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Congratulations, y’all, we finally made it: we’re officially on the eve of the 30th season of the WNBA.
For a while there, I wasn’t sure this day would come, at least not this soon. The negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement stretched on for months and months. Progress seemed stymied by a war of the words between the league and the players’ union. Both sides seemed so far apart on the most foundational issues (revenue share, housing, etc.) that I began to worry that the WNBA might not see its 30th season. But thanks to several all-nighters in a New York hotel conference room, the league and the players were able to come to an agreement.
Now, we get to witness the fruits of all that labor: young talent taking advantage of newly conceived roster development slots and franchises being compelled to invest in facilities and personnel to provide for the health and wellness of players. The salaries — which now max out at $1.4M — aren’t sufficient but it’s a meaningful step towards a true partnership between the league and its players. It’s a new day in the WNBA and I, for one, am grateful.
The weeks that followed the finalizing of a new CBA have been hectic: there were two expansion teams’ rosters to fill, a college draft to host, and an abbreviated free agency period that would include nearly all of the league’s veteran players. In short, a lot has happened in a very short amount of time. To help you prepare for the new season, I’ve done all the homework on the league’s 15 (!!) teams (no wild predictions this time, though…I learned my lesson).
Today, we start with a look at the teams contending in the Eastern conference.
Atlanta Dream
2025 Season: 30-14; Lost in the first round of the playoffs
Who All’s Gay Here: Jordin Canada
Once the Players’ Association secured support for the new CBA, things within the WNBA shifted quickly: the league’s newest franchises needed to set their preliminary rosters through the expansion draft, then free agency opened and nearly 80% of the league’s veterans competed for million dollar paydays, and, finally, the best collegiate and international players were drafted into the best women’s league in the world. And yet, despite the sheer number of transactions that took place during the abbreviated free agency period, perhaps none was bigger than the trade that sent Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream.
Last season, it seemed like the Atlanta Dream skated under the radar. The team had talent, of course — led by Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray — but they didn’t have the star power to compete with Las Vegas, Indiana, or New York for the headlines. Even as Gray put up numbers that had her in early MVP conversations, the WNBA fanbase wasn’t really checking for Atlanta like that. Now, though? Every team has circled their game against Atlanta on their calendar and front offices are pondering whether to move those games to bigger venues. There’s no more sneaking in under the radar for the Atlanta Dream; every team in the league is going to see them coming.
I love this move for Reese and for Atlanta. Reese had already built relationships with Gray and Howard (thank you Tamper Bay!) so she comes to Atlanta with a support system and sisterhood that never really existed for her in Chicago (Teresa Weatherspoon notwithstanding). Head Coach Karl Smesko has already shown more excitement and interest in Reese’s development than we saw in Chicago last season…and I know Reese is going to soak those lessons up like a sponge. Obviously, she gives Atlanta a tenacious scorer and rebounder, capable of putting up a double-double every night.
That said, I do wonder what the Dream’s post rotation looks like with Reese in the mix, particularly after the team saw so much success with Brionna Jones and Naz Hillmon last season. With Jones on the shelf for the start of the season due to injury, there’s more of an opportunity to slot Reese in, but what happens when she returns? Also, I loved what I saw from Madina Okot in the pre-season and hope that she’ll get an opportunity to be part of Atlanta’s post rotation.
From my perspective, though, Atlanta’s success this season will hinge on Jordin Canada. If she’s ready to make that jump to an elite play-making point guard, capable of making those pivotal last second decisions, I think she transforms the Dream into a championship contender.
Chicago Sky
2025 Season: 10-34
Who All’s Gay Here: DiJonai Carrington, Natasha Cloud, Courtney Vandersloot
Last season, Angel Reese insisted that the Chicago Sky needed to change. She said, “I’m not settling for the same s−−− we did this year…it’s going to be very, very important this offseason to make sure we attract the best of the best because we can’t settle for what we have this year.” For that — for the sin of telling the truth about the organization that she played for — Angel Reese was rebuked by her team’s leadership and suspended for “statements detrimental to the team.”
And yet, during the WNBA’s abbreviated free agency period, all the Chicago Sky has done is prove that Angel Reese was right.
Reese was worried about the Sky relying on a 37 year old point guard coming off an ACL injury and pushed the team to get more help at the PG slot. The Sky did that: they now have Skylar Diggins and Natasha Cloud to helm their offense. Finally, the Sky have guards that can actually throw a post-entry pass. Reese said that the Sky needed to recruit “the best of the best” and the Sky have done that, bring in former Sparks teammates Azurá Stevens and Rickea Jackson. Stevens’ development as a stretch big in Los Angeles and Unrivaled made her — to me, at least — one of the most coveted players in free agency. Getting Jackson for an underperforming Ariel Atkins was a coup. She is one of the best young players in the league and was widely underutilized in Los Angeles. I also love the addition of Gabriela Jaquez to this roster, I think she has the potential to be Sonia Citron-esque.
