When the 2025 WNBA season tips off tonight, so much will be new: a new team, eight new head coaches, veterans in new places, and legions of new fans who saw the stupid fights we had online last year and thought, I need to be a part of that.
One ancient institution is strong enough to withstand these winds of change. No, not Diana Taurasi; she retired. I’m talking about the annual Defector WNBA season preview! The 13 teams are listed below in order from oldest to newest.
NEW YORK LIBERTY
Last season: 32-8, won the WNBA championship
The Liberty know from experience that life without Betnijah Laney-Hamilton isn’t easy. The All-Defensive 6-foot wing had minor surgery on her knee over the Olympic break last year and missed time when the season resumed, still a step slow when she returned for the playoffs. In her absence, rookie Leonie Fiebich emerged as a capable swing starter, one more tall and switchy forward on a roster whose greatest strength is its defensive versatility. But New York still missed Laney-Hamilton on the worst defensive play of their season: an Alanna Smith offensive rebound that Courtney Williams finished with a go-ahead four-point play in the final seconds of Game 1. Laney-Hamilton, hobbled, watched from the bench.
Top talent and depth—plus some … officiating luck—would still power the Liberty to a franchise-first WNBA championship. But the offseason chipped away at New York’s reserves again. The Valkyries nabbed Kayla Thornton in the expansion draft, Courtney Vandersloot went back to Chicago in free agency, and Laney-Hamilton injured her other knee while playing in the offseason Unrivaled league. She’s expected to miss the entire WNBA season. The Liberty’s offseason trade for veteran point guard Natasha Cloud helps, even if Cloud isn’t the scorer that Laney-Hamilton could be. Cloud lights up a room, can run an offense, and fits the scheme. Last year, on a kooky Mercury roster, she picked up some odd jobs on defense, like guarding A’ja Wilson. If opponents do make it past her crazy arms on the perimeter, they’ll find the crazier arms of Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones waiting for them in the paint.
LOS ANGELES SPARKS
Last season: 8-32
A few days after vet Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke challenged the Sparks’s “dud owners” to “step up or sell the team,” the Sparks parted ways with head coach Curt Miller, the first of a series of offseason moves that suggested ownership was at least starting to pay attention. (“I’m going to get more involved,” team owner Magic Johnson told Plaschke.) One of those moves was a blockbuster trade for Kelsey Plum, the small but efficient champion guard who’d played for the Aces franchise since before the team moved to Vegas. I tend to think the Sparks got the best player in the three-team deal, which sent Storm All-Star Jewell Loyd to the Aces, but it’s also true that Plum played her All-Star seasons in a pretty flattering environment there. As the new face of a rebuilding team looking to return to the postseason for the first time since 2020, she may be stretched thin.
Defense could be a challenge in the early going. Rickea Jackson impressed as a shotmaker in her rookie season, but she takes a lot of defensive possessions off. Neither she nor Plum will have the safety net of an elite defensive big at the start of the year: Cameron Brink suffered an ACL tear 15 games into her rookie season, and won’t play before June. Plum will also take on extra work as a distributor. On this roster, she’s the best option at point guard, a position she didn’t play much full-time after 2021, when the Aces signed Chelsea Gray.
This may all sound very low on Plum, but I’m not! In many ways, she is exactly what the Sparks offense has lacked for the last few years: a legit scorer who gets downhill and finishes with ease. After a couple of ugly, spacing-free years on offense, the Sparks have some new sources of hope: Plum, and first-year head coach Lynne Roberts, who joins the WNBA after spending her whole coaching career in college.
PHOENIX MERCURY
Last season: 19-21, lost to the Lynx in the first round
The Mercury were my League Pass team last year, an all-wing hodgepodge trying to figure things out with talented new head coach Nate Tibbetts, an elusive new star in Kahleah Copper, and absolutely no depth. What’s striking about them in 2025 is a pair of absences. Diana Taurasi, the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, retired after 20 seasons with the Mercury. After 11 seasons in Phoenix, Brittney Griner signed with the Atlanta Dream in free agency. But the new-look Mercury aren’t lacking in star power. They used league-wide disgruntlement to their advantage. Fed up with the player experience in Connecticut at a time when standards are rising across the league, MVP candidate Alyssa Thomas requested a trade from the Sun, where she had spent her entire 11-year career. The 6-foot-4 forward Satou Sabally requested a trade from Dallas and landed in Phoenix. At Unrivaled in February, I chatted with Sabally, who said she’d been using her time in Miami to get to know Thomas and especially Copper, whom Sabally didn’t know at all before this year. “Getting to know them personally, I think, is even more important than on the floor,” she told me. “I can really see this fit.”
