Hello, hoopheads! Welcome to the first daily edition of The Post Presence and first installment in my 2026 WNBA season preview series. I’ll be checking out one team a day over the next two weeks, then making predictions on the eve of the WNBA season (May 7) and getting into daily previews and recaps from there. We’re starting at the top with the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces and then working backwards through the playoffs/standings — tune in tomorrow for the Phoenix Mercury. Each preview sets out to answer the same four questions: what happened last season, what’s their roster going to look like, what Marvel Snap deck do they remind my broken brain of, and what am I expecting from them in 2026. Feel free to ask any questions of your own in the comments, and also to share this far and wide with the women’s hoops fans in your life as every bit of exposure helps. And with that, let the Post Presence previews begin!
What happened last season?
One could write an entire book about the 2025 Aces, and perhaps I should’ve given how many words I spilled about them in the Her Hoop Stats newsletter. Alas, I’m going to try to tell their story in about 300 words, and I’ve already wasted about 50. The headline, of course, is that the Aces won their third WNBA title in four seasons, becoming the second team in the league’s first 29 seasons to accomplish that feat and the first since the Houston Comets — the real ones, not the future Connecticut Sun, who I’ll be calling the Fauxmets — four-peated from 1997-2000. The Aces’ road to the 2025 WNBA title was anything but smooth, however, as Las Vegas spent about two-thirds of the season flailing to a 14-14 start which culminated in a 111-58 home loss to the Minnesota Lynx in early August. That humiliation incited a now-legendary group text from Aces superstar A’ja Wilson to her teammates, which I’ll paraphrase as saying get your shit together or don’t bother showing up to the gym tomorrow. The message was clearly received, as Las Vegas reeled off 16 straight wins to end the regular season, with Wilson claiming her league-record fourth MVP. That regular-season win streak, which carries into the 2026 season, is tied for the second-longest in WNBA history. The 2025 postseason was something of a microcosm of the campaign on the whole, as Las Vegas was pushed to the limit in both the best-of-three first round (which ended with a one-point win over Seattle) and the best-of-five semifinals (which ended with an overtime win over Indiana) before sweeping the WNBA’s first best-of-seven Finals against the Mercury to confirm dynastic status.
What’s the roster going to look like?
This is the easiest time I’ll have answering this question over the next two weeks, because Las Vegas really didn’t leave much to the imagination. There are only 13 players in training camp vying for the Aces’ 12 roster spots, with 11 of them veterans and two of them drafted rookies. Among those 11 veterans are almost all of the key players in last year’s championship run, including all six who scored more than 2.5 points per game in the playoffs (Wilson, Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young, NaLyssa Smith, Jewell Loyd and Dana Evans). Evans will be sidelined indefinitely to start the season, but is expected to play in 2026. Kierstan Bell, who started all 12 playoff games in 2025, is also back, although it’s worth remembering she played less than 11 minutes per game during that postseason run (her starting status almost felt like a meme by the end, if I’m being honest). Also back is veteran big Cheyenne Parker-Tyus, who missed most of last season due to childbirth but came back to play in two regular-season and six playoff games. Her full-time availability should help offset the losses of frontcourt reserves Megan Gustafson and Kiah Stokes, while well-traveled veteran Stephanie Talbot will also eat up some of those lost minutes.
The most intriguing new Ace in the deck is without a doubt Chennedy Carter, who returns to the WNBA after going unsigned in 2025 and is two years removed from averaging 17.5 points per game during a 33-game run with the Chicago Sky. Carter’s signing raised some eyebrows after tumultuous stints with the Sky, Los Angeles Sparks and Atlanta Dream earlier in her career, but there is no disputing that she’s a bucket. I think Las Vegas is the perfect place for her to try to turn her career around given the locker room she’s walking into. That starts with the championship core of Wilson, Gray and Young, but it also includes a Hall of Fame player as head coach in Becky Hammon, and even a player like Smith, who also showed up in Sin City looking to turn her career around less than a year ago and can tell Carter firsthand how valuable this opportunity is.
The natural assumption and most likely immediate outcome is that Las Vegas’ 12th roster spot goes to one of its drafted rookies (Janiah Barker and Jordan Obi) while the other gets one of its two developmental player slots. Don’t be surprised, however, if both of the rookies ended up on developmental contracts after Hammon finds the right veteran to sign to a minimum contract — all Las Vegas can afford to give — for a title run. Yes, I am specifically referring to Natasha Cloud, and no, I have no reason for that other than being a huge fan of Tash and wanting her to land in a good place.
What’s the Marvel Snap deck?
I spend a lot of time playing a silly video game called Marvel Snap which has the virtue of scratching my eternal poker itch without real-money stakes. I would say Snap has broken my brain, but it’s always been broken. Either way, I frequently find myself thinking about things in terms of Snap, and about Snap in terms of other things. Since this is my little corner of the internet and there are 12 players on a WNBA roster like there are 12 cards in a Snap deck, I’m going to tell you which deck best captures the spirit of each team.
Check the alt-text for the deck code, if you’re into that sort of thing!
The Aces are a Zombie Galacti deck, and more specifically, Wilson is Zombie Galacti, who chooses six cards at the start of the game which will transform into copies of Zombie Galacti whenever it’s played. In practice, what this means is that your gameplan is about pouring as much power as possible into Zombie Galacti, such that said power can be funneled back into the cards you used to support it. Similarly, the Aces surround Wilson with players who complement her otherworldly skills, with the payoff being that she elevates their play in return. That’s not to say that the Aces don’t have other stars — Gray and Young are probably both headed to the Hall of Fame alongside Wilson — but it’s the interplay between Wilson and those other pieces that takes Las Vegas over the top, just like Zombie Galacti.
What’s the expectation?
Part of the purpose of this preview series is for me to take a fresh look at every team in the league and form my expectations, so I won’t settle on a championship pick until writing it into my predictions piece in a couple weeks. That said, my gut tells me exactly the same thing about the Aces that it did last year, when I eventually wrote the Aces into that spot: if Wilson is healthy, I wouldn’t want anything to do with her in a postseason series. I called her the GOAT earlier, and I meant it. The four-time MVP is already, in my opinion, the best hooper the WNBA has ever seen, and there’s no reason to believe her best basketball is behind her three-and-a-half months before her 30th birthday. Don’t bet against the GOAT tallying a fourth straight season averaging at least 20 points, nine rebounds and two blocks per game, but also don’t forget that the rest of the players in WNBA history have three such seasons combined (one each by Sylvia Fowles, Lauren Jackson and Candace Parker). It’s almost not fair that Wilson gets to be this good while being surrounded by the level of talent throughout the rest of the roster, but as long as that is the case, the Aces shouldn’t be doing anything other than contending for titles.