Aliyah Boston joined Indiana Fever teammates Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham in vocally defending head coach Stephanie White against backlash and boos from home fans.

"I think when you are on your home floor and the team's getting announced and the coach is getting announced, there's no reason for any of that," Boston told reporters on Thursday, as seen in a video shared by James Boyd of the Athletics.

White was welcomed with boos from a portion of the home crowd when she was introduced before Indiana's 106-92 win over the New York Liberty.

Caitlin Clark, Kelsey Mitchell, and Sophie Cunningham had already reacted to the boos right after the game. On Thursday, Boston joined them, calling the incident 'disrespectful' and 'annoying'.

"I mean, we come out here, we do everything that we can to win. I think Steph does a great job with us, like, we love her, and we appreciate her, and so, to hear that, it was really annoying, honestly, and disrespectful," Boston added, per the same video shared by Boyd on X.

"But we kept the main thing, main thing, and we said we were gonna come out here and we're gonna get that dub."

The Fever backed up those words. Indiana beat the defending champion New York Liberty 106-92 on Aug. 11, moving to 21-12. It strengthened their position near the top of the Eastern Conference.

The boos, however, didn't emerge from nowhere. During Indiana's 90-86 win over the Sky on Aug. 8, Chicago guard DiJonai Carrington was ejected after a hard foul on Cunningham during a fast-break layup attempt.

Carrington caught Cunningham across the left side of the head with her arm.

In her immediate postgame comments Saturday, White said she didn't believe Carrington, whom she'd previously coached in Connecticut, had gone after Cunningham intentionally.

White also praised Carrington's competitive nature.

White later explained that she had not seen the play clearly in real time and had not watched the replay before giving those first postgame comments.

But the damage was already done. Some fans felt White should have immediately taken a stronger public stand for Cunningham.

While fans booed, the locker room rallied around their coach

Clark said hearing fans turn on White stuck with her more than anything that happened on the court.

"There was no way we were losing the game for [White]," Clark said. "I hated that our fans booed her before the game. That made me a little sick, to be honest."

This is Clark's second season under White, who took over as Fever head coach in November 2024.

In their first year together in 2025, Indiana went 24-20, won the WNBA Commissioner's Cup and reached the playoff semifinals — the franchise's deepest postseason run since 2016.

Cunningham, the player at the center of the original controversy, was just as supportive.

"Our locker room in there, it's tight, and we have each other's backs," she said, adding that White simply hadn't seen the replay in time for her first comments.

Cunningham has played under White for two seasons as well.

Kelsey Mitchell added her voice too, saying the boos "kind of threw me for a loop" and that watching White absorb that reaction bothered her personally.

If anyone assumed the boos reflected a real rift between White and her players, Indiana's stars spent the following days making it clear that wasn't the case.

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Written by

Md Saife Fida

Edited by

Zaid Quraishi