The Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever are powered by women -

There’s a hoops revival happening in the land of the Hoosiers. Right there smack dab in the middle of the pro basketball map, with an NBA franchise that once floundered among the league’s middle class and a WNBA franchise that has missed the playoffs seven years in a row. Before this month, the Indiana Pacers hadn’t won a playoff series in 10 years. Truth be told, they hadn’t been relevant since the Reggie Miller years. Despite becoming a League Pass darling, these Pacers played on in anonymity, originally scheduled for just one nationally televised game during the 2023-24 regular season.

But in their Eastern Conference semifinal series against New York, these Pacers are reacquainting themselves with those fun “Hicks vs. Knicks” rivalries and resurrecting memories of Miller placing all of Spike Lee’s hopes and dreams in a chokehold. Even more, this Pacers resurgence comes at a time when Indianapolis is the nexus for female empowerment in basketball.

A woman sits at the front of the bench, next to Pacers Coach Rick Carlisle, and will jet down the court to pull her player away from a fight with a very large, very angry Bobby Portis.

A woman is part of the brain trust behind the construction of this Pacers roster, which led the league with a historically high 123.3 points per game and scored 140 or more 11 times, an NBA record.

A woman waits in the wings as the next CEO of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, which operates the NBA and WNBA teams, and now sheepishly accepts photo requests from young girls who spot her in the arena.

Also, the brightest star in basketball just so happens to play in that arena now. Naturally, that’s Caitlin Clark.

Need an example of Indy’s hoops renaissance being powered by women? Just turn on the TV anywhere in the world.

“Somebody told me that the day after the [WNBA] draft, they had a friend who woke up in Cairo, who was from Indianapolis and was traveling there, and Indiana Fever was on the television in Egypt,” said Mel Raines, president and chief operating officer of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, sharing just one anecdote of the impact Clark is having on the city and the franchise ahead of her rookie WNBA season. “It puts us on the map in a different way than some other Midwestern cities and states that don’t have that.”

While Raines isn’t the first woman to run the business side of NBA and WNBA franchises, what’s happening inside her company is unique.

Pacers assistant coach Jenny Boucek moved to the front of the bench this season, meaning she has more of a vocal and integral role on Carlisle’s staff. She works with players on their shooting, instructs the team’s defense and doesn’t mind rushing into fires, as she did during the first round when she sprinted down the floor to pull Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard away from a scuffle involving Portis, the Milwaukee Bucks’ enforcer.

“I didn’t realize how elite Jenny was,” Nembhard told the Indianapolis Star in October about his coach’s vast skill set.

Any conversation about elite basketball in the city has to include the heyday of the Fever. Kelly Krauskopf was hired as the team’s first president of basketball operations. More than two decades ago, back when the downtown Indy arena was being constructed, Krauskopf stood on the dirt floor and imagined a banner hanging in the sky. She delivered, engineering a Fever run of success that included 12 consecutive playoff appearances (still a WNBA record), three conference titles and a championship in 2012. After 19 years running her own franchise, Krauskopf felt an urge to hand over the baton. That’s when Rick Fuson, the company’s CEO, and Kevin Pritchard, the Pacers’ president, asked for a meeting.

At a time when NBA team news releases crowed about the latest female hire, Pritchard wanted Krauskopf to join his front office. She wanted a new challenge but did not want to become a team’s trophy for diversity and inclusion.

“I saw what was happening in the NBA [five years ago]. … There were a lot of teams quote ‘adding women to their staff.’ Some were, like, the job description was all over the board. It’s like you’ve got invited to the dance; now you’re at the dance, but nobody is going to ask you to dance,” Krauskopf said. “I made this very, very clear: I had no interest in just being an addition of a female-check-the-box on the staff. I’m about the work. I’m about winning. I know how to put together rosters. I know how to build teams. I know how to run a franchise, and if you can’t utilize me in that way, I’m not here just to check a box.”

The Pacers assured her they could use her expertise; besides, whenever team owner Herb Simon gazes up to the rafters, he sees his franchises’ only championship of the modern era and it belongs to her team. So in 2019, Krauskopf became the first woman hired as an assistant general manager in the NBA.

Krauskopf has been the boss throughout her career, so this assistant role has been challenging at times. However, she was part of the collaboration that changed the Pacers.

Donnie Walsh, the Hall of Fame executive who hired her for the Fever, always advised Krauskopf to trust her gut. So when the front office explored the prospect during the 2021-22 season of trading all-star Domantas Sabonis to get a second-year point guard named Tyrese Haliburton, Krauskopf couldn’t shake her instinct that the rising guard was worth it. In the background, she was the one prodding Pritchard and General Manager Chad Buchanan. Pushy, she was. After all, she’s accustomed to being in charge. The Pacers made the deal, and by acquiring the joyful floor leader, the trade instantly changed the locker room and the team’s style of play, setting in motion the thriving squad of today.

“Women who are the first, we want to earn it,” Krauskopf said of her position. “The whole thing about being in management, you have to know the personnel. And that’s one skill I know how to do.”

When Raines left her job in politics to join the Pacers’ business side in 2015 — she helped organize four Republican National Conventions and worked for former vice president Dick Cheney — she admittedly faced a steep learning curve.

“But [Fuson] saw something in me that I don’t think I saw in myself,” Raines said. “It was a thoughtful thing on his part, and I’m not sure any of the other teams would’ve hired me with my background to do it. But it was something that he and [ownership] were really committed to the diversity piece on the senior team, and I’m really grateful that they took a chance.”

During Fuson’s 40-year run, he helped plan the 1985 All-Star Game in Indianapolis and brought the event back to the city in 2024. And remember the story of Krauskopf standing on the dirt floor of what would become Conseco Fieldhouse? Fuson was involved in designing the arena and then, decades later, spearheading the $360 million renovation to the building now known as Gainbridge Fieldhouse, along with Raines.

As Raines takes over as the company’s chief, she is becoming more of a featured face around the arena. That’s not exactly something that she wanted, nor did she want headlines about her promotion to focus on her gender. However, Raines has recognized this momentum in Indy can be bigger than basketball. Her presence — and those of the other high-powered women around the Pacers and Fever — just might shape the future.

“I can’t change what the rules are, but what I can do is just do this job better than anyone else would do it,” Raines said. “It’s made me realize even more, in our small community … that that 10-year-old girl sees this as her future job. I never would’ve seen this as my future job at that age. And so I owe it to them to do it really well.”

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