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Indiana Fever fire coach Christie Sides after Caitlin Clark’s breakout season
The Indiana Fever fired coach Christie Sides on Sunday, the organization announced.
Sides went 33-47 in her two seasons with the squad, including going 20-20 this season. The Fever made the playoffs as the sixth seed and were swept in the first round by the Connecticut Sun.
Indiana is the sixth team to make a coaching change this offseason, joining Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles. All of the coaches let go had three years or less experience.
Jessica Hill / AP
Whoever takes over the Fever will have a strong young core to work with, led by Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston. The pair have won the last two WNBA Rookie of the Year awards.
“We are incredibly thankful to Coach Sides for embracing the challenge of leading us through an integral transition period over the last two seasons, while also positioning us well for future growth,” Fever president of basketball operations Kelly Krauskopf said.
“While decisions like these are never easy, it is also imperative that we remain bold and assertive in the pursuit of our goals, which includes maximizing our talent and bringing another WNBA championship back to Indiana. Coach Sides was an incredible representative of the Fever and our community, and we wish her nothing but success in the future.”
Krauskopf came back to the Fever earlier this month after spending time with the Indiana Pacers.
Ashley Landis / AP
Sides was a longtime assistant in the league, spending time with Chicago (2011-16), the Fever (2017-19) and Atlanta (2022) before getting the head coaching job. She replaced Marianne Stanley and her interim successor, Carlos Knox, who coached in the 2022 season.
Sides had two years left on her contract.
The Fever haven’t had a head coach last for more than three years since Lin Dunn, who coached from 2008-14. Since then, they’ve had Stephanie White (2015-16), Pokey Chatman (2017-19) and Stanley (2020-22).
Indiana had a brutal schedule to start the season and lost eight of their first nine games. The Fever finally got going after the Olympic break, winning seven of eight to get into playoff contention.
The Democratic National Committee is projecting digital messages on Madison Square Garden’s exterior during former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally on Sunday about recent reports that he once praised Adolf Hitler and his generals and that cast him as unhinged.
“Trump praised Hitler,” one of five planned projections from the DNC says, referring to Trump’s longest-serving chief-of-staff, four-star Marine Corps. Gen. John Kelly, telling The Atlantic this week that Trump had admirable things to say about the German dictator.
Trump says he “never said it,” and campaign aides have denied Kelly’s accounts.
Sunday marks the first time the DNC is projecting counterprogramming onto a building while Trump will be inside it, but it’s far from the first time Democrats have deployed the technique. The DNC put projections on Trump Tower in New York City on the night of the vice presidential debate and on Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower during the Democratic National Convention in August.
Democratic National Committee
This time, the stunt comes as some Democrats make comparisons to a 1939 rally supporting Hitler and the Nazi party at a previous reiteration of Madison Square Garden ahead of World War II. Billed as a “Pro American Rally,” the February 1939 event was organized by German American Bund, an pro-Hitler organization, attended by more than 20,000 people and saw an even larger number of counter-protesters outside.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz on Sunday also compared Trump’s rally there to the 1939 rally.
“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said, speaking to voters in Nevada. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid 1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”
Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris have recently increased their criticisms of the former president as they push their final message to voters in the final stretch ahead of the election. In a CNN town hall, Harris agreed that Trump was a fascist and Walz has called comments from the former president “so damn racist.”
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Hillary Clinton said Trump’s choice of venue for his closing message was no coincidence and that he was “actually reenacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939,” following similar comparisons from others including New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back to say Clinton herself has held events there while her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accepted the Democratic nomination there in 1992.
“Putting aside her hypocrisy, Hillary’s rhetoric about half of the country is disgusting,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Sunday’s rally comes just days after Kelly also told The New York Times Trump has little appreciation of history, saying, “I think he’s lacking in that.”
Trump also personally rebuffed the criticism at a rally later on Friday in Michigan, distancing himself and his base from the comparison.
