Hello, hoopheads! Tuesday was one of the few nights this WNBA season without a national broadcast, but the games were some of the best so far. All three were decided by five or fewer points, including a win at the buzzer for the expansion Portland Fire. You can catch up on all of that here, but we’ve got four more games to look ahead to tonight as the remaining regular-season total ticks down to 312.
The second half of tonight’s national TV doubleheader looks like the night’s most compelling game to me, despite or perhaps because it’s the only one between teams without a win yet. Someone’s gonna start 0-2 and send their fanbase into a (ridiculous) panic when the Indiana Fever (0-1) visit the Los Angeles Sparks (0-1) (10:30 ET, USA Network/local affiliates)! The Fever, of course, tend to elicit extreme reactions of both the positive and negative variety almost no matter what they do, a dynamic that won’t have been improved by Caitlin Clark’s decision to follow her return to the court on Saturday (in defeat against the Dallas Wings) with an appearance at a racist country singer’s show. Final score aside, Clark’s on-court return offered a little bit of everything — 20 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 turnovers, a disappearance into the locker room that had the arena holding its breath, the Wings targeting her on defense and a missed 3-pointer for the tie in the final seconds that I still think she would’ve made if she’d taken it from the logo. Clark’s miss wasn’t Indiana’s last gasp, as Kelsey Mitchell (30 points) would miss from an almost identical spot a few seconds later as the buzzer sounded. The two of them were joined in the 20-point club by Aliyah Boston, with the Fever’s “big three” becoming one of just four trios to score 20+ points in a WNBA opener (joined by the Wings’ Paige Bueckers, Arike Ogunbowale and Odyssey Sims). They just couldn’t overcome a miserable defensive showing as the Wings made 59% from the field including 12-of-23 from deep.
The Sparks are surely hoping that Indiana responds to playing terrible defense in its opener in a different manner than the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces did. They took out their frustrations on Los Angeles in a 105-78 rout on Sunday night in which the Sparks were outscored by double-digit margins in three of four quarters, only avoiding a truly humiliating margin of defeat thanks to a 27-13 edge in the second. Las Vegas won the other three quarters by a 92-51 margin including 63-37 after halftime despite playing in Los Angeles on the second night of a back-to-back. Sparks stars Kelsey Plum (27 points, 10-for-18 FG) and Nneka Ogwumike (19 points, 10 rebounds, 7-for-15 FG) got their seasons off to solid starts, but that’s really about it for the positives from LA’s opener. The Sparks’ top six players will get plenty of time to figure things out on the floor, however, as no one other than Plum, Ogwumike, Dearica Hamby, Ariel Atkins, Rae Burrell and Erica Wheeler played double-digit minutes in the opening defeat. It’s just going to be a long season for LA if four of those six players combine for 27 points on 10-for-40 (25%) from the field every night. Perhaps Cameron Brink would’ve gotten more run if she didn’t live by the mantra that “it’s foul o’clock somewhere” (she racked up three in eight minutes). I’m not sure how players like Brink and rookies Chance Gray and Ta’Niya Latson are supposed to develop if they barely even see the floor in blowouts, but I get the impression that LA sees developing young players as a secondary goal at best.
The other West Coast game on tonight’s schedule sees the Chicago Sky (1-0) visit the Golden State Valkyries (2-0) (10:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass), who have a chance to become the first team to three wins thanks to my Liberty’s loss last night in Portland. Both teams will be shorthanded, as Golden State remains without Tiffany Hayes (finger) and Cecilia Zandalasini (concussion) after they were injured in the opener while Chicago is still awaiting the 2026 debuts of DiJonai Carrington (foot), Azurá Stevens (knee), Courtney Vandersloot (knee) and Maddy Westbeld (reconditioning). Natasha Cloud (illness) is listed as questionable to make her Sky debut.
