending the brand than on fixing the noise around it.

The next hire decides whether this was a reset or a reshuffle

The upcoming agenda is brutal: Clark's extension under the new EPIC clause, Mitchell's free agency, and a spotlight that has turned the team into a vehicle for off-court arguments. SI frames the goal with Sophie Cunningham's phrase: the team needs to "get back to basketball."

Our view is plain. Indiana should split the roles. Hire a president who runs the business and a GM whose résumé is player evaluation, roster construction and cap strategy. Don't hire a name for the sake of a headline. Clark already provides the headlines.

The risk is that the Fever treat this as a PR cleanup, swapping faces and keeping the same structure. One exit and one firing give you a story for a weekend. Hiring two good replacements gives you a title window.

Our verdict: the shakeup was necessary and probably overdue, but it only counts as progress if the replacements are chosen for basketball judgment first. A star can fill an arena. It takes a plan to win in it.