So, let’s recap: first, Angel Reese was right and, second, the Chicago Sky are without question a better team coming into the 2026 season than they were last year. BUT — you had to see that coming — this is the Chicago Sky and until the franchise gives me reason to have faith in this team, this coaching staff, and this organization, I remain agnostic with respect to the Sky. That’s not a reflection on these players, it’s decades of the Chicago Sky being the most mismanaged team in the league — the team owner is being sued for this very thing right now! — that leave me gun-shy about believing in this franchise.
The improvements to the Sky’s roster haven’t restored my faith in Tyler Marsh. I still wonder if he can be the coach that this team needs. I haven’t liked anything I’ve heard from Courtney Vandersloot in this offseason and I worry about how her relationship with Sky General Manager Jeff Pagliocca might hamstring Marsh. Chicago has foregone rebuild and gone all-in on winning now, mortgaging their future in the process, and I’m just not convinced that they have to leadership in place to lead this team to playoff contention.
Connecticut Sun
2025 Season: 11-33
Who All’s Gay Here: Brittney Griner, Saniya Rivers
It’s the Sunset Season for the Connecticut Sun. After 23 years in Uncasville, the team will move South and rebrand as one of the most storied franchises in women’s basketball: the Houston Comets.
While I welcome the return of the WNBA’s original dynasty, nothing about this move sits right with me, most notably that the Mohegan Tribe was forced to pass up a more lucrative offer to buy the team — and keep it in Connecticut — due to the machinations of the MNBA owners. It is such a blatant example of tortious interference as one could possibly imagine but, of course, no one wants to fight the MNBA because they want to do business with the MNBA in the future. Connecticut’s senators have spoken out against the move and are pushing for an antitrust investigation but given who’s running the DOJ right now, I am not optimistic about its chances. Barring litigation from the state’s Attorney General, it looks like the sun has truly set on this franchise.
As I start to resign myself to the future, I do begin to wonder how much of what we saw last year and what we’ll see this season in Connecticut will make that move to Houston. Though their record might not show it, the Sun were building something last year: thanks to the work of Jennifer Rizzotti and Morgan Tuck, Sun head coach Rachid Meziane had a young team of dawgs who really bought into the system. Were the Sun going to win? Probably not, but they were going to make their opponents earn that victory. I saw the vision and hoped that the Sun would continue to build upon it. But last week, news (rumors?) circulated that Meziane would take over as head coach of Euroleague powerhouse, Galatasaray S.K.. If Meziane’s gone, is the writing on the wall for Rizzotti and Tuck? Will Houston look to clean house entirely…and if so, what’s that mean for this current roster?
If this is it for this franchise and for this team, I hope that the new roster is as young, scrappy, and hungry as last year’s club. Leïla Lacan was a standout on last year’s squad and I’m anxious to see what she can do with a year of experience under her belt. Lacan will be an asset in helping Nell Angloma, the latest talented French prospect to join the WNBA, adjust to the league. With Marina Mabrey gone, I’m interested to see who they partner Lacan with in the backcourt. Saniya Rivers feels like the most obvious answer but I haven’t been impressed by her offensive efficiency in the Sun’s two pre-season games (her defense, though…always top tier). I’ve always been high on Diamond Miller‘s potential — she can slot in at the 2 or 3 — and I hope she’s found a space in Connecticut where she can truly show what she’s capable of.
I loved the development we saw last season from Aneesa Morrow, Olivia Nelson-Ododa, and Aaliyah Edwards and look forward to seeing them grow this season. Pairing that young front court rotation with a savvy veteran like Tina Charles last season paid dividends and hopefully that’ll happen again with Brittney Griner on the roster. In the Sun’s pre-season game vs. the Liberty, Griner reminded me a bit of Marta of the NWSL’s Orlando Pride in 2024: a seasoned veteran reinvigorated by the youth around them. BG looks great and, if TikToks are to be believed, she’s having the time of her life in that Sun locker room…no one deserves it more.
Indiana Fever
2025 Season: 24-20, Lost in the WNBA Semi-Finals
Who All’s Gay Here: Tyasha Harris
Last season was a true test for the Indiana Fever. Injuries decimated the Fever roster: it seemed like one player would go down, then another would step up, and then someone else would go down. And yet, somehow, the team preserved. They won the Commissioner’s Cup and advanced to the WNBA semifinals, pushing the eventual champions to the absolute brink. It’s hard to know whether the Fever lost that series to the Aces because Las Vegas was the better team or if the Fever simply lost a war of attrition.