The fit involves Thomas in a point-center role with Sabally and Copper as shooters around her. Those are basically the only people on the team. To assemble this “Big Three,” the Mercury flipped what little depth and few picks they had: Sophie Cunningham, Bec Allen, and Natasha Cloud are all gone. It’s hard to see Phoenix challenging the deeper Liberty or Lynx, even if they have the top-level talent to keep them in games.
LAS VEGAS ACES
Last season: 27-13, lost to the Liberty in the semifinals
The Aces rode chemistry and consistency to back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023, but the core four couldn’t get back there in 2024. Even before losing to the Liberty in four games in the semifinals, Vegas looked shakier than usual. Mortal. Chelsea Gray was slow to recover from the foot injury that kept her out to start the year; the night-to-night defensive effort was weaker; and the post-Olympic crash hit Jackie Young hard in the second half. It’s hard for a team to stay motivated when they’ve won for so long, and A’ja Wilson said this offseason that she’d felt the lack of focus early. “It wasn’t a championship locker room,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Callie Fin. “I mean, out of the gate, going into training camp, I was like, ‘We ain’t got it.’”
All parties in need of a shakeup, the Aces traded Kelsey Plum to the Sparks and replaced her with Seattle’s veteran shooting guard Jewell Loyd. Does the trade make the Aces better? Loyd can be an inconsistent shooter, and last year was one of her least efficient seasons, but she’s also best in small doses, when she can play second or third fiddle, as she did next to Breanna Stewart in their championship seasons in Seattle. Next to All-WNBAers Wilson, Young and Gray, she won’t have the weight of the team on her shoulders. Vegas is also hoping the move pays off on the defensive end; the Liberty picked on Plum in the playoffs, and Loyd has been an above-average defender in her career.
As it has for a few years, the question of depth looms over the Aces. Head coach Becky Hammon rides her starters hard in the regular season, and both teams in last year’s Finals showed the value of a deep rotation. The Aces’ core usually answers this question with their unrivaled conditioning, and they won’t have the Olympics to worry about this year. Still, the season is four games longer in 2025. Ideally they get some productive minutes from other places on the roster, maybe from backup big Liz Kitley. The 2024 draftee will debut in the league after tearing her ACL as a senior at Virginia Tech.
Further down the roster, the search for a new cult favorite is on: Kate Martin and Tip Hayes have headed west for the Valkyries; Syd Colson is now in Indianapolis backing up Caitlin Clark. Perhaps this is the year Aces fans finally come around to end-of-bench staple Kierstan Bell.
WASHINGTON MYSTICS
Last season: 14-26
Give up on your dreams of a hero’s return from Elena Delle Donne. She officially retired this April. In 2019, she shot 117 free throws and missed three. I bring that up because it is a wonderful stat and I want to tell everyone about it, but also because it’s funny now to remember that season’s Mystics, whose offense remains one of the best in league history. The team has ranked in the bottom half of the league by offensive rating every year since.
New head coach Sydney Johnson and new general manager Jamila Wideman end the Thibault dynasty. Johnson has focused on making the offense work faster. He’s described his strategy as “eight seconds or less,” and if Washington’s roster is not the most talented, it might be one of the more athletic. Crucially, this is true of the bigs: First-round pick Kiki Iriafen has experience running the floor at USC. Sophomore Aaliyah Edwards is out for at least two weeks with a back contusion, but she and her quickness were the talk of Unrivaled’s 1v1 tournament, where she shut out Breanna Stewart and then made it to the championship round against Napheesa Collier. “I was just kind of like, wow, she did her thing up there. And against guards, too,” Brittney Griner said in February, when we chatted about young players who’d impressed her. “D.C., use her more.”
Joining the speedy Jade Melbourne and Brittney Sykes in the backcourt is the No. 3 overall pick, Notre Dame’s Sonia Citron, a polished 3-and-D type who looked pretty comfortable in preseason games and should play a big role as a rookie on a team with a lot of playing time to give out. She will first need to peel herself off the ground.
DALLAS WINGS
Last season: 9-31
Make dumb decisions and you will eventually be rewarded. This is how I try to live my life, and it is the way to run a pro basketball team in Dallas.
Disastrous drafting and nonsensical roster construction earned the Wings top lottery odds and No. 1 overall pick Paige Bueckers. She plays with a cool polish; she is a historically efficient guard prospect, a smart off-ball player, and should be at least an average defender in the WNBA. Her passing vision makes her teammates’ lives easier, yes. But as a plug-and-play type who can tune herself to the frequency of any game, Bueckers will also make life easier for first-year head coach Chris Koclanes and first-year general manager Curt Miller. Put whoever you want around Bueckers. She’ll make it work.
