The Indiana Fever Will Miss the Playoffs Defending Like This...Plus 14 More Overreactions to the WNBA's First Week

Like my moral compass Walter Sobchak, the WNBA apparently doesn’t roll on Shabbos. That means I’ve got nothing better to do with myself today than to overreact to the first week of the season. As always, you can catch up on the latest action with my recaps of Friday night’s four-game slate, but without further ado, let’s do some overreacting.

It doesn’t hurt that they’re the team with the fewest games under their belt, but my picks to win the WNBA title are the league’s last unbeaten team nonetheless. Atlanta’s offense hasn’t clicked at the level it’s expected to in wins over the Minnesota Lynx (after trailing by 19 points) and Dallas Wings (by five points), but I have no doubt that the Dream will eventually start pouring on the points. What has clicked has been the defense, which has the league’s second-best rating according to WNBA.com (98.8 points allowed per 100 possessions) and Allisha Gray, who scored 24 and 26 points in the two wins and seemed to be the player who pulled Atlanta through its worst offensive stretches in both. On top of that, Angel Reese has 30 rebounds and a pair of double-doubles in her first two games, and the Dream will presumably get quite a bit better when Rhyne Howard and Naz Hillmon bust out of early showing slumps and Brionna Jones gets on the floor. I genuinely don’t think there is a team in this league that can be as good as Atlanta has the potential to be at both ends of the floor.

The newest Ace in the deck has scored 77 points over the first four games of the season, the second-most in WNBA history by a player who hadn’t started a game at this point in the season. Only Bria Hartley had more, putting up 79 points over the first four games in the Wubble. Some of Carter’s production has undoubtedly been a result of the Aces winning two of their last three games in dominant fashion, but she was also the team’s second-leading scorer in a more competitive game last night with 18 points on 5-for-8 from the field and 8-for-12 at line. As an aside — the Aces’ second, third and fourth-leading scorers (Carter, Jackie Young and Chelsea Gray) combined for two fewer points (43) than A’ja Wilson scored last night (45). The only players who signed with new teams as free agents averaging more points per game than Carter’s 19.3 are Toronto’s Marina Mabrey (20.0) and Brittney Sykes (19.7), who’ve been the focal points of the offense, and no one is doing better than Carter’s absurd 71.1% (32-for-45) from the field.

First of all, I want to start this by saying that a year ago at this juncture, I said the Aces should bring Jewell Loyd off the bench, and her request to do so a couple months later ended up being one of the pivotal developments in their championship season. Just like in that case, this is not in any way a negative statement about Sabally, but instead a reflection of my beliefs that teams with talent levels like the Aces and Liberty’s do themselves well to bring some of their best players off the bench, and also that the more time that the Liberty spend with Pauline Astier running point and Sabrina Ionescu off the ball, the better they’ll be. Once Ionescu and Leonie Fiebich are back in the mix, my ideal Liberty starting lineup includes Astier, Ionescu, Fiebich, Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones. There’ll still be plenty of minutes and vital roles for Sabally, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton and the rest, but I think New York is more balanced in a hypothetical scenario where it brings Marine Johannes, Laney-Hamilton and Sabally in for Astier, Fiebich and Jones as the first group of subs than in one where it’s Astier, Johannes and Laney-Hamilton replacing Fiebich, Sabally and Jones (with Ionescu and Stewart staying on the floor in both cases).

Ahhh, the Chicago Sigh — wait, sorry, I meant Sky. Chicago looks significantly improved over last season despite DiJonai Carrington, Azurá Stevens and Courtney Vandersloot having missed all three games, but I just can’t help but dwell on how much better the Sky could be if they still had Angel Reese. Trading Ariel Atkins to Los Angeles for Rickea Jackson looks like a home run, as does signing Skylar Diggins (who hopefully won’t miss significant time with the eye injury that forced her from last night’s game), but imagine if they were starting Reese in the spot currently occupied by rookie Gabriela Jaquez. Don’t get me wrong, I think Jaquez is a real player, but Senator, she’s no Angel Reese.

