The Fever’s point guards haven’t fared well this season. Caitlin Clark has only played 13 games due to quad and groin injuries. As if that wasn’t enough yet, the Fever also lost backups Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson to season-ending injuries in a 95-60 loss to the Phoenix Mercury. McDonald suffered a broken bone in her foot, and Colson tore her ACL.
The Fever signed Odyssey Sims, who had been waived by the Los Angeles Sparks earlier in the season, and relied on Kelsey Mitchell and Sophie Cunningham to share the point guard duties in the starting lineup in the team’s first two games without a true point guard.
Indiana handily beat Chicago behind a strong game from Mitchell, but suffered an 81-80 loss to Dallas. Sims played 13 minutes in the latter game, but looked rusty—as is to be expected after not playing since late June. Even with Sims in better shape, the Fever lack point guard depth, which puts a lot of pressure on Mitchell to be the team’s leading scorer as well as one of the top playmakers. Trusting Aliyah Boston to facilitate from the post and carry a bigger part of the playmaking load would solve that problem.
Aliyah Boston is a great playmaker
When Caitlin Clark appeared on Sue Bird’s podcast Bird’s Eye View, she said that Boston was one of the best facilitators in the post. With all of their point guards out and Mitchell already carrying a ton of responsibility on offense, it is time for the Fever to rely on Boston to act as one of the team’s main facilitators again.
Boston already stepped up as a playmaker when Caitlin Clark first went down. She dished out five or more assists eleven times this season, including two games in which she recorded eight assists. If we don’t count Clark, who only played a handful of games, and McDonald, who is out for the season, Boston leads the Fever in assists per game.
While Boston has always been a good passer, she is averaging a career-high 3.6 assists per game this season. That is the most among centers in the WNBA. A’ja Wilson is the only other center who averages more than three assists per game. Boston has dished out a total of 120 assists—22 more than the next-best center and 16 more than the next-best healthy Fever player.
Leaning into her ability to facilitate would not only allow Mitchell to continue to focus on scoring but would also limit the minutes that Sims, who just joined the team amid a late-season playoff push, has to be on the court. Sims has been a good point guard for over a decade now, but it will take her some time to create chemistry with the rest of the team. Considering how close the standings are, time is not something the Fever have a lot of.