That’s welcome news for Arike Ogunbowale, the other half of the “Parike” duo. She showed last season that she probably isn’t suited to being the primary option on a championship team, but if she’s been a source of some of Dallas’s offensive dysfunction, she’s certainly also been a victim of it. Bueckers can keep Ogunbowale off-ball more, where the All-Star scorer should thrive. The Wings shored up their defense by trading for Connecticut’s DiJonai Carrington, who joins her girlfriend, former Fever forward NaLyssa Smith. (Miller recently confessed that getting Smith was part of a plot hatched before the Sun blew up their roster: “We knew if we could get NaLyssa in a trade that we could get DiJonai through free agency, too.”) What’ll hold the Wings back, though, is the weakness of the frontcourt, a persistent problem for this team, and an increasingly obvious one in a league whose bigs are only getting quicker and more mobile.
MINNESOTA LYNX
Last season: 30-10, lost to the Liberty in the Finals when Cathy Engelbert and her New York City skyline dress called in a favor 👁️
If anyone from the league office read that, I am joking. Also, going forward, double-check Cathy’s clothes. As a heated post-Finals Cheryl Reeve made clear, the Lynx believe “this shit was stolen” from them. The core of a team that lost the controversial coin-flip 2024 Finals returns with a vengeance. Napheesa Collier told Taylor Rooks in an interview this offseason that she would never get over the loss. And to potential charges of being a sore loser, Collier responded, “I’m like, I am a sore loser. It sucks! I agree with you. I am very sore about losing.”
Because I am a dumb sportswriter who tries to draw narrative arcs through largely random events, the Lynx are my pick to win it all this year. But an unsentimental person might arrive at the same conclusion. On paper, the Lynx look almost exactly like they did in 2024; by minutes, their top six rotation players are all returning. Running it back isn’t a terrible strategy for a team whose elegant blend of ball movement and off-ball movement was near-impossible to stop. You could even make the case that the three other teams in last year’s semifinals all got worse. The Lynx will have to adjust as the league plays them tougher this season, but I wouldn’t bet against Reeve and Collier on a mission.
CONNECTICUT SUN
Last season: 28-12, lost to the Lynx in the semifinals
After many seasons of false alarms and wolves cried, the Sun can probably be declared dead.
I’m leaving some extra space under that sentence so the Sun’s social media team can more easily screenshot it and add it to their Finals Game 4 hype video. But really, they are dead and everyone is gone. Alyssa Thomas? Gone! Phoenix! Ty Harris went with her! DeWanna Bonner? Gone! Indy! Head coach Stephanie White went with her! Brionna Jones? DiJonai Carrington? Gone! Gone! Marina Mabrey? G—oh, no, she’s still here. Her trade request was not successful.
Here just in time for a serious rebuild is new head coach Rachid Meziane, who will coach in the league for the first time after years of coaching in Europe. The Sun seemed to value picks over players as they went about their offseason dealing, flipping Alyssa Thomas trade returns Natasha Cloud and Bec Allen to New York and Chicago. But they did acquire Jacy Sheldon in the Carrington trade. She’s an intriguing two-way guard who really shined as her rookie season went on. Veteran free-agent pickup Tina Charles should help Meziane steady the team; the rest of the roster skews young and unproven.
In other news, the whole team might be gone soon. The children of southeastern Connecticut will finally be able to have their birthday parties in peace. Sportico reported earlier this week that Mohegan Sun is exploring a sale of the team. The Sun have always drawn pretty well, and they play in a women’s basketball hotspot, but the Sportico report called relocation “likely,” and one imagines there are plenty of interested buyers, perhaps those rebuffed in the expansion process and hungry for another way in.
INDIANA FEVER
Last season: 20-20, lost to the Sun in the first round
Did you hear? Caitlin Clark is jacked this year! A suite of single-arm exercises and isometric training has her in the best shape of her life. With her huge new biceps, she might have an easier time carrying the team she’s turned into the WNBA’s best show. Last year, Clark brought out shooting guard Kelsey Mitchell’s inner superstar. And it took some time, but center Aliyah Boston found her footing as a short-roll playmaker—by the end of the season, she was making the smart, quick decisions she needs to for Indiana’s offense to succeed.
