The WNBA face has retired for twenty years. A new collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players’ union, a league that may bring higher salaries, is in talks. While the WNBA finals in four of the past five years featured the Las Vegas ACE or the New York Liberal Party, there is no guarantee that their mastery of the league will continue.
By this transitional moment, the new WNBA season begins, which starts on Friday and is not short of interesting players. NBC News collapsed.
Clark won Rookie of the Year and led Indiana into the playoffs, so she determined she could guide the big offense. Now, Clark's offensive burden in his second season isn't as heavy as Clark's offense, while Dewanna Bonner, Sophie Cunningham and Natasha Howard added offense in the offseason, one of the league's absolutely best offenses in the first half. Clark keeps mastering the ball and has to break down the best way to get teammates involved while still playing her trademark aggressiveness.
The seventh-year guard has scored the top 10 MVP votes in every season of her career, but averaged less than 18 points per game. Still, sometimes as an inefficient scorer, these 39% of shooters are still the best choice to create their own shots in dribble.
Her challenge this season is to build chemistry with a new campaign partner after the offseason, where Dallas traded Satou Sabally and drafted the first game for former Connecticut guard Paige Bueckers. Theoretically, the backcourt of Ogunbowale and Bueckers is dangerous. How does it work in practice?
Reese established the league-leading rebounder last season (13.1 per game), and her star appeal in college can continue to the WNBA. For her reenactment, can Reese diversify the offensive threats she poses? Thanks to her offensive rebounding skills to a certain extent, Reese's total shots fell within 3 feet of the rim last season. (Only four players who played for at least 100 minutes had higher shots.) However, Rees also ranked the worst in the league in 49% accuracy at the edge, and was quite accurate with the basket.
Phoenix Mercury will start a season for the first time since 2003 without retired Taurasi and Brittney Griner, who signed with Atlanta. How to replace two licensed devices? Have a splash trade for the offseason and hope it pays off. Phoenix and Connecticut’s former All-Stars Sabally and Alyssa Thomas were brought in to join Kahleah Copper for the star trio.
When Sabally missed 25 games and was healthy last season, she joined Caitlin Clark as the only other player in the league, averaging at least 15.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists. Mercury hopes she can stay productive when playing next to Thomas, six members of the league’s all-defensive team, while also taking the top five with MVP votes over the past three years.
The WNBA champion returns stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu, the franchise pillars that support the team's repeated championships. But don't ignore Johannes' re-signation, a 39% career 3-point shooter who can allow opponents to defend their freedom by spreading the floor.
Johannes joined the freelance event in 2019 and played for the club in 2022 and 2023, but she did not compete in the WNBA when she focused on preparing for the Olympics last season, where she helped France win silver medals. Now, she is back to make freedom better.
Atlanta is underway for an experiment where Dreams hired a long-time college coach to implement an action offensive that emphasizes creating space movements. Interestingly, the 6-foot-9 Griner tried only 44 3-pointers throughout her career in that offense, and she said she was given a "green light" to shoot more threes. In the preseason, she started 3-3 from Deep - a small but noteworthy sample size. If Griner, 34, was able to consistently make deep shots, it opened her brand new game later in her career and was possible for her team.
After nearly losing the WNBA final against Minnesota last year, Collier played in the unparalleled, co-founding the offseason league with Stewart of New York and averaging a league-high 25.7 points per game. This should set up last season's MVP runner-up and defensive player of the year Collier to get started this season quickly.