Conventional wisdom seems to be that the return of Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham to a team that advanced to the semifinals last season cements the team’s success. However, here’s the thing: this is not the same team that lost to the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA semifinals. Of the nine players that got minutes in that decisive Game 5, only four remain on the Fever roster. Admittedly, the big pieces remain — Kelsey Mitchell, Aliyah Boston, and Lexie Hull most notably — but the bulk of that lineup, which absolutely refused to quit or give up, isn’t there anymore. This year’s roster has a new vibe and a new feel and it’s going to take a minute for everyone to adjust to the Fever’s new identity.
In the Fever’s pre-season games, Boston has looked good. Unrivaled has paid dividends for Boston and she continues to show up for the Fever in fighting form. Based on Indiana’s pre-season games, I am a bit worried about the spacing in the post between Boston and newcomer Monique Billings; hopefully that gets figured out with more reps. I’m excited to see Clark back on the floor for the Fever. She’s shown little rust in Indiana’s two pre-season games and looks primed for an offensive explosion this season.
There’s a lot of consternation among the Clark fanbase about Stephanie White’s suggestion that CC play more off ball this season. It’s been bizarre to watch alleged fans of Clark’s pushback on an idea that would help extend the former Iowa guard’s playing career and create new scoring opportunities. They seem so married to this image of CC as a player who shoots from distance and tosses quick no-look passes that they can’t allow her game to evolve beyond that. I feel bad for those fans and for Clark that they’re putting a ceiling on her greatness.
I am not as enthused by the additions of Myisha Hines-Allen and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, primarily because I’d rather seen the Fever invest in stronger perimeter defense. It remains Clark and Kelsey Mitchell‘s greatest deficiency and is a liability against some of the top teams in the league with strong backcourt tandems (Las Vegas, Dallas, Atlanta, etc,). Raven Johnson fills that void to a degree — and I’ve loved her play thus far — but I think the Fever would’ve been better served with a Betnijah Laney-esque addition to their roster.
New York Liberty
2025 Season: 27-17, Lost in the First Round
Who All’s Gay Here: Breanna Stewart, Marine Johannès, Jonquel Jones, Leonie Fiebich (currently suspended due to overseas commitments, will rejoin later in the season)
Just a year removed from winning a WNBA championship, the New York Liberty parted ways with head coach Sandy Brondello at the end of last season. It’s hard to know who to fault for the Liberty’s disappointing 2025 season — a season began with so much promise — but, despite full-throated support from Breanna Stewart following the Liberty’s playoff exit, Brondello took the fall for a disappointing season. The move, the Liberty Front Office contended, was a proactive step.
‘These decisions mark fork-in-the-road moments for organizations,” Liberty General Manager Kolb said. “You can stand still or you can embrace change and move forward, and my commitment is to keep pushing the New York Liberty to new heights.”
Kolb replaced the Liberty’s Hall of Fame Coach with Chris DeMarco, a longtime assistant coach with the MNBA’s Golden State Warriors. His only head coaching experience is a short-stint with the Bahamas men’s national basketball team and he’s never coached women before. It was a challenge to get a sense of what DeMarco’s coaching philosophy might be, based on the Liberty’s pre-season games, but I worry about this burgeoning trend. It feels like the experience of longtime MNBA assistants is valued more than the experience of longtime WNBA assistants…and that’s troubling, particularly when you consider the gender dynamics of those roles.
That said, there might be enough talent on this Liberty squad to paper over whatever deficiencies DeMarco has. New York retained their big three — Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Breanna Stewart — at a steep discount and return some key reserves. Most notably, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton returns after missing last season due to injury and her tenacity (and perimeter defense) are going to be crucial for this Liberty squad who sometimes lose sight of their goals.
While it’s easy to scapegoat Brondello for last season’s woes, the Liberty’s real problem was recurring injuries, particularly among their Big Three. It never felt like Stewie, Sab, and JJ were all healthy and locked in at the same time last season. The addition of Satou Sabally gives the Liberty an insurance policy: her versatility — they call her the Unicorn for a reason — makes it easy for her to slot in for whomever might be missing in that lineup. With an ankle sprain set to keep Ionescu out for at least two weeks, Sabally can easily step up, handle the ball, and provide another scoring threat from the perimeter.
On paper, the Liberty look like the team to beat in the East but they looked like the team to beat last year when they added Emma Meesseman and we know how that turned out. A return to the Liberty’s former glory hinges on a healthy core succeeding with an untested coach…I’m trying not to get my hopes up.
