Around the W: Early Season Thoughts

5 things that have stood out to me the most to begin the WNBA season.

After a few games, here are the main takeaways I have from the start of the WNBA season.

Early Season Parity

The 2026 WNBA season hasn’t even been going for two full weeks yet, and one trend has stood out to me immediately. At least to start the season, we have had excellent parity throughout the league. Not a single team out of the 15 franchises managed to go more than two games without suffering a loss. Not one team made it to 3-0. Compare that to last season, when the Minnesota Lynx started the year 9-0 and didn’t suffer their first loss until June 11th at Seattle (94-84). The New York Liberty also went 9-0 a year ago to begin their season, and didn’t take their first L until June 14th at Indiana (102-88).

The Atlanta Dream (2-1) were the last remaining unbeaten team in the WNBA this year, and they lost their first game on May 17th against the Las Vegas Aces (85-84).

I’m not sure what’s more surprising to begin this season, the fact that no team got to 3-0, or the fact that both expansion franchises - the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire - have already won two games each. Also, 14 out of the 15 WNBA teams have already recorded at least one win. The last remaining winless team is the Connecticut Sun, who have started the year out 0-5. They will have a good chance to end their winless streak this week as they face the Seattle Storm (1-3) on Wednesday and again on Friday. Seattle will be without its leading scorer, Dominique Malonga, as she suffered a concussion on May 13th against the Toronto Tempo.

Right now, 12 out of the league’s 15 teams have a record of .500 or better. That’s a great thing for the WNBA. Parity and competition are often what make the NFL such a popular sport. It’s a positive sign when most fans can attend a game and believe their team has a legitimate shot at winning.

Over the next month, I don’t expect the WNBA to remain this balanced. The better teams will start to separate themselves, and we will start to get a clearer picture of the true contenders versus the pretenders. Health will also play a major factor. The Storm have been marred by injuries to start their season. The Chicago Sky have been one of the league’s biggest surprises through four games, but Rickea Jackson sadly suffered a torn ACL against Minnesota. Speaking of the Lynx, Napheesa Collier remains out after having double ankle surgery in the offseason. The team with the best record in the WNBA last season needs to stay afloat until she returns. Their overall success will likely come down to whether Phee misses just a month of the season or multiple months.

As the league continues to expand, it’s great to see the competition throughout the WNBA. The WNBA has always been a good product, but with the additional media exposure and TV time this year, the league has an opportunity to bring even more fans to the game. Especially, when we’re getting excellent battles like the Wings’ 107-104 victory over the Indiana Fever, or the Aces desperately hanging on to beat Atlanta 85-84 despite a furious rally by the Dream.

Unstoppable Aces

Speaking of those Aces, I think the rest of the league could be in trouble. Las Vegas has already won three out of the last four WNBA Championships (2022, 2023, 2025). They still have the best player in the league, four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson. They still have the heart of their championship core between Wilson, Chelsea Gray, and Jackie Young. They swapped Kelsey Plum for Jewell Loyd last year. And they’ve only gotten better.

Late last season, they made a trade before the deadline to acquire NaLyssa Smith, the former #2 overall pick of the 2022 WNBA Draft. That trade benefited A’ja Wilson significantly because opposing defenses could no longer double-team Wilson as much as they used to when Kiah Stokes was playing alongside A’ja in the front court. Smith is much more of a threat on the offensive end, which requires defensive attention. She’s also a solid rebounder. Once teams were limited to how much they could double and trap Wilson, she became unstoppable. She averaged 27 PPG in the playoffs, including a 38-point performance against Seattle, a 35-point performance against Indiana, and a 34-point performance in the WNBA Finals against the Phoenix Mercury.

Las Vegas re-signed Smith, and now she’ll play a full season with the Aces instead of arriving late for the stretch run, a year ago. Smith’s stats are up a little this year, and it’s not unreasonable to think they will continue to improve. But Smith isn’t the only player ready to contribute more for the Aces. Last season, they signed former All-Star Cheyenne Parker-Tyus, but her play was limited as she was going through her pregnancy. This season, she is ready to help Las Vegas from the get-go. She will provide more front-court depth for the Aces to help spell Wilson and Smith.

They improved their depth even further by adding veterans Stephanie Talbot and Brianna Turner. Turner is another post player who is a strong defender and more of a direct replacement for Kiah Stokes. Talbot is the traditional 3 and D wing. She’s an above-average defender and helps space the floor for the Aces’ best players to create on the offensive side of the ball. This doesn’t even include Dana Evans and rookie Janiah Barker, both of whom have been out with injuries.

