Fever GM Lin Dunn on coach Christie Sides: `It's time to give her some grace and let her grow as a young coach.'

Sides gets pilloried on social media after every Fever loss (and sometimes wins, too). It's time to give her some credit; she's helped turn this team around after the 1-8 start.

I don’t know how your X timeline looks after the Fever lose a basketball game, but here’s how mine looks. Christie Sides, the Fever coach, gets annihilated on social media, and shoot, the only social media I see regularly are Twitter and Facebook. Lord knows what it looks like on Instagram and elsewhere.

Praying she gets fired and replaced by Lisa Bludder. (It’s “Bluder.”)

Need a different coach making `coach’s decisions.’

She probably bet Mystics money line at +250, lol.

Christie Sides has NEVER been a Head Coach and it shows. Not even at the high school level.

She doesn’t know her way around a basketball. How did she get this job?

And on and on it goes, relentless and angry and largely unfair. Who are these people who’ve suddenly shown up on my X timeline, trashing Sides, who took over after the Fever won five games two years ago, won 13 games last year and now has the Fever with nine victories heading into the Olympic break? Are these all Caitlin Clark superfans, who can’t fathom why their hero isn’t scoring every point and leading the Fever to the top of the WNBA in her first season? Are they long-time WNBA fans who suddenly showed up on my feed? Are they newbies? I don’t know, but the nastiness goes beyond anything I’ve seen with a Colts or Pacers coach.

Except maybe for the comments we read about Jeff Saturday.

“It’s time to give her some grace,” Fever general manager Lin Dunn told me this week, “and let her grow as a young coach.”

Certainly, Dunn, who hired Sides prior to last season, sees the team’s improvement after the 1-8 start and sees the garbage that almost inevitably comes her way after every game, especially losses like the brutal one they suffered to the short-handed Mystics Wednesday afternoon.  

“One of the things that really impressed me is we were given a very, very difficult, brutal early schedule for a young team,” said Dunn, the Fever GM and the coach of the franchise when they won the WNBA title in 2012. “I don’t know anyone who had to play two back-to-backs so early. We had to play all the top teams on the road; we’ve already played the top team, New York, four times.

“So she has led this team through an enormous amount of adversity, but still we improved, we got better and started to win games. What I think is impressive is that she didn’t allow the brutal schedule and that early adversity tear us apart. Instead, it’s pulled us together. Now we’re in a position where if we can get healthy and stay healthy, we’ll challenge for a playoff spot. I like what she’s done with the second-youngest team in the league. I like what I see.

“Instead of beating her up all the time, let’s pat her on the back for what she’s accomplished.”