WNBA Roundup, July 23: Second Trimester Report Card

Hello, hoopheads! The WNBA All-Star break has finally arrived after 202 games comprising just over 61% of the busiest regular season in WNBA history, which means it’s time for the second Report Card of the season. As you may remember from the first Report Card, I intended to do these quarterly, but the lack of leaguewide days off — which the WNBA used to have every Monday — made it very hard to find a day to fit it in around the time that everyone hit the halfway point of their seasons. Given we’re now closer to the two-thirds point than the middle, let’s call this one a second trimester Report Card, with one to follow at the end of the regular season, unless I decide to do something else later. There’ll be at least one more, I promise that much. As a reminder, the rubric is mostly based on vibes and on-court performance relative to expectations. It is 100% subjective, but it is about basketball — in other words, the Indiana Fever’s grade isn’t going to be the ‘F’ that I’d like to give them, standing for “fuck the Indiana Fever,” after their statement in support of Sophie Cunningham’s bigotry against trans girls and women. You can find more about that ordeal elsewhere if you’re so inclined, I’m not going to link to it here, and now I’m going to go back to never mentioning that awful person’s name if I can avoid it. I will say, however, that her language echoes language previously used by segregationists, and there is a reason: it is because she is advocating for segregation. Now let’s get to the basketball grades, presented in alphabetical order by team.

First grading period: 8-3 — B+

Second grading period: 8-7 — D+

My picks to win the WNBA title have bounced back fairly well from a five-game skid, with four wins in their last five games, but the defense that had been their calling card was pretty lax despite those wins. The good news is that the Dream offense went into the All-Star break on fire, but it remains to be seen if they can sustain a high level of play at either end of the floor for long enough to call it reliable. The best news, however, is that the Dream got four-time All-Star Brionna Jones back on the floor a couple of games ago, and I would have to think that she’ll be back in the starting five very soon if not in the first game out of the break. Assuming she’s 100%, Bri Jones’ presence should go a long way towards making the Dream more consistent at both ends.

First grading period: 4-8 — C

Second grading period: 5-10 — B-

If you’re a regular Post Presence reader, you can probably guess why my grade here is higher than the on-court results might lead you to expect. The reason for that, pretty simply, is that Sydney Taylor grabbed hold of a spot in the starting five and hasn’t let it go, and her emergence as a diamond in the rough (and one of the best rookies on any team this season) significantly upgrades my outlook on the Sky’s youth movement. That’s not to say I was down on the young nucleus of Kamilla Cardoso, Gabriela Jaquez and the injured Rickea Jackson, who are all players I like quite a bit, but one thing sorely missing from that group was a bucket-getter in the backcourt, and Taylor looks like she has star potential in that role. The practice facility and Skylar Diggins fiascos (which are, of course, related) are a couple more stains on a franchise that has a tendency to embarrass itself at the highest levels of management, but the team has been competitive and fun to watch while also finding some young players who I think have a chance to develop really nicely together. It’s honestly going better than I expected.

First grading period: 2-11 — F

Second grading period: 5-9 — F

Maybe my personal feelings are getting the better of me here, but I just can’t find anything positive to say other than I’m glad there is a team that is willing to let Brittney Griner play big minutes and have some big nights. Also that we’re about a third of a season away from the Sun ceasing to exist. Aside from Leïla Lacan, who we already knew was good, none of the young players here strike me as future stars. That’s not to say any of them are terrible, but it’s hard for me to imagine that the Houston Comets run something like a version of this roster that’s one year older out there next year and see anything but similar results. Just a miserable death march of a season — you better believe I’m savoring it.

First grading period: 7-4 — A

Second grading period: 11-5 — A

The Wings are the WNBA’s most improved team by an almost comical margin, which owes in part to having been the league’s worst team last year, but it’s still been an incredible turnaround after picking atop the last two WNBA drafts. Dallas has improved its winning percentage by .439 points from last season, with the next-largest jump being Golden State’s improvement by .181 points. Paige Bueckers, the first of those consecutive No. 1 picks in the draft, would probably be second on my MVP ballot behind A’ja Wilson if I was casting one today (I have no ballot) and fellow All-Star starter Jessica Shepard — who has four of the five triple-doubles in the WNBA this season — has perhaps been the league’s best free-agent signing. Unless…

First grading period: 7-5 — C+

Second grading period: 12-3 — A+

Gabby Williams, also an All-Star starter, might also be the best free-agent signing in the league this season, and couldn’t possibly be a better fit as a Golden State Valkyrie. The Valkyries got off to a fairly shaky start, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, where they’ve established their identity since day one last season. They were sitting in seventh in defensive rating at Her Hoop Stats as of the first Report Card. They’re now the WNBA leaders in that category and just had a nine-game win streak snapped which was the longest in the league so far this season. And if you’re talking about All-Star snubs without the conversation starting with Veronica Valkyrie (Burton), you’re doing it wrong. The only questions I have about this team are can it beat Las Vegas and/or Minnesota (it’s yet to do either this season) and can it make enough of its damn layups when the season is on the line (it’s last in 2-point percentage, but the number has been rising of late). If the answers to those questions are both yes, the Valkyries might just win the WNBA title.