I haven’t even gotten to the Aces’ latest trump card. They brought in the extremely talented scorer Chennedy Carter. Carter’s on-court talent has never been questioned. It’s always been things either inside the locker rooms or off the court that have stirred up trouble for her in the past. She is now playing with a veteran-laden team with the best player in the world, with one of the best coaches in the world. The early returns have been very positive.

Carter is averaging 19.4 PPG, 2.8 RPG, 2.0 APG, and 1.6 SPG off the bench. If she keeps this up, she’ll almost certainly win the 6th Player of the Year award. The damage she does off the bench for Las Vegas is terrifying for other teams. After the opposing team has to deal with A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray doing everything they do, there is no let-up for the reserves as Carter comes in and provides an immediate punch on the offensive end. There is no major dip in the Aces’ production.

With Las Vegas, their only real “weakness” in recent seasons has been their lack of bench production. And that hasn’t stopped them from winning multiple WNBA titles because the top end of their roster is so talented. Now they have the deepest roster this championship core has ever had, making the 2026 Las Vegas Aces the most dangerous team in the league.

They aren’t infallible. They lost by 33 points on opening night to the Phoenix Mercury. But we’ve seen that story before, and it didn’t matter. A year ago, they lost to the Minnesota Lynx by 53 points midway through the season. Then proceeded to win 16 games in a row to finish as the #2 overall seed. Then they went 9-3 in the playoffs to win their third championship.

I think the New York Liberty can challenge them. I think a fully healthy Atlanta Dream can give them a challenge. And maybe even the Indiana Fever if Aliyah Boston gets healthy. But outside of a major injury to A’ja Wilson, I have a hard time seeing any other WNBA team beat the Aces in a playoff series.

SoCal So Many Problems

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Los Angeles Sparks (1-3). If the Aces look like the most impressive team to start the year, the LA Sparks have been the most disappointing. I thought the return of Nneka Ogwumike would be huge for them. Nneka hasn’t been bad, far from it. She’s averaging 16.5 PPG, 6.8 RPG, 2.0 APG, and 1.3 SPG to begin the year. Ogwumike is still her impressive, efficient self, shooting 59% FG from the floor. And yet, the team seems like a mess.

The Sparks had a horrible start to their season last year, but finished strong. They went 6-14 through their first 20 games, but then won 15 of their final 24 games to end the year. They missed the playoffs as the first team out (9th seed). Based on their improved play in the 2nd half, plus the addition of Ogwumike, I thought for sure Los Angeles would be a playoff team and projected them to finish 6th overall in the standings.

They proved a year ago that a bad start doesn’t have to carry throughout the entire season. But they need to right the ship sooner if they want to be a playoff team. They can’t wait 20 games into the season before they turn things around. What’s most concerning to me is that they’re tied with the Storm for the second-worst record in the league, and they’ve played all four of their games at home in Los Angeles. Unlike the Storm, this isn’t a young team that should grow, develop, and get significantly better as the season goes on. They should be good right now, and they aren’t.

Their problems from a year ago still exist. They ranked 10th (fourth-worst) in DEF Rating (RTG) a year ago at 108.5. That means they gave up nearly 109 points per 100 possessions. To start the 2026 season, LA ranks dead last with a DEF RTG of 121.3. In 2025, they ranked 6th in OFF RTG at 105.2. They rank 9th to begin this season at 107.7.

Overall NET Rating is generally a very strong indicator of how well a team performed in any given season. NET RTG is calculated by taking OFF RTG - DEF RTG. If you go back 10-15 years, usually the WNBA team that finished 1st or 2nd in NET RTG goes on to win the championship (almost) every year. The Sparks finished last season with a NET RTG of -3.3 (negative). That made them 9th overall out of 13 teams. That’s exactly where they finished in the WNBA standings (9th). To start this year, the Sparks rank 14th at -13.6. Only the 0-5 Connecticut Sun have a worse NET RTG at -18.5.

Obviously, it’s still very early. A four-game sample for a 44-game season is a very small sample size. But it’s not great for the Sparks to be in this position.

To make matters worse for LA, they are currently built to win now. Like right now! This is not a roster that is building for the future. Their main additions this offseason were Nneka Ogwumike (35 years old), Erica Wheeler (35), and Ariel Atkins (29). They traded away the #2 overall pick from the 2025 draft because they wanted to win-now with Kelsey Plum instead of building around Dominique Malonga (or Kiki Iriafen or Sonia Citron). They traded away the #3 overall pick in the 2026 draft, which became Awa Fam, as part of the deal where they acquired the #4 overall pick from Seattle in the 2024 draft. They turned that selection into Rickea Jackson, but instead of building around Jackson, they traded her away to Chicago this offseason for Atkins in an attempt to win now.