“I guess in the 1930s or something, some guy who was inclined toward the Nazis had something, and she said it’s just like the 1930s. No, no, this is called Make America Great Again,” Trump told a crowd in Traverse City.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison didn’t go as far as to make the same comparison as Clinton but told CBS News in a statement he sees Trump as having “grown increasingly unhinged in the final weeks heading into Election Day; so much so that those who know Trump best are warning voters that he is dangerously unfit to lead.”
To that end, the DNC is also projecting messages onto Madison Square Garden questioning Trump’s competency including, “Trump = Unhinged” and “Trump = Unwell.”
David Schwartz, a trial attorney in New York City, has previously told CBS News it’s illegal to project digital signs in New York City for longer than 60 seconds without a permit. A spokesperson with the DNC, however, said they are aware of the law and complying with it by rotating through individual messages.
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contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — Timothée Chalamet made a surprise appearance Sunday at his own look-alike contest in Manhattan.
At least one person was arrested after a large crowd formed and police broke up the event in Washington Square Park.
Chalamet posed for photos with his doppelgängers, some of whom came dressed as his characters from the movies “Wonka” and “Dune.”
The look-alike contest was one of several such competitions hosted by the YouTube personality Anthony Po, and it promised $50 for the winner. As word spread on social media, thousands of people RSVP’d.
From “a silly joke” to “pandemonium”
Stefan Jeremiah / AP
Minutes after the competition started — and before Chalamet arrived — police ordered the group to disperse from the park. Organizers were hit with a $500 fine for an “unpermitted costume contest,” and police said one person was issued a summons for disorderly conduct.
“It started off as a silly joke and now it’s turned pandemonium,” Paige Nguyen, a producer for the YouTube creator, told The Associated Press.
The group relocated to another park, and the audience eventually crowned Miles Mitchell, a Staten Island college senior, as the winner.
“I’m excited and I’m also overwhelmed,” Mitchell said. “There were so many good look-alikes. It was really a toss-up.”
The contestants were asked to demonstrate their French skills, about their romantic plans with Kylie Jenner, and what they would do to make the world a better place.
WESTON – A small group of loyal customers gathered in Weston Saturday morning to thank a pharmacist who is relocating as Walgreens closes the location where he served the community for almost three decades.
The celebration was led by an 11-year-old boy who shocked the pharmacist by presenting him with thousands of dollars that he raised as a thank you gift.
Weston Walgreens closing
In the midst of corporate cutbacks at Walgreens, the location on Boston Post Road is closing permanently. So a small group came out to thank the pharmacist at the store.
“It’s humbling. I can’t believe it. It’s amazing,” said veteran pharmacist Bob Hesselberg, who has worked at the store for nearly 30 years. “I don’t want to retire, even though I am 75. I don’t want to retire. I’m not ready for it.”
Hesselberg is moving on to a store in Waltham. The sendoff was led by 11-year-old Aarav Khanna, whose school bus routinely drops him off right across from the Walgreens location.
“I’ve seen the amount of kindness and hard work he puts into his job,” Khanna said.
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Money raised for pharmacist
Khanna got the idea to raise money for Hesselberg as a going away present. And the total grew quickly. Thanks to the community, Kanna was able to present Hesselberg with a check for $6,000 on Saturday, leaving the pharmacist in shock.
During the Saturday celebration, a young girl gave a handmade card to Hesselberg, who people in the community call “Pharmacist Bob.”
“You walk in, he not only greets you by name, but he wants to know how your family is, and how is that medication you had last time, and how are you doing? And he means it,” customer Carol Ott said.
The Weston Walgreens closes in the middle of November. Hesselberg hopes some customers will follow him to Waltham, but he worries about some of the older residents driving that distance, especially since the chain won’t be doing home delivery anymore.
“I’m gonna miss everybody. And I’m very grateful for all of this. And thank you so much,” Hesselberg told the crowd.
