Indianapolis is not new to hosting major sporting events, routinely hosting Final Fours and annually hosting the NFL Draft Combine. This past February, it was also the site of the NBA All-Star Game. Next summer, however, will mark the first time the city is hosting the WNBA All-Star Game.

The game will take place July 19 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, with the 3-point contest and skills challenge occurring July 18.

“We are excited to bring AT&T WNBA All-Star to Indiana for the first time,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “The city of Indianapolis and the entire state of Indiana have such an incredible and enduring passion for the game of basketball, making the region the perfect host to celebrate the WNBA and the game’s greatest stars.”

it’s official.

AT&T WNBA All-Star 2025 is coming to Indianapolis 💫

📝 https://t.co/PKuMPP9P4j pic.twitter.com/I0Z5nCiKr6

Advertisement

— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) August 15, 2024

The news comes amid a significant surge in interest in the Indiana Fever. Led by 2024 No. 1 pick Caitlin Clark and 2023 No. 1 pick Aliyah Boston, Indiana leads the WNBA in attendance for both home and away games this year, with the franchise saying Wednesday it has had a 265 percent increase compared to last season.

Heading into the second half of the WNBA season, which begins Thursday, the Fever have also seen a boom in other areas. Indiana announced that single-game records for sales at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse Team Store have been set four times this season, and the team store has experienced a jump of more than 1,000 percent in net sales. The Fever have added 1.3 million followers across its social media platforms since mid-April, and according to the team, videos produced by the team from April 15 to July 19 had more than 800 million views, trailing only Miami FC (the club of Lionel Messi) across major U.S. sports franchises during that period.

Ten Fever broadcasts this season have also set network viewership records with the team’s June 23 matchup against the Chicago Sky becoming the most-viewed WNBA game in 23 years, averaging 2.3 million viewers. Even appearance requests for Indiana’s mascot, Freddy Fever, are up 150 percent.

“This is a historic moment, an inflection point for women’s basketball, and there’s nothing more fitting than Indiana being at the center of it all,” Mel Raines, chief executive officer of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, said in a statement. “Over several seasons, we have built a young, talented roster that fans are excited to support, and this is momentum that we will build off for years to come.”

Clark and the Fever got off to a slower start than many expected, losing nine out of 11 games in 20 days. Since then, Indiana has rallied, with Clark, Boston, two-time All-Star guard Kelsey Mitchell and 2022 No. 2 pick NaLyssa Smith developing more chemistry. Entering the second half of the season, Clark leads the league in assists while pacing rookies in points per game. She also ranks third in 3-pointers and seventh in total points, all while playing the second-most minutes of anyone across the WNBA.

The Fever, who sit in seventh place at 11-15, return to the court Friday against the Phoenix Mercury. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET.

Required reading

(Photo: Justin Casterline / NBAE via Getty Images)

ESPN has fired “Sunday NFL Countdown” host Samantha Ponder and analyst Robert Griffin III, sources briefed on the moves told The Athletic on Thursday.

The decisions were made for financial reasons as ESPN nears the conclusion of its fiscal year at the end of September, per a source briefed on the matter. Both Ponder and Griffin made more than seven figures. Each was informed of ESPN’s decision Thursday morning, a source briefed on the decision said. Neither Griffin nor Ponder responded to The Athletic’s requests for comment, but Griffin referenced the move in posts on X.

“Thankful for so many people in my time at ESPN that helped me grow because they are some of the best in the business. … THANK YOU to everyone who has supported my family through my playing days and broadcast career so far,” he wrote.

Ponder was entering the final season of a three-year deal worth more than $3 million, sources briefed on her contract said. She only worked in the prestigious role of “Sunday NFL Countdown” host and was basically off for the rest of the year. ESPN generally reserves these types of schedules for the Joe Bucks, Troy Aikmans and Peyton Mannings of its world.

“NFL Live” host Laura Rutledge and “Get Up” host Mike Greenberg are potential replacements for Ponder. Greenberg is considered the favorite, according to sources briefed on the network’s internal talks.

