Hello, hoopheads! Wednesday was about as quiet as it gets in the WNBA in August 2026, continuing the recent dominance of both home teams in general and playoff teams against non-playoff opposition. The latter trend won out when they came up against each other in one game last night, with playoff teams going 3-0 and having won seven straight against non-playoff teams since the Los Angeles Sparks (12-20) beat the Minnesota Lynx (28-7) on Friday, while home teams went 2-1 and are 32-16 since the All-Star break (and since a shaky start to the season that was, of course, covered extensively here). The top eight’s dominance extends back much further than just the past few days, as they’re 37-4 (.902) against the bottom seven since July 13, which is conveniently a month ago today, but was honestly just where the losses started becoming more frequent as I scrolled back through game logs. Good teams beating up on bad teams is, to an extent, how they became the top eight and bottom seven in the first place, but the recent clip has been quite a bit more extreme than the still dominant 69-19 (.784) record playoff teams amassed against non-playoff teams from the start of the season through July 12.
Wednesday’s games going the way they were expected to thankfully didn’t mean they were entirely boring, particularly in the case of the Lynx’s eventual 85-81 win over the Portland Fire (13-20), who came back from a 64-35 third-quarter deficit to make it a one-point game down the stretch, with a missed free throw all that kept the comeback from being completed (in the sense of erasing that entire 29-point deficit). While the Lynx came away with the win, the second half was extraordinarily uncharacteristic of the league’s top team and top-rated offense according to Her Hoop Stats (112.3 points per 100 possessions for the season), as Minnesota scored just 28 points after the break after putting up 26 in the first quarter and 31 in the second. That was easily the Lynx’s lowest-scoring half of the season, which had previously been a pair of 33-point halves back in May (one first half and one second half). They’d had just one other half this season with fewer than 37 points, and it was another forgettable one (34 points in the second half of the loss to the Sparks on Friday). It’s probably not even up to the level of a blip on the radar, but the worst half of the season can’t be the note the Lynx wanted to go into their stretch run on given their next six games and eight of their final nine games are against playoff teams.
Elsewhere last night, the Golden State Valkyries (24-9) improved to 24-4 against teams other than Minnesota and Las Vegas (23-11), over whom they reestablished a 1.5-game lead by routing the Chicago Sky (12-22). The Dallas Wings (20-14) also got a much-needed win over the Toronto Tempo (10-23), pulling back into a three-way tie for the sixth-through-eighth spots in the standings with the New York Liberty (20-14) and Washington Mystics (19-13). That tie won’t last for long, with both teams other than the Wings in action tonight, starting with the evening’s marquee matchup between the Washington Mystics (19-13) and Las Vegas Aces (23-11) (10:00 ET, Prime Video). The Aces pulled the season series even at a game apiece with a 10-point win on Tuesday, snapping a seven-game Mystics win streak — their longest since 2019 and second-longest ever — in the process while avoiding a first three-game skid of the season. A win tonight would clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker for the Aces while also probably making it a moot point, as they’d be four games up with nine to play (11 in Washington’s case). A Mystics win, on the other hand, would leave them just two games back and in possession of the tiebreaker.
One thing that has been pretty clear through the first 80 minutes of Aces-Mystics basketball is that Washington’s outstanding young frontcourt duo of Shakira Austin and Kiki Iriafen have no answers for the GOAT A’ja Wilson. That’s not much of a surprise, given that she is the literal GOAT and just turned 30 while Austin is a young 26 (having also just turned that age while having lost a lot of development time early in her career to injury) and Iriafen is a couple weeks from turning 23. Surprising or not, it is a problem for Washington in this matchup, as Wilson has racked up 64 points on 22-for-34 (64.7%) from the field with 20 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 steals and 6 blocks in two games. She can’t claim to be scoring more than Austin and Iriafen in the series combined, but the fact that the margin is only 74-to-64 in their favor speaks volumes, while they’ve gone 28-for-62 (45.2%) from the field with 2 steals and a block between them (Austin recorded all of those on Tuesday). Austin and Iriafen at least combined for 37 rebounds in the first two games, but if Wilson and the Aces are measuring sticks, then it looks like Washington’s still got a ways to go.
The first half of tonight’s BezosVision twinbill will also break the three-way Liberty-Mystics-Wings tie when the Los Angeles Sparks (12-20) visit the New York Liberty (20-14) (8:00 ET, Prime Video). The Libs are looking to bounce back from Tuesday’s humiliating-if-unsurprising thrashing at Indiana, just their second loss in nine games but also their eighth time allowing an opponent to post an offensive rating of at least 105 points per 100 possessions in the last 10 games. The defense has been atrocious, and it will remain so tonight since Leonie Fiebich (“left foot soreness”) and Satou Sabally (head/not with team) remain sidelined, the former with an incredibly frustrating lack of clarity surrounding her status and the latter with a similar lack of clarity that is completely understandable. The Sparks have lost two in a row after winning two of three (including the one at Minnesota), and they have a win over the Liberty this season, although since-traded Kelsey Plum played a large part in that win. I would be more worried about the Sparks torching the Liberty the way Indiana did if Plum was still in purple and gold, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if it happens anyway.
Last but not least is the first game on tonight’s schedule, which sees the Atlanta Dream (20-12) visit the lowly and detestable Connecticut Sun (8-23) (7:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass). If you were wondering about the answer to the question, “who does the WNBA believe to be the Sun’s greatest rival?” it is apparently the Dream, because this is Connecticut’s only game during the league’s made-for-TV Rivals Week. Atlanta apparently also has a rivalry with the expansion Toronto Tempo (lol), who the Dream beat on Monday to avoid a second straight loss and third in four games, but I can’t say the Dream’s actual history was given much consideration here either. Meanwhile, the Sun will play their final matchup ever with the Liberty — their geographic and on-court rivals for 24 seasons — on Saturday, the day after the Rivals Week branding ends. As a Sun hater, I love seeing them forgotten before they even cease to exist, and it’s only fitting that Rivals Week ends up being just as pointless a charade as the Sun’s slow, sad march into the dustbin of history. Hopefully Rivals Week joins them there. Failing that, I hope the league consults with someone who actually watches its product before picking the matchups next time (call me).