Toronto Tempo
2025 Season: N/A
Who All’s Gay Here: Isabelle Harrison, Marina Mabrey, Brittney Sykes, Julie Allemand
When Sandy Brondello became the head coach of the Phoenix Mercury in 2014, she inherited one of the most talented starting lineups in WNBA history: Diana Taurasi, Penny Taylor, Candice Dupree, DeWanna Bonner, and relative newcomer, Brittney Griner. The Mercury had had successful seasons — after winning the title in 2009, they were fixtures in the Conference Finals — but needed new leadership to recapture their former glory. Brondello succeeded immediately, leading the Mercury to the best season in the history of the franchise and winning the 2014 WNBA Championship.
In 2022, Brondello would head to New York to become the head coach of the Liberty. Success in her first year was modest — just a four win improvement over the previous season — but it was enough to convince the franchise to invest in bringing the league’s best talent to New York. The next season, Brondello added a couple WNBA champions and MVPs to the roster and a superteam was born. In their first season together, the new rotation advanced to the WNBA Finals and by their second, they won the whole damn thing.
It’s worth remembering Brondello’s history because, ultimately, it presents the biggest question facing the Tempo ahead of their inaugural season: what kind of coach is Sandy Brondello really? This is a very different situation than what she’s seen in her head coaching career thus far. There are no future Hall of Famers on this roster and only Nyara Sabally and Aaliyah Nye have any championship experience. Who is Brondello without the WNBA’s version of the Monstars to back her up?
That said, Brondello’s has some interesting pieces to work with in Toronto. Julie Allemand is a savvy, experienced floor general who I thought was the lynchpin to the Sparks’ run late last season. Her presence gives Brittney Sykes and Marina Mabrey more time and space to operate and I think they’ll drive the Toronto offense. I loved seeing Mabrey’s contributions both as an offensive threat — her performance in Philly was bananas — and as a facilitator for her teammates during Unrivaled. If she can work the pick n’ roll with Sabally or Temi Fagbenle like she did with Aaliyah Edwards at Unrivaled, something special could be brewing in Toronto.
I hope Toronto can, like Golden State, give undervalued players the opportunity to shine in new roles. Izzy Harrison only averaged 11 minutes last season for the Liberty, but her stint in Dallas showed that she was capable much more…I hope to see her get back to that. I want to see Sabally step out and thrive on this stage…she’s always been capable of that…but can she (and Mabrey, to a lesser degree) stay healthy and live up to her immense potential?
Washington Mystics
2025 Season: 16-28
Who All’s Gay Here: Lauren Betts, Rori Harmon, Ally Wilson
Heading into the 2025 season, the Washington Mystics were fully in rebuilding mode. They shipped the lone remaining player from their championship run, Ariel Atkins, to Chicago and collected first round picks like they were infinity stones. For their efforts, the Mystics secured the best draft class in the history of the franchise — Georgia Amoore, Kiki Iriafen, and Sonia Citron — and everything seemed to work…perhaps a little too well. Iriafen and Citron adapted to the pro game and thrived, far faster than anyone could have imagined, earning them both All-Star nods in their rookie season. The team struggled, particularly following the Brittney Sykes trade to Seattle, but the vision was clear.
And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.
On the day that free agency opened in the WNBA — the most consequential free agency in the history of the league — and a week before the draft, the Mystics fired their general manager, Jamila Wideman. A few months after giving his complete support to Wideman, Mystics team president, Michael Winger, ousted her from her role. According to Alexa Philippou’s reporting, Wideman and Winger had what sources called “serious strategic differences”.
Now, do I know for certain what that means? Absolutely not. Am I inclined to side with the team president who has overseen the MNBA’s Washington Wizards continued slide into mediocrity over the queer black woman who “had one of the greatest rookie years as a GM in the history of men’s or women’s sports?” Also, no…and, frankly, nothing that’s happened with the Mystics since Wideman’s departure has inspired a lot of confidence.
To be clear, the Mystics have some great pieces. Their investment in Shakira Austin shows that they’re interested in making that young core — Austin, Citron, and Iriafen — into the Mystics’ “big three.” I’m excited to see what Amoore can do, coming off her ACL injury, and whether or not she’s the Mystics’ point guard of the future. Unrivaled showed us how much Austin thrives with a legit PG so if the Mystics want to maximize Austin’s potential, they’ll need to find good fit for that position.
I love what we saw from Lauren Betts during the pre-season but, as was the case last season with Aaliyah Edwards, I worry about how the Mystics post rotation. I thought Johnson stifled Edwards’ development and I’m worried the same thing will happen to Betts. While the Mystics got great pieces in Cotie McMahon, Angela Dugalić, etc., I’m not entirely convinced that those pieces fit together and/or work with the foundational piece Washington already has. Plus, I think this team desperately needed some outside shooters — they averaged the fewest threes of any team in the WNBA last season — and I’m not sure they addressed that need during the draft or free agency.
What are your thoughts on the seven teams in the Eastern Conference? Which team are you most excited to see? Who do you think will represent the Eastern Conference in the Commissioner’s Cup?