The buyouts of Ponder and Griffin are the only moves ESPN is making at the moment, but it could choose to shed more salary by the end of September. However, the cuts are not expected to be anywhere near the bloodletting in which around 20 big names were let go last June, including stalwarts like Jeff Van Gundy, Suzy Kolber and Jalen Rose.

Griffin, who as recently as last year had been viewed as a rising star at ESPN, had two years remaining on his deal. He was hired three years ago after gaining interest from Fox Sports and ESPN. At the time, sources at both networks raved about what they described as one of the best auditions they have ever seen.

He was considered strongly to be ESPN’s No. 2 college football game analyst with Sean McDonough last season, but the job went to Greg McElroy.

ESPN declined to comment.

Since Griffin’s stock had fallen, it made him a prime candidate to be let go. While his seven-figure per year salary will be honored, his role had diminished to a point where ESPN decided to not keep him on.

The first real sign Griffin was being dropped in the order was when he was removed from “Monday Night Countdown,” where he had been on the prime pregame show for two years. ESPN hired Jason Kelce this offseason to replace Griffin.

Last season, Griffin also served on one of ESPN’s top college game broadcast teams, working with play-by-player Bob Wischusen.

Over the years, Fox Sports has shown interest in Griffin. When it sought to find a successor to Reggie Bush on its “Big Noon Kickoff” pregame show, Griffin was high on its list, but it went with another former Heisman winner, Mark Ingram II.

Griffin is active on social media, chiming in on an array of issues, including when ESPN has had controversies. Ponder does not have the flurry of social media posts like Griffin, but has chimed in at times about transgender athletes and other politically charged issues.

In 2017, Ponder was given the honor of replacing the legendary Chris Berman on “Countdown.”

Berman, perhaps the most prominent on-air person in the network’s history, stepped aside, making way for Ponder. She did not have much NFL experience, having worked her way up the ESPN ranks by being a mainstay on its iconic pregame show, “College GameDay.”

Required reading

(Photo: Peter Joneleit / Getty Images)

The Baltimore Orioles are a lesson in successful rebuilds, having gone from 115 losses in 2018 to one of the best teams in baseball — with one of the best farm systems — in five years. The O’s won the American League East last year, with 101 wins. Their farm system has produced the likes of young All-Stars Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg with the next wave — Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo — recently promoted to the big leagues. Multiple current rebuilding organizations have cited Baltimore as their blueprint, particularly in producing young hitters.

The problem is identifying what exactly that blueprint is. The Orioles are mum on their secret sauce – there are plenty of theories – though some of their guiding principles aren’t necessarily groundbreaking. They’re just difficult to execute, such as the 65 new hires the Mike Elias regime made in roughly 18 months, as the organization streamlined the messaging from coaches in the minor leagues and prioritized tough work environments to breed more competition through a total culture shift.

“We have some organizational non-negotiable philosophies or values, and what we needed to do was find and hire a bunch of people that either believed in those or were willing to push those and build off those and that’s what we initially did,” said Matt Blood, who was promoted this winter from director of player development to vice president of player development and domestic scouting. “We drafted players that sort of fit in those moments as well. So we were acquiring players with these skills and we were finding coaches and building resources to reinforce these skills and then putting them to work.”

While anecdotal evidence suggests many of the Orioles young hitters are good at the same things, Blood demurs.

“I think they’re just all good at adjustability,” he said, “and being able to compete against what the game is throwing at them.”

Still, there are some interesting theories around the league as other teams try to figure out what the Orioles do well so they can follow the same roadmap.

“They draft for VBA,” said a rival scout about the Orioles.

That’s a compelling idea, that the Orioles have found some alphabet soup that’s better than the analytics other teams use, and that they’ve used those numbers to find the best hitters in baseball.

So what is VBA?

Vertical Bat Angle is the angle of the bat respective to the ground, judged directly behind or in front of the batter. A “steeper” bat bath is generally associated with the potential to lift the ball better, though it can have some ramifications when it comes to swing-and-miss in parts of the zone. In other words, it’s great to be steep low in the zone but it’s hard to maintain that steepness and still hit a ball at the top of the zone.

