Fever’s Aliyah Boston Reflects on Why 2025 Was Her Favorite WNBA Season Yet

Indiana riddled with injuries in 2025, but Boston was one of many who helped hold it down into the playoffs.

With the WNBA year over, Boston is currently playing with the Phantom for the 2026 Unrivaled season. | Joe Boatman/NBAE via Getty Images

For fans of the Fever, the 2025 season was bittersweet—the team won the Commissioner's Cup and made it to playoff semifinals, but the roster was also riddled with injuries to players like Sophie Cunningham, Sydney Colson, Aari McDonald and Caitlin Clark. Even more gut-wrenching, Indiana’s postseason series with the eventual champion Aces was close, too; despite the depleted squad, Indiana forced a Game 5 and held on to the bitter end.

Still, for star forward Aliyah Boston—a key reason for Indiana’s success in both the regular and postseason—this most recent campaign was her favorite yet.

Speaking with Sports Illustrated on behalf of The Court Is Hers, a Fever and Lilly-founded initiative aimed at increasing girls' participation in local Indiana basketball, Boston explained exactly why her third season in the WNBA stood out from the rest.

“I know when you look at it from a whole, it’s like, how could this have been so special, especially with all the injuries that we have?” Boston said. “But I think [it was] just the people that we had in the locker room. And it started with the entire coaching staff, they made it so exciting to come in and work, even when we came off losses. ... We continued to find different areas of where we wanted to grow, which I think excited me the most."

Boston said she felt that energy and excitement endure through the postseason, even if the Fever would ultimately exit the playoffs earlier than they hoped.

“Making it to Game 5 of the semis obviously didn’t end the way we wanted to,” she said, “but I think it showed us as individuals, you know, how we can continue to impact the game, regardless of who’s on the floor. [Those were] growing moments for us.”

That resilience was also the perfect demonstration of what Boston believes to be the team’s secret weapon: fun.

“It’s the way that we're able to communicate [and] the friendships and the relationships that we have with each other,” she mused, asked about the most underrated piece of the Fever’s success. “It was just so natural, and it was [like that] off the court, as well. Anything off the court is only going to help that bond on the court, which I think we were able to accomplish and show.”

It’s the offseason now, which means many a WNBA player—including Boston—is spending her time in Unrivaled, the upstart 3v3 league co-founded by superstars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart. Still, the forward already knows what she’d like to work on next for her WNBA campaign, whenever that may be.

“Just continuing to expand my game,” Boston said of what she’d like to improve going forward. “I think just being a lot more consistent with it, and not allowing it to be here and there, depending on possession.”

In the meantime, though, she’ll keep doing her thing with Unrivaled (she’s the Phantom's second-leading scorer and leads the team in rebounds, steals and blocks), while continuing to inspire young, athletic girls with both her platform and her work with The Court is Hers.

“I never take it for granted,” she said of influencing the next generation. “It’s an opportunity that I would never trade. ... Sometimes, I’m still in awe that I’m really at this level, but it's honestly such a great feeling.”

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