2026 WNBA Season Preview — Predictions

Hello, hoopheads! It’s WNBA Opening Day Eve, which would be a federal holiday if I was named America’s second czar. Having taken a preview tour through all 15 teams, I’m just about ready to tell you what’s going to happen over the next five months of hoops (I have no idea what’s going to happen). I got the big one and not much else right last year, when I picked the Las Vegas Aces to win the title, Napheesa Collier to win MVP and the Dallas Wings to be the most improved non-playoff team in the Her Hoop Stats newsletter. I still think my take on the Indiana Fever — that the expectations they’d compete for a title were unfairly high — was more right than wrong despite their improbable semifinal appearance after losing Caitlin Clark for three quarters of the season, but that’s neither here nor there. Having just yesterday reached the ripe old age of 42, which I’m calling my Mariano Rivera year because I don’t have the right strain of white guy DGAF to call it my Jackie Robinson year, I’m pretty stubborn. As such, I’m about to start this year’s predictions in a familiar place…

This should be a relatively safe prediction, given that they have the most room for improvement as last year’s last-place finishers, but that didn’t prevent me swinging and missing badly on this prediction last year. I’m going back to the well anyway after the Wings reunited Paige Bueckers with her national championship teammate Azzi Fudd and made a handful of genuinely impactful free-agent signings. The most notable of those was last year’s co-Defensive Player of the Year center Alanna Smith, who also brought her Minnesota Lynx backup Jessica Shepard with her (by which I mean Shepard also signed as a free agent). Arike Ogunbowale also re-upped with the Wings after an excellent showing in Unrivaled with the championship-winning Mist. If she plays like that alongside Bueckers and Fudd, the Wings backcourt is going to give people problems. I don’t think the Wings are a title contender or anything, but I think they’re good enough to make the playoffs.

I’m a little lower on the Mercury than most people seem to be, mostly because I can’t bring myself to assume they’ll get through the season without Alyssa Thomas and/or Kahleah Copper missing significant time. If they manage that, they’re probably a bottom-half playoff team after last year’s trip to the Finals. Unfortunately, Thomas and Copper are both players on the wrong side of 30 with injury concerns, and I just don’t think Phoenix can really stand to play without them. Phoenix fared pretty well when one or both were out of the lineup last season, and even played some of its best basketball with both out of the lineup early in the season, but the major difference this time is Satou Sabally isn’t around to carry the team on those nights. Players like Kitija Laksa, Lexi Held and Kathryn Westbeld, all of whom were key parts of those early-season wins, are also either gone or injured. Atlanta, Indiana, New York and Las Vegas seem likely to occupy the top four spots in some order, with Minnesota also a near-lock to make the playoffs. I think Golden State and Los Angeles look like the next-best teams on paper. That would leave one spot for everyone else, and if I had to guess, it goes to Dallas over Phoenix.

The Lynx probably lost too much from last year’s team to return to top-tier WNBA title contention this season, but re-signing Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams to two-year deals and Collier to a one-year deal in free agency should keep the team in the playoff mix. The question is going to be how much time Phee misses and how close she is to her MVP-caliber form of the last two seasons when she returns from the ankle injuries she suffered in last postseason’s loss to the Mercury. The latest update was that she’d return to on-court activity no sooner than June, which of course prompted a wave of “Phee is coming back in June” posts all over social media and the internet at large. The reality, though, is that there’s going to be some time between her return to basketball activity and her return to actual games, given she’s coming off of surgery on both ankles and 7 months of inaction. I’m not pretending to know when she’ll be back one way or the other, but I do remember that basically the same thing happened last year with Cameron Brink, who didn’t end up returning (from a different injury) until late July after the internet had decided the Sparks were on the clock the moment the calendar turned to June. It’s impossible to know when or what form she returns in, but if Phee is back at her MVP-caliber form for the postseason, the Lynx should be capable of beating anyone, wherever they finish in the standings.

I went with Phee as the pick last year because, after the dual gut punches of the 2024 WNBA Finals and the 2025 Unrivaled semifinals, it seemed obvious that she was going to come into the WNBA season like a woman possessed. That ended up being the case, but the time she missed in August and Wilson’s otherworldly play down the stretch most likely cost Phee MVP. With the undisputed second-best player in the league likely to miss enough of the season to end her awards contention before it starts, I just don’t see who’s going to stop the league’s GOAT from taking home the trophy again. 

The Atlanta Dream will be the 2026 WNBA champions, winning their first title in franchise history. I was very high on the Dream before they became the beneficiaries of the Chicago Sky mishandling their relationship with Angel Reese, but (Area Codes) Barbie really does seem like the perfect addition to put the Dream over the top. I also think Atlanta is the perfect place for her to continue the rapid evolution that began last season, when Reese played like an MVP candidate for her final 20 games of the season. If I could decide between Reese and her new Dreammate Allisha Gray, I might well have picked one of them to win MVP, but I honestly think what’s most going to happen is that they’ll both be in the mix and split each other’s vote. As a Liberty season-ticket holder, I’d very much like to be wrong, but I’m going to stick to my guns just like I did through the worst of Las Vegas’ early stumbles in 2025, because 2026 feels like Atlanta’s year.