With the moves they’ve made to be competitive right now, they should be expected to reach the second round of the playoffs. If they miss the playoffs outright or even fall short in the first round, this will be considered a catastrophic failure.

Overseas Scouting is a Big Advantage

One thing that’s been made abundantly clear to me in the early going is that International scouting is going to make a big difference for WNBA teams moving forward.

Last season, I wrote that the next major investment the Storm’s ownership group should make is to expand their scouting department. The article talked about how the New York Liberty and the Phoenix Mercury were putting a heavy emphasis on building out their scouting departments and investing more in International scouting. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two of the best rookies to begin the year are Pauline Astier for the Liberty and Jovana Nogić for the Mercury. Astier leads all rookies in scoring, averaging 16.8 PPG, and Nogić is right behind her at 16.0 PPG. What makes the Liberty and Mercury more impressive is that they landed these players without having strong draft capital. It’s one thing to be the Storm and take top International prospects Dominique Malonga and Awa Fam, each with Top 3 draft selections. It’s an entirely different thing to bring on impactful rookies that are averaging more than 15 PPG with overseas players that went completely undrafted.

Jovana Nogić is a “rookie” more as a technicality because she’s 28 and has been playing in Europe. She is more similar to how Sami Whitcomb was a rookie with the Seattle Storm in 2017, despite being 28 years old. However, Pauline Astier is still just 24 years old, one year older than the 2026 #1 overall pick, Azzi Fudd.

The work that the Liberty and Mercury’s front offices have done is highly impressive. They’ve managed to add two of the best rookies in the league this season, despite neither of them having a first-round pick. In fact, the Mercury had just two selections - 27th and 42nd overall. The Liberty had only a third-round pick, 41st overall. This shows the type of impact scouting can have on WNBA teams.

As the league continues to grow, and with players from all over the world having more incentive to play in the WNBA now with higher salaries, there will be a lot more options for General Managers to sift through. The teams that will find the most long-term success are the ones whose owners are investing heavily into the scouting departments here in the USA and abroad.

R-E-L-A-X

There was a whole lot of negative talk surrounding #1 overall pick Azzi Fudd after she had played just one game in the WNBA. In Fudd’s debut, she finished with 3 points in 18 minutes off the bench and only took two shots. That first game between the Dallas Wings and Indiana Fever featured the last four #1 overall picks with Fudd (2026), Paige Bueckers (2025), Caitlin Clark (2024), and Aliyah Boston (2023). The other three all scored 20+ points in their season debuts. Social media accounts took cheap shots at Fudd. Some radio shows did the same.

Things got worse when it was announced that Fudd would miss the Wings’ next game with a knee issue. Fudd suffered multiple knee injuries during her five years at UConn. That was a legitimate concern for her coming out of college, but in her final two seasons at UConn, she was healthy. She played and started in all 39 games during the 2025-26 season.

The negativity didn’t only fall on Fudd. There was also the subset of Azzi fans who were vocally upset by the fact that Fudd wasn’t starting for Dallas. Actually, it wasn’t just the fans. Even Chiney Ogwumike was complaining about that on ESPN. Fudd became the first #1 overall draft pick to not start since Kelsey Plum back in 2017. That side was frustrated with Wings Head Coach Jose Fernandez for how he was handling the rookie.

Since then, Azzi returned to game action but remains a bench player for now. Over the next two games, Fudd already looked much more comfortable on the court. In her second game, she finished with eight points on 57% (4-7 FG) shooting. In her third game, Fudd scored 12 points on 67% (6-9 FG) shooting. There were legitimate basketball reasons why Azzi Fudd wasn’t the clear-cut consensus #1 overall pick. But she was always going to be one of the top prospects, and for good reason.

She may not win rookie of the year. She might not even start the majority of the games during her rookie season. But that’s OK. Azzi will have games where she struggles, and she’ll have more games like her last one, where she scores in double figures and helps the Dallas Wings earn a victory. People don’t need to call her a bust after one bad game. People don’t need to call for the firing of the Wings’ head coach because he’s bringing Fudd off the bench. Everyone out there, take a deep breath and RELAX.

Notes:
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Photography Credits: Seattle Storm/WNBA Photography
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