The Valkyries are coming off of a 95-79 win over the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday, either the second time they’ve scored at least 90 points in back-to-back games or the first time they’ve scored more than 90 points in back-to-back games if you’re less beholden to round numbers than I am. Either way you slice it, they’ve never scored in the 90s in three straight games in their brief history, and doing so would make them just the third team to start a WNBA season with three straight 90-point outings. Only the 2023 Las Vegas Aces (five straight, won the WNBA title) and the 2025 New York Liberty (four straight, very much did not win the WNBA title) have done that according to Sports Reference.
The Sky opened their season with a 98-83 win at Portland on Saturday, their highest-scoring outing since 2023, when they last went to the playoffs (with an 18-22 record) and broke the century mark on six occasions. Kamilla Cardoso led the way with 22 points and 14 rebounds, and if you’re less beholden to single-season streaks than I am, it’s the first time she’s had 20+ points in back-to-back games after finishing off last season with 21. Skylar Diggins added a 20-point double-double of her own with 21 points, 11 rebounds, 7 assists and a steal while making 8-of-12 (66.7%) from the field in her Sky debut, the fifth time a pair of Sky players have had 20-point double-doubles in franchise history. Cardoso has been a part of three of those five, having done it alongside Angel Reese twice last season, while Courtney Vandersloot did it once in the 2016 playoffs alongside Jessica Breland and once in 2022 alongside Emma Meesseman. Diggins also had the 10th 20-point double-double of her career, one of 44 players to do that in WNBA history. She’s tied with Clark, Reese, Meesseman and Chiney Ogwumike for 40th on the 20-point double-doubles list for now, and I’m pretty sure this is the first time those five players have ever been mentioned in the same sentence.
Tonight’s earlier games don’t look quite as appealing, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that I won’t be able to watch them live and want to believe they’ll be uneventful. The first should be the more competitive of the two as the Seattle Storm (1-1) visit the Toronto Tempo (0-1) (7:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass). Toronto has been off since dropping a heartbreaker of a rock fight to the Washington Mystics on Friday night, and I’m fairly confident that people younger than me would say that Portland has done something involving the word (or maybe it’s a suffix?) “mogging” to Toronto since then as the Fire have both set an attendance record and gotten their first win. The Tempo will look to get Canada on the board while improving the nation’s rather unsightly 27% from the field and 20% from deep all-time. Seattle started its road trip with its first win of the season, an entertaining 89-82 triumph over the Connecticut Sun on Sunday afternoon — because nothing says Mother’s Day like spending a couple hours in the basement of Mohegan Sun. “Downtown” Lexie Brown earned herself a nickname for at least a few days with a 5-for-6 performance from deep en route to 17 points to lead the Storm off the bench while Jade Melbourne added 15 more off the pine. Notably quiet was Storm center Dominique Malonga, who had 6 points and 7 rebounds on 2-for-6 from the field. That said, she was limited to 20 minutes due to foul trouble, but still had three blocks and earned a game-best +15 plus-minus rating.
Second on the schedule but last in my heart and order of interest, the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces (1-1) visit the Connecticut Sun (0-2) (8:00 ET, USA Network/local affiliates). The champs’ last visit to the Mohegan Sun basement encompasses both the second and third games of a four-game road trip, with the teams set to meet again on Friday. Vegas started its trip with the rout of Los Angeles that I talked about from the Sparks’ perspective above and will finish the odyssey with a visit to Atlanta for a potential WNBA Finals preview against the Dream on Sunday. The Aces looked a hell of a lot like the team that went on a late-season tear to win the title against the Sparks, getting 67 points on 26-for-41 (63.4%) from the field from A’ja Wilson (19 points, 7-for-14), Jackie Young (20, 8-for-12), Chelsea Gray (16, 6-for-10) and NaLyssa Smith (12, 5-for-5). The most notable difference from last season was that Chennedy Carter (team-high 22 points, 9-for-13) was also there. That signing is working out every bit as well as I expected it to so far.