First grading period: 6-5 — D-

Second grading period: 11-5 — B+

As I said above, I don’t particularly like it, but this is a basketball team that is starting to show the upside that led many to pick it to win the WNBA title. I still think its deficiencies — namely, playing defense and the fact that some teams play it as well as the Fever play offense — make a championship highly unlikely, but there is no denying that the Fever have been scorching hot on offense of late. There was a period of time last night when I thought they were gonna make a post of mine from Sunday night look pretty stupid by breaking the single-game WNBA scoring record of 127 points (in a double-overtime game), but thankfully they took their foot off of the gas and settled for hanging 123 on the Sun. That said, they’re under .500 (6-7) against teams with winning records, who’d be the other seven teams in the playoff field at this point, and have feasted on the seven teams with losing records (11-3).

First grading period: 8-3 — A

Second grading period: 10-5 + Commissioner’s Cup loss  — A

No need to overthink this one. The last time we did this, I ended the Aces blurb by saying, “don’t be one of the people who looks up in October and realizes they slept on this team.” I will give the same advice once again, although I don’t feel like they’re being ignored to quite the same degree that they were six weeks ago. They’ve also had a few of their surprisingly frequent no-effort nights and lost a nailbiter last night to the Mystics, but the only reason any of that might matter in the long run is that it knocked the Aces a half-game behind the Valkyries for the No. 2 seed in the playoffs. With all due respect to the Valkyries, I don’t think an extra game at Ballhalla would be enough for me to pick against Vegas in a playoff series, nor would Minnesota having an extra home game. Dynasties built around the GOAT A’ja Wilson get the benefit of the doubt that way.

First grading period: 5-6 — F

Second grading period: 5-10 — F+

The Sparks get a little bit of a pass for the fact that Kelsey Plum has missed more games (14) than she’s played in (12), but god awful is god awful. There’s really nothing to be optimistic about with this team going forward, either, which is why it’s in the midst of an in-season search for a general manager. Whoever takes that job is going to find a pretty old roster with a few young players who don’t look like franchise centerpieces. It looks like a total mess in the short term, the long term, and everywhere in between. 

First grading period: 10-2 — A+ (A++++? S+? How high can we go? Are we using a Japanese rhythm game scale, I ask myself?)

Second grading period: 12-4 — A+ (oh dear god, Phee’s even scarier than she was last year and she was already Mothra to A’ja’s Godzilla. Is she MechaMothra now?)

The Lynx had the league’s best record even before Napheesa Collier, the two-time MVP runner-up, made her 2026 debut yesterday afternoon with 24 points and 10 rebounds in just 22 minutes. Phee was the second player in WNBA history with at least 24 and 10 in fewer than 23 minutes, along with Isabelle Harrison two days ago, which is a pretty ridiculous thing to write about a 30-year old league, but we are living in the Age of Offense. If you make it 23 or fewer minutes, you can also include Collier’s Lynx teammate Natasha Howard, who did it in 2022 with the New York Liberty — and isn’t that a great reason to remind you that I predicted that Howard would be an All-Star for the first time since then just a few days into the season (granted in an “overreactions” piece). I wrote in the first Report Card that “Rookie of the Year Olivia Miles will not make me look silly for calling her that months before it becomes official,” but honestly, I think she’s actually making everyone else look silly for not doing so. If Miles retired from basketball tomorrow, she’d still win Rookie of the Year, and no one needs to pretend that isn’t the case. All of this is to say that there remains no real concern here except for peaking too soon, and I still haven’t figured out the antidote to that other than being great for the whole damn season. So far, so good for the Lynx on that front.

First grading period: 8-4 — B+

Second grading period: 7-8 + Commissioner’s Cup win  — D-------

I can’t justify an ‘F’ when my beloved Libs won the Commissioner’s Cup during this grading period and will eventually (rightfully) raise a banner to the Barclays Center rafters to celebrate it. That said, the middle portion of the season was a disaster in pretty much every other sense for a team that still has its sights (rightfully) on winning the actual WNBA title. The effort level has been there for the last couple of games after an embarrassing loss in Indiana on Saturday, even if the execution hasn’t always been. Those two games — both wins — aren’t enough to erase the stink of that loss to the Fever, however, nor the 2-8 regular-season stretch and four-game skid that loss capped off. They’ve got just under 40% of their season to get back to playing at a championship level, which might still just be as simple as getting Leonie Fiebich healthy given they’re 11-5 with her including the Cup win, another win over the Aces, one over the Lynx and dominant wins over Indiana and Atlanta. They didn’t do any of that over the last few weeks, but if the 2025 Aces taught us anything, it’s that you can atone for a lot of sins in a third of a season and a playoff run.

