When the Indiana Fever chose Florida State’s Makayla Timpson in the WNBA design of 2025 was more or less assumed that she would have to earn playing time as a Rookie. The fever had chosen a win-now approach in the low season, so that veteran Natasha Howard, Dewanna Bonner and Brianna Turner was added to a free desk. Timpson would not even make the last grid, let alone be part of the rotation.
Timpson, however, has beaten several other players, including colleague trees Bree Hall and Yvonne Ejim, and although her time on the field was minimal during the first month of the season, she slowly but surely deserves the confidence of her coaches. After having hardly played in May and a large part of June, Timpson made double digits in seven of her last nine games; Recently she played for 22 minutes in one Win the Chicago SkyRecording a career-high 14 points to go with four rebounds and three steals.
“She’s great. One of the best rookies I’ve ever come across,” Said Kelsey Mitchell from TIMPSON. “She is the ultimate professional. If you have dressing room culture, you need great people to make it bigger, and I think we have a good addition.”
Timpson himself was a bit shy and brought the credit to her teammates. “They have my back and they encourage me every exercise, every game just to stay ready and to stay focused. I just wanted to be who they need to be on the field.”
To the honor of Timpson, when a rookie gradually earns minutes in a team with championship ambitions (and, in the case of the fever, a team with a lot of depth at that position), it is usually an indicator of more than just a good posture. Fever General Manager Amber Cox was excited when Indiana Timpson at No. 19 in general and called her a ‘called’defensive powerhouse’And praises her gifts as an edge-running athlete.
It was that defense and athletics that delivered Timpson extra playing time against Chicago. Fever head coach Stephanie White was not happy with how easily the sky had shot attempts, so instead of another veteran, Damiris Dantas, replaced by Howard, she stopped in Timpson instead.
‘I felt [the Sky] I have too many easy looks. ‘KK’s’ versatility enables us to play her defensively in a different way than we can play [Dantas]” White explained After the game. “And then they had it rolling in the first half and so we just stayed with those eight or nine.”
That rotation of eight or nine players can look different for the fever on a game-to-game basis, something that recognizes White is a double-cut sword. As much as she would also play everyone on her selection, both young people and veterans, she knows that it is simply not realistic and explains: “One of the benefits of having a deep team is that if you don’t have it one evening, someone else does that, but one of the challenges of having a deep team is that people do not always play.”
For Timpson that may mean that from the first big one of the bank of the fever to just playing joke-up minutes. This is mainly true when the play -offs start; Teams usually shorten their rotations in the late season, and because because Timpson has played lately, it would be no surprise to see White leaning on its most experienced players when the games are the most important.
For now, however, the fever is satisfied with the development of Timpson. In a team with three All-Stars and many players who are comfortably shooting the ball, they don’t need her to do much more than rebound, defend and play with energy, and she is more than happy to stick to that role. According to Timpson itself, her success comes down to one Simple approach- “Just don’t be too high and don’t be too low” – and while she remains adapted to life in the pros, one can see how well it works for her.
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