While Clark got to work in the weight room, the Fever’s front office got to work building a team that might be easier for their franchise face to carry. Relative to consensus, I think I am lower on these free-agent additions. Natasha Howard won Defensive Player of the Year in 2019, but 2019 was a long time ago for the 33-year-old forward; it was also the last year she made an All-Defensive team, and she’s slowed a bit since. Syd Colson provides some defense and energy off the bench, but she’s probably overextended in her role as a primary backup point guard. Clark may not get many breathers.
But the other additions—3-and-D player Sophie Cunningham and long-limbed wing DeWanna Bonner—might allow for some more minutes with Clark as a decoy, giving her some rest even while she’s on the floor. Clark finished fourth in MVP voting and made first-team All-WNBA in 2024, but her actual numbers still leave her with scary room to improve: Without an offseason last year, she shot 34 percent from three and 41 percent from the field. Her other task in 2025 is to keep refining her off-ball game, which will make the Fever trickier to stop in a series. It’ll also help keep her fresh for what Indiana hopes will be a deep playoff run. At Fever media day, Clark was clear about her team’s goal for the season: “A championship.”
SEATTLE STORM
Last season: 25-15, lost to the Aces in the first round
The Storm couldn’t hit outside shots last year, and they approached free agency with this in mind, signing Lexie Brown and 37-year-old Alysha Clark, the league’s new oldest player post-Taurasi. Even Jewell Loyd, the long-tenured franchise shotmaker, was a prolific shotmisser in 2024. It sounded like a frustrating season for Loyd, personally: Annie Costabile reported that she had lodged a complaint against the coaching staff. The Storm investigated the complaint, but found no violations and closed their investigation in December. Loyd requested a trade soon after, and a three-team blockbuster sent her to the Aces, giving the Storm the 2025 No. 2 overall pick.
Clark and wing Gabby Williams will probably take Loyd’s place at the two beside the incredibly cool veteran point guard Skylar Diggins. In the past, Williams and her fellow French WNBA players have made their national team obligations a priority: Williams didn’t sign with Seattle until after the Olympic break last year. But Storm fans received good news this week when both Williams and French rookie Dominique Malonga told reporters that they don’t plan to play for France in the EuroBasket tournament in mid-June.
Malonga moves with uncommon quickness for her size. At 6-foot-6, she’s drawn somewhat clumsy comparisons to countryman Victor Wembanyama; another irresponsible WNBA comp might be something like “quicker Jonquel Jones.” Clark, Williams, Nneka Ogwumike, Ezi Magbegor, and the teen phenom Malonga make this an obvious Defense To Watch. Those first four players have made WNBA All-Defensive teams. The offense is also one to watch, but largely due to its mystery. I’m curious to see what it might look like funneled through some more efficient players than Loyd. The Storm’s relative lack of experience playing together was noticeable in their disappointing playoff series against Vegas. Seattle is betting that another year of chemistry and minor roster reinforcements will bring about happier results.
CHICAGO SKY
Last season: 13-27
The range of jerseys I noticed at a Sky game last June was a funny reminder of all the turnover Chicago fans have seen in a pretty short time. Some looks come back in style: Courtney Vandersloot has returned to the team she helped lead to the 2021 championship. To the wearers of Elena Delle Donne, Candace Parker and Sylvia Fowles jerseys, I think you’re out of luck.
This past offseason brought yet more turnover. The Sky fired first-year head coach Teresa Weatherspoon and hired Tyler Marsh, a former Aces assistant with a reputation for player development. They also elected not to re-sign leading scorer Chennedy Carter. Her reputation for locker-room issues evidently weighed more heavily on the minds of front offices than did the 17.5 points per game. She is totally out of the WNBA this year. In a league this small, you do run out of bridges to burn. The rookie head coaches are also probably less inclined to take the risk.
The downhill-at-will Carter was a bright spot for last year’s Sky offense, which could otherwise feel archaic, left behind by a league going all in on spacing. An elite rebounding rookie, Angel Reese bought her teammates (and herself) more possessions with her work on the offensive glass. This year, Marsh plans to use Reese more as a point forward, leaning on the latent playmaking skills that made her a top wing recruit coming out of high school. Between Vandersloot, a healthy Elizabeth Williams, and trade pickups Ariel Atkins and Bec Allen, there should be more places for the ball to go than there were last year.
The Sky are also depending on big sophomore seasons from Reese and Kamilla Cardoso, who both have work to do on their games. Reese, taking almost all her shots at the rim, still shot under 40 percent from the field. Cardoso was injured to start the 2024 season and struggled to assert herself against the league’s tougher centers. (The team’s shortage of playmaking guards last year didn’t help either of them.) But Marsh cites the two of them as a reason he took the job. “Being able to help them try to reach their potential is something that certainly appealed to me,” he said in an interview after his introduction as head coach. If you want to buy a Reese or Cardoso jersey, you’re safe … for now.