I’m not convinced that the Valkyries would be a bad team without Veronica Burton, who is known as Veronica Valkyrie around these parts (because duh), but I think she is far and away the biggest reason they are currently a good team. The 25-year old is third in the league averaging 7.3 assists per game, trailing only Alyssa Thomas and Caitlin Clark in the early going, while her 3.67 assist-to-turnover ratio is behind only Diggins (8.50 lol), Jessica Shepard (4.0) and Paige Bueckers (3.75) among players who’ve played in multiple games. Moreover, the Valkyries are a rather good team so far with Burton on the floor (+13.7 net rating), but a pretty bad one in the limited time she’s been off the floor (-7.3). The sample is small of course, but Golden State was also significantly worse with Burton off the floor last season, with a +4 net rating when she was on and a -3.9 rating when she was off. Only Iliana Rupert (+12.8 differential) and Cecilia Zandalasini (+8.4) had better splits among Valkyries regulars last year, but the pair both missed over half the season, so “regulars” is doing some real work there.

I was going to use this space to heap praise on surprising 21-year old rookie forward Emma Cechova, but the crushing news that her injury on Thursday night was a torn ACL short-circuited that plan. That news, as well as the ongoing absences of Napheesa Collier and Dorka Juhász, seems to leave a lot of minutes for Natasha Howard in the foreseeable future, and she will be able to make the most of them. That is in part because Howard has an elite playmaker in rookie point guard Olivia Miles and a two-guard in Courtney Williams whose playmaking skills have improved quite a lot while playing the point the last two seasons. Howard should be in line for a whole lot of easy buckets if the last couple games are any indication, having scored 40 points on 17-for-23 (73.9%) from the field while piling up 16 rebounds in the last two games. 

The youngest team in the WNBA may also be the hungriest, judging by its first three games, all of which were dogfights. With two rookies, two second-year players and a grizzled 25-year old veteran in the starting lineup, the Mystics are too young to know what they don’t know, but they’re also overflowing with talent. The “big three” of Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen and Shakira Austin combined for 74 points, 28 rebounds and 11 assists in last night’s overtime win at Indiana while making two-thirds of their shots, and they’re gonna lead the Mystics to the playoffs. 

Phoenix’s surprise star is 13-for-20 (65.0%) from deep so far in her WNBA career, the best mark for a player with at least 10 attempts in her first four games. While I don’t think she can sustain anything close to that rate, I do think that she’s going to keep getting a ton of good looks as long as Alyssa Thomas is healthy. Nogić appears capable of knocking down enough of them to be among the league’s most prolific and accurate shooters come July, and it’ll be enough to carry her to the All-Star game.

I have no idea what it was that set Wings coach Jose Fernandez off on his “selfishness in this locker room” presser, but if it was Maddy complaining about her minutes, well, she was right. As a Villanova fan, I will freely admit my bias in favor of Villanova’s best player ever, but the fact remains that the Wings have been better when she’s on the floor. The Wings have put up 123.1 points per 100 possessions with Siegrist on the floor compared to 96.8 with her off of it through their first three games, while their defensive rating is also worse with her off the floor (113.5 points allowed per 100 possessions) than on it (102.2) despite that being her weaker end. Put that all together and Dallas has been +20.9 points per 100 possessions during Maddy’s minutes and -16.6 when she’s watching from the bench, a difference of 37.5 net points per 100 possessions. The problem: she’s only been on the floor about a third of the time (42 of 120 minutes). At the other end of the spectrum: the Wings are 33.9 net points per 100 possessions worse in 73 minutes with marquee free-agent forward Alanna Smith on the floor and 41.8 worse in 94 minutes played by fellow former Lynx forward Jessica Shepard. Dallas can’t and shouldn’t give up on those two, but I’m certain there are five more Maddy minutes to be found per game here.

