INDIANAPOLIS — The Eastern Conference will be represented by the Indiana Fever in the 2025 Commissioner’s Cup final. The reward did not come easily for the Fever, who had to fight for it, quite literally.

The Fever won 88-71 on Tuesday against Connecticut in a game marred by multiple scuffles, but still needed an Atlanta loss to overtake the Dream. The New York Liberty provided the assist, overcoming a 17-point deficit to beat Atlanta 86-81. Indiana and New York were tied at 4-1 in Commissioner’s Cup games, but the Fever’s latest victory over the Liberty gave them the tiebreaker.

This is the first time Indiana has advanced to the final in the five-year history of the Commissioner’s Cup. The East was previously represented by Connecticut, Chicago and New York, twice. Only the Liberty have won the cup for the Eastern Conference, which came in 2023. Of the current Fever players, DeWanna Bonner — who has missed the last two games for personal reasons — is the only one to have appeared in a cup final, back in 2021 with the Sun.

Indiana will have to travel to Minnesota, the Western Conference representative, for the final on Tuesday, July 1.

Caitlin Clark at the center of scuffles

The tension was high between the two teams until their emotions boiled over in the second half, resulting in Fever star Caitlin Clark being flagrantly fouled in the third quarter and three players being ejected in the fourth. At the 4:48 mark of the third quarter, Clark was poked in the eye by Sun guard Jacy Sheldon and body-checked from her blindside by Sheldon’s teammate Marina Mabrey.

As Clark dribbled down the lane, Sheldon reached in with her right hand and hit Clark in the face. Clark immediately grabbed at her right eye as Sheldon bumped her once more. Clark responded by shoving Sheldon, which prompted Sheldon’s teammates, Tina Charles and Mabrey, to enter the fray. Charles went up to Clark and wagged her finger in Clark’s face, and then Mabrey came over behind Clark and pushed her to the floor.

Clark and Sheldon had been chirping at each other from the start of the game as Sheldon hounded Clark on defense. The two came face-to-face to argue early in the second quarter and had to be separated by their teammates and the officials.

“When the officials don’t get control of the ball game, when they allow that stuff to happen and it’s been happening all season long … this is what happens,” Fever coach Stephanie White said, later adding that she believes the officiating is an issue for the entire WNBA and not just for her team. “You’ve got competitive women who are the best in the world at what they do, and when you allow them to play physical and you allow all these things to happen, they’re gonna compete and they’re gonna have their teammates’ backs. …

“I started talking to the officials in the first quarter, and we knew this was gonna happen.”

Upon review, the referees upgraded Sheldon’s foul on Clark to a flagrant foul penalty 1. They also issued technical fouls to Clark, Charles and Mabrey, who was not ejected despite shoving Clark down.

“The contact made by Mabrey did not rise to the level of an ejection,” crew chief Ashley Gloss said via the official pool report. “Additionally, (it) did not meet the criteria for a flagrant foul penalty two.”

After the dust-up, Mabrey was relentlessly booed by the home crowd at Gainbridge Fieldhouse every time she touched the ball. But the extracurriculars weren’t over.

Sheldon came up with a steal with less than a minute remaining in the game and raced the other way for what would’ve been a fast break layup, but Fever wing Sophie Cunningham chased Sheldon down and threw her to the ground with 46.0 seconds left. When Sheldon popped off the floor, she and her teammate Lindsay Allen went after Cunningham as the three of them came face-to-face. Their kerfuffle spilled into the first row of courtside seating before teammates and officials separated them.

“I think when things aren’t managed well to begin with, that it tends to get out of hand, and that’s what happened. That’s what was shown (Tuesday),” Sun center Olivia Nelson-Ododa said. “So, I think just, it goes with managing both teams on the court, managing calls and fouls, and making sure that things aren’t just adding fuel to the fire throughout the game to where we have situations like this happen.”

After a lengthy review, Cunningham was issued a flagrant foul penalty 2, and Sheldon and Allen received technical fouls. All three players were ejected.

“When you are winning the game by 17 points and you are doing this stupid foul, this is just disrespectful,” Sun coach Rachid Meziane said of Cunningham’s flagrant foul. “I don’t know how Lindsay and Lacy (were) ejected from the game when they did nothing.”

Clark declined to talk about the flagrant foul she received from Sheldon or the officiating in Indiana’s postgame news conference. However, the Fever star nodded her head in agreement with White’s scathing assessment of the referees, which included White claiming that everyone in the WNBA is getting better “except the officials.”

Clark has been the recipient of four flagrant fouls through her first 48 WNBA games, including the playoffs, though Tuesday’s was the first this season. Clark still finished with 20 points and six assists in 29 minutes to lift the Fever into the Commissioner’s Cup final. She drilled four 3-pointers, punctuated by a 28-footer over Sheldon that gave Indiana a 20-point lead with just under four minutes left in the game. After the ball swished through the net, Clark stared down the Sun bench and screamed in its direction.

“I’m a passionate player, but at the end of the day, like, I’m here to play basketball,” Clark said. “… My game’s gonna talk, and that’s all that really matters.”

Commissioner’s Cup final is one step forward for Fever

At the start of the season, Clark said Indiana’s goal for 2025 was a championship. She likely didn’t mean a Commissioner’s Cup trophy, but the in-season tournament has historically augured postseason success for its participants. The Las Vegas Aces got their first taste of a title in 2022 with the cup, following that up with a title later that season.

In 2023 and 2024, the event served as a preview of the WNBA Finals, though with the opposite winners. Every team that has made the Commissioner’s Cup final — other than Seattle in 2021, which lost Breanna Stewart to an Achilles injury later in the year — has at least made the WNBA semifinals.