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Caitlin Clark, Fever Went All Out to Celebrate Christie Sides's New Award

Stephen Douglas

Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides talks with guard Caitlin Clark during a game this season.
Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides talks with guard Caitlin Clark during a game this season. / Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images
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The Caitlin Clark era continues to bring new hardware to the Indiana Fever. Following Clark's second straight Eastern Conference Player of the Week award, news came out that Fever coach Christie Sides had received an award that the franchise had never won before.

Christie Sides is the WNBA Coach of the Month for August.

Sides and the Fever went 5-1 in August after returning from the WNBA's monthlong Olympic break. In the process, they moved to .500 for the first time all season and after their highly-rated victory on Sunday, they're currently 17-16 and clinched their first playoff berth since 2016 with two weeks remaining in the regular season.

To celebrate, players surprised their coach with cake and balloons.

It's not unreasonable to think of this as part of the Caitlin Clark effect. The Fever went 13–27 last season in Sides's first year as a head coach. With Clark catching fire after the break, the Fever are on their way to the franchise's first winning record since 2015. As Clark points out in the video, they started from the bottom and now they're here, winning awards on a regular basis.

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Stephen Douglas
STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a Senior Writer on the Breaking & Trending News Team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in journalism and media since 2008, and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Stephen spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and has previously written for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.

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