First grading period: 4-9 — F

Second grading period: 6-9 — F

Even as someone who thought the Mercury were going to be a lot worse than most other people did — I said they were going to miss the playoffs in my season predictions post — this has been several orders of magnitude worse than I expected. What I expected was that, first of all, the loss of Satou Sabally was going to hurt a lot more than anyone seemed willing to admit, which has certainly been the case, and that it would be particularly evident when Alyssa Thomas and/or Kahleah Copper inevitably missed time, which thankfully hasn’t happened all that much. The other thing that I thought was possible, and which I believe has been a major problem, was that the WNBA’s shift towards tighter officiating would really hurt what had previously been the league’s most physical team. I also thought that it was entirely possible that shift would prove to be lip service, but as it turns out the W really does feature a brand of basketball with a lot less grabbing and a lot more freedom of movement than in the past, and the Mercury have found themselves left behind on both ends of the floor as a result. 

First grading period: 6-7 — B+

Second grading period: 5-9 — A-

The Fire are being graded on an expansion team curve, and just putting a generally competitive team on the floor that has kept its fanbase engaged and excited is plenty. Only the Valkyries, Liberty and Fever are averaging more fans at home games, so that alone means this team is off to a good start. It’s also found some young players who I think can be long-term contributors, and given it was built with an eye towards youth as opposed to immediate contention, that’s also an excellent development. It isn’t news to ball knowers that Carla Leite or Sarah Ashlee Barker is a real hooper, but it’s still great for the Fire that they seem to be aware of that and planning their future around it. The biggest reason for the improved grade is that I haven’t had to beg for more of SAB since she got moved into the starting lineup not long after the first Report Card. I truly hope that the knee injury she suffered last night against the Wings wasn’t as bad as it looked, but it seems like she has a real WNBA home in Portland, and I love that for her and for me as someone who loves watching her play. 

First grading period: 3-10 — F

Second grading period: 3-13 — B+

This improved grade might raise some eyebrows, but the gist of my first-quarter blurb for the Storm was that, with Dominique Malonga having missed eight games due to a concussion, Awa Fam having barely seen the court yet and Flau’jae Johnson really struggling to start her career, it was impossible to find the upside even for a rebuilding team. I wanted to give them an incomplete, but it would’ve mostly been sentiment getting the best of me. Since then, Malonga and Fam have played quite a bit more together and looked like they are not only playable together, but a perfect fit, while Johnson has had several excellent games lately despite her overall numbers still not looking great. I said this the other day, but it bears repeating that there’s no pair of young teammates I’d rather have in the league than Fam and Malonga, and that isn’t something I could’ve said with confidence six weeks ago. I couldn’t care less about the wins and losses for a team built around a 19-year old and a 20-year old when those two players look as good as these two players look.

First grading period: 6-5 — A

Second grading period: 4-11 — B-

Like the Fire, the Tempo are on an expansion team curve, and if you saw their games in Montreal or in the big arena in Toronto, you know how engaged Canada is in its team. The on-court results have gone south since injuries to Kiki Rice and Brittney Sykes and head coach Sandy Brondello’s calling Angel Reese a “protected species” jeopardized the good will that most people generally feel towards expansion teams. It’s been a successful inaugural campaign for the most part, however, and I would think that will continue to be the case just as long as things don’t get much uglier the rest of the way. Marina Mabrey going ahead and breaking the single-game scoring record the next time she gets to 53 wouldn’t hurt, though.

First grading period: 4-6 — C-

Second grading period: 10-6 — A+

Shouts to the alphabet for saving one of the best for last! The Mystic Babies’ recent surge has been among the most pleasant surprises of the season so far. It’s no surprise at all that Shakira Austin, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen are good, which is reflected in the fact that the latter two were All-Stars as rookies last year. It is surprising, however, that one of the youngest teams in WNBA history has cohered so quickly into one of the best defensive teams in the league, sitting third in defensive rating at Her Hoop Stats behind Golden State and Minnesota. I’m not gonna pretend the offense isn’t among the league’s worst — 14th in offensive rating at HHS, also under 100 points per 100 possessions — but the Mystics have gotten comfortable winning ugly, which is honestly one of the best things a basketball team can be. If you can keep that mentality and start scoring at a decently efficient level, now you’re the Valkyries (eighth in offensive rating). If you get the offense to an elite level, now you’re the Lynx (second in offensive rating). So yeah, this seems like a pretty good place to start.