ATLANTA DREAM
Last season: 15-25, lost to the Liberty in the first round
Frankly, this isn’t a team I’ve had much fun watching the last couple of years—last year, they boasted the league’s worst offense by rating—but there are at least a few reasons to tune in early. New head coach Karl Smesko joins the WNBA from mid-major powerhouse Florida Gulf Coast University, where his players lived by a code of efficiency. The Eagles were more or less banned from mid-range shots. When I blogged about the team in 2023, I was amazed to learn that of the 1,936 shots FGCU had taken that year, only 26 of them were twos outside the paint. Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray will happily play that game; the two guards are comfortable shooting from deep. So is point guard Jordin Canada, though that wasn’t always the case in her career.
That three-point shooting skill can come about late in life might be of comfort to free-agent signing Brittney Griner, who isn’t known for her outside shot but seemed game to try at training camp and in the preseason. It’s worth pointing out that Smesko’s system developed as an adaptation to the realities of women’s college basketball. The scheme helped his less-heralded recruits compete with bigger D-I programs and their talent. That’s not an imbalance he has to deal with anymore. “At Florida Gulf Coast University, we never had players like BG and Bri Jones. We’re gonna take high-return shots,” he told reporters in training camp. Griner’s unguardable mid-range jumper probably qualifies.
GOLDEN STATE VALKYRIES
Last season: Didn’t exist
I don’t know anything about this team! The WNBA’s 13th team, its first expansion team since 2008, is new, purple and mysterious. They could be bad, or they could be amazing. OK, they will probably be pretty bad. The WNBA’s last two expansion teams, Chicago and Atlanta, both had sub-.150 win percentages in their inaugural seasons. You’ll have to excuse the Valkyries if they look like a team of randos who have never played with each other.
Reigning Sixth Player of the Year Tip Hayes is making a strange transition from a team famous for their chemistry to a team that has to build it from scratch. “I’ll just be trying to be that leader that they need me to be,” she told me in February. She’ll have a familiar Aces face with her: Kate Martin, a young fan favorite whom Hayes called “a sponge.” Look out for the team’s international players, who make up a big chunk of this roster. French rookie Carla Leite, in particular, has popped in the preseason.
Otherwise, keep your spirits high and expectations low, Valks fans. If owner Joe Lacob makes good on his promise to win a WNBA championship in five years, there should be fun times in Balhalla very soon.
FAQ
Where can I watch WNBA games, and which games should I watch? The WNBA has national broadcast deals with ESPN, CBS Sports, Amazon Prime, and ION. The league’s TV deal is negotiated as part of the NBA’s TV deal, so expect NBC games and more Amazon games next season. Non-nationally televised games are all available on WNBA League Pass, which is $35. Just check your team’s broadcast schedule to see which games might be blacked out: Fever fans, for example—41 of the Fever’s 44 games will be on national TV. Games on ESPN/ABC, CBS and Amazon Prime are not on League Pass, but the ION games are.
The best matchups tend to be on ESPN or ABC on Sunday afternoons. When I’m flipping around League Pass, I seek out the Mystics and Sky broadcast crews. If you don’t mind comical levels of homerism, Dick Fain in Seattle can also be fun.
How do I watch basketball? Go read Patrick’s super-sharp guide to watching basketball! He wrote it with the NBA playoffs in mind, but for the most part, the same principles apply. As WNBA offenses get more spread out, I pay close attention to what a team’s bigs are asked to do defensively and how they do it—how they take away space, how comfortable they are switching. To me, that’s what separates the WNBA’s top teams from the rest.
What’s going on with the collective bargaining agreement? Ahead of a huge increase in league revenue, WNBA players exercised the opt-out clause in the 2020 CBA. The deal is up after the 2025 season, so the players and owners will spend the season negotiating a new one. Among the issues at the bargaining table are higher facilities standards and a pension plan, but the big one will be salaries. Expect them to rise considerably. Veteran players certainly expect that! It’s why almost all of them have avoided signing long-term contracts in the lead-up to the new CBA. Just about every player not on a rookie deal will become an unrestricted free agent in 2026, so the league could look very different next season after its rare free-agency bonanza.
Which WNBA mascots could beat Jacked Caitlin at arm wrestling? Great question. Prowl. Prowl is the only one.
