Fever Guard Shares Emotional Injury Return Message After Long Layoff
The second season of the Unrivaled 3x3 women's basketball league is now underway, as the opening slate of games tipped off on January 5.
This is great news for all women's basketball fans, as the league's top talents haven't been on the court for several months. And some players whose WNBA teams didn't make the postseason haven't competed since September. As for the Indiana Fever, the players they have competing in Unrivaled haven't seen real-time action since September 30, when they came agonizingly short against the Las Vegas Aces in Game 5 of the WNBA Semifinals.
This overtime defeat still stings for Fever fans, especially because the team made it so far without several of their best players on the court. Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham were both injured, Aliyah Boston fouled out before overtime, and Kelsey Mitchell suffered a leg injury down the stretch that forced her out.
However, not every Fever player who's competing in Unrivaled was active during that playoff game. Guard Aari McDonald was among those sidelined, as she suffered a broken foot during a game in early August and needed season-ending surgery.
Aari McDonald shares message ahead of first game in months
McDonald is playing for Unrivaled's Breeze BC team. And ahead of her team's opening game against Phantom BC on January 5, McDonald sent a heartwarming message over social media.
"Today is my first time playing in almost 5 months 🥹," McDonald wrote, which has nearly 57,000 views on X in just a few hours. And the Fever showed McDonald love ahead of her return by replying to her X post and writing, "go Aari! 💪".
go Aari! 💪 https://t.co/96CjkPUBB9
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) January 5, 2026
There have actually been exactly 151 days since McDonald went down with her injury, as it happened during the Fever's August 7 game against the Phoenix Mercury. That was a brutal stretch for the Fever, as Sydney Colson tore her ACL during the same game, Sophie Cunningham suffered a season-ending knee injury on August 17, and Caitlin Clark was still on the sidelines (and would remain there) after re-injuring her groin on July 15.
In fact, Clark suffered a sprained ankle while warming up on the court before that fateful August 7 game, which set her return timeline back enough to force her out for the rest of the 2025 WNBA season. That was not a good day for the team.
But that's all in the past. For now, Fever fans are just eager to see how McDonald and the other Indiana players look in Unrivaled this winter.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the Indiana Fever and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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