Indiana’s 11th in defensive rating, allowing 108.6 points per possessions according to WNBA.com, and it’s worth remembering that the Fever haven’t even faced a 2025 playoff team yet. The Fever’s first three opponents (the Wings, Sparks and Mystics) are all among the six teams behind them in net rating and none is higher than seventh out of 15 teams in offensive rating. Forget winning a championship, Indiana will not be a playoff team if this is the kind of defense it’s going to play all season. Some may take this as a veiled criticism of Caitlin Clark, but it’s been a team-wide issue over the first three games. The Fever’s defensive rating is actually quite a bit worse in 26 minutes with Clark off the floor (114.5 points allowed per 100 possessions) than the 99 minutes she’s been on it (105.6) over this limited sample. It all needs to get better or Indiana is going to continue struggling to beat the WNBA’s worst teams, let alone its best.

After an offseason dedicated to getting older and theoretically better on defense, headlined by the signings of Nneka Ogwumike and Erica Wheeler and the trade that sent Rickea Jackson to Chicago for Ariel Atkins, Los Angeles appears to have gotten worse on both ends of the floor. The Sparks are 14th out of 15 teams in defensive rating, giving up an astonishing 117.6 points per 100 possessions according to WNBA.com and sitting ahead of only the expansion Portland Fire. Small sample size aside, that is quite a bit worse than last season, when the Sparks were 10th out of 13 with a defensive rating of 108.5. The offense has also taken a hit, sitting in 10th with an offensive rating of 103.7 points per 100 possessions after finishing 6th last season at 105.2. Bear in mind that offensive numbers are skewing higher in general thanks to the changes in how the game is officiated, so that decrease is bigger than it looks. With no disrespect to Atkins, the Jackson trade in particular seems like it might haunt the Sparks for years as she strings together big games for the Sky.

This was initially going to be a “Sarah Ashlee Barker needs more minutes” topic, because I have been a fan since her college days. I also thought she played well in the Fire’s two games against my beloved Liberty this week, and not just because she was in the right place at the right time for the game-winning putback on Tuesday. That said, Barker’s played 67 of a possible 120 minutes despite coming off of the bench in all three games, and played more than half of the minutes in all three. So it’s less about the minutes than about the fact that I think Portland should feature her more when she’s on the floor, if only to see what she can do with a higher volume of shots. Barker’s 10-for-18 from the field including 4-for-7 from deep in the early going. Being old enough to remember her going off for 45 points in the NCAA Tournament, I’d love to know what might happen if she got 18 shots up in a WNBA game.

Early returns on rookie Flau’jae Johnson, acquired in an awkward draft-night trade with Golden State, haven’t been great. The former LSU star has gone 7-for-29 from the field over her first three games while committing more turnovers (6) than she’s had assists (5), and has just four attempts from deep over the last two games after going 3-for-7 in her debut. You’d have to expect that teams will make it a priority to run her off the 3-point line as much as possible for as long as she keeps struggling to make anything inside the arc (3-for-18 so far). The Storm are taking what looks like a gap year, so it’s hard to blame them for adding another prospect worth taking a look at, but given the roster crunch the Valkyries had, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say Johnson probably wouldn’t have made the team. In other words, Seattle may have been able to claim Johnson on waivers without spending a pair of second-round picks (and the Valkyries’ first-round pick) on her. It can still be a win for Seattle if Johnson eventually has a successful WNBA career, but Golden State can already put it in the win column.

Mabrey took some of the wind out of my sails in a seven-point outing last night, dropping her average to 20 points per game on the nose following games of 26 and 27 to open the season. I’m still betting on the Jersey native to have a lot more loud games than quiet ones and to lead the league in scoring. After all, what are Jersey natives if not loud? Mabrey’s been getting buckets at a very high rate thus far in 2026, having led Unrivaled in scoring in the winter, and I think that being the Tempo’s alpha will afford her plenty of opportunities to continue doing so throughout the WNBA season. 

In the past, this is when I would have said the Sun should move to Philadelphia and become the Dawn. Philly is off the table now, however, set to join the WNBA in 2030, and the Sun are headed elsewhere under the ownership of a fuckhead MAGA billionaire, so I’ve really got nothing here. Only 40 games left before the Houston Fauxmets move into the Sun-sized void in my hater’s heart. I hope they lose all of them.