This visualization of Vertical Bat Angle is from an explainer article by Eric Cressey. (Photo illustration courtesy of Eric Cressey)

So are the Orioles great at this? Do they have good swing paths? Yes and no.

At the major-league level, @SwingGraphs estimates that the Orioles are middle of the pack when it comes to VBA. But the major-league team still has some holdovers from previous regimes, as well as players who fill different roles for their current lineup. In the minor leagues, @SwingGraphs found that Baltimore’s top three prospects — Holliday, Mayo and Heston Kjerstad — were second-best in the league when compared to other top position-player prospects in terms of their “path score,” which incorporates VBA. Another team’s analyst pointed out that the Orioles’ minor leaguers have the second-highest launch angle in the sport, which would be consistent with having good VBA.

Still, it’s probably not a singular approach chasing one number in the scouting and development circles. Some evidence of this is how good the Orioles have been at slugging both pitches in the top and bottom thirds of the strike zone.

The Orioles are the only team in baseball that’s in the top five of slugging in both the top and bottom thirds of the zone, though the Minnesota Twins’ offense is close. You can also see that the Orioles don’t whiff all that much at the top of the zone — the Red Sox have a good slugging percentage at the top but whiff a lot more there. The Orioles also have the third-smallest difference between slugging at the top and slugging at the bottom. They’re good all over!

So they don’t necessarily draft for VBA or value it specifically, as multiple sources confirmed. Adjustability? That’s a different story. We just saw that their offense is multi-dimensional. Executives from other teams had more theories on how the Orioles have developed bats that can slug all over the zone.

“They draft guys with present power and improve their launch angle and swing decisions,” said a rival assistant general manager with player development responsibilities. “That present power is there in the form of top-end exit velocities, not necessarily slugging percentage. They teach better Vertical Bat Angle to reduce ground-ball rates. Swing decisions plus better VBA equals power production when those top-end exit velocities exist.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Take raw power, add swing decisions and improve their bat paths, and you start pumping out some really good hitters? And how do they add all that? How do they improve their raw, young hitters?

“They have a lot of young coaches and throw short box with them — so those are relatively live arms, from up close, forcing the hitters to adapt and see the ball out of a release point,” said a rival director of player development. “They use weighted bats at most levels as part of the regular process to keep bat speed up. They focus on making good swing decisions and help hitters internalize that as they come up through the minors.”

This starts to line up with things that even the Orioles will admit they value.

“Our training environments are very competitive, very difficult,” said Blood. “That leads to more efficiency, in terms of learning skills.”

They want to make drill work difficult and game-like for their hitters, so the short box fits that bill. In fact, those young coaches challenged each other to develop the best stuff for their short box sessions, turning their knowledge of pitch shapes into nastiness on the mound. They want their hitters to only swing at pitches they can drive, so the nightly swing decision text messages help drive that point home. They believe in data-driven techniques that have been shown to produce on-field results, so the weighted bat training makes sense. They also use force plates — devices that measure how much force a player puts into the ground, which Driveline Baseball confirmed has a lot to do with bat speed — to check on their hitters and guide workouts throughout the season.

These examples alone give us a window into the data- and tech-driven process of developing today’s Oriole slugger. But these aren’t concepts that are foreign to other organizations. So why is it working so particularly well for the Orioles right now? The talk often comes back to the players themselves.

“I think the Orioles have done a phenomenal job of getting guys with really good makeup,” Adley Rutschman told Travis Sawchick at The Score. “And once you get enough guys who are of that same mindset, because everyone is pushing each other and everyone is on the same page, it would be really difficult if guys were not bought in. When guys are bought in, it’s a lot of fun.”

“Every single one of their All-Stars has a high baseball IQ,” agreed a rival hitting coach. “Every one has a specific way they are going to have success that night. The high IQ allows them to know what the pitcher is trying to do to them that day and adjust their swing path and approach on a pitcher-to-pitcher level. He’s throwing sinkers, I’m going to be more scoopy with my swing today! He’s got a lot of ride, I’m going to be flatter today.

“Never has it been more important to have high IQ players like that.”

(Top photo of Jackson Holliday: Cole Burston / Getty Images)