INDIANAPOLIS — Kelsey Mitchell appeared over to Indiana Fever PR staffers with a fast query earlier than speaking about how her season resulted in Recreation 5 of the WNBA semifinals final yr.
The three-time All-Star guard was taken off the court docket, declining a stretcher, halfway by means of the third quarter in opposition to Las Vegas with “numbness/paralyzing feeling” in her legs.
At Monday’s coaching camp session, Mitchell requested if she might curse earlier than explaining the situation. Would she need to change something that led to her legs giving out?
“Hell naw,” Mitchell stated emphatically. “If I’ve acquired to do it once more and let my physique fall out the best way it did, I will do it. I really like the sport that a lot. I really like competing that a lot. Lord keen, it does not occur once more like that.
“Hopefully it was a once-in-a-lifetime factor. However I will die on my sword each recreation, each time.”
Mitchell was recognized with rhabdomyolysis, a situation when muscle cells break down and launch a protein into the bloodstream. The league’s No. 2 scorer final season was logging main minutes down the stretch because the Fever roster was decimated by accidents. Mitchell performed 33-plus minutes in 5 of the crew’s seven playoff video games earlier than the semifinal showdown in opposition to the Aces, together with 37 and 39 minutes in Video games 3 and 4.
Mitchell stated she was cleared in two weeks after getting IVs and CT scans. The second was a scary one in Las Vegas as what initially appeared like extreme cramping despatched Mitchell to the hospital. For roughly 5 minutes, she was down being attended to by medical employees. Mitchell later posted on social media that her physique “locked up from a bodily standpoint” and that she had “no motion from my decrease extremities for as much as 5 to 7 seconds.”
Mitchell was named first-team All-WNBA for the primary time in 2025, rating No. 3 in factors per recreation (20.2) and main a reworked lineup that misplaced Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, Aari McDonald, Sydney Colson and Chloe Bibby to season-ending accidents. She additionally completed fifth in MVP voting.
“It was positively what I wanted, although, as a result of we had performed a lot basketball,” Mitchell stated of the time without work. “I am positive folks took an extended time without work, for actual, for actual. However I used to be cleared in, like, two weeks.”
Mitchell was rewarded with a one-year, $1.4 million supermax deal to return to the crew that drafted her No. 2 total in 2018. She defined that there have been a number of conversations with Clark, Lexie Hull and Aliyah Boston, who signed a four-year $6.3 million extension to stay in Indianapolis.
“We knew that we needed to be collectively,” Mitchell stated. “In order that was the simple half, with the ability to sit down and break bread with the folks that you just get pleasure from taking part in the sport with. That was the best a part of it.”