Hello, hoopheads! It took five days, but a WNBA home team finally won a game in America’s 251st year when the Los Angeles Sparks spoiled Caitlin Clark’s (fairly miserable) return to the lineup last night in a much-needed 106-92 rout. That snapped a league-wide 11-game home losing streak which included hard-fought home losses earlier on Tuesday night for the Toronto Tempo (against the Golden State Valkyries) and Connecticut Sun (against the Minnesota Lynx, whose Cheryl Reeve became the WNBA’s all-time winningest coach in the regular season). Nneka Ogwumike led Los Angeles with 24 points while Rae Burrell had 22 (two shy of her career-high) and Dearica Hamby added 21, the first trio of Sparks with 20+ points in a game this season. Hamby has been part of six such games as a Spark, including the franchise’s only one with four 20-point scorers last August, with Ogwumike having been part of the same number. One or the other of them has been involved in all 11 three-20-point-scorer games in Sparks history, but last night was the first time they did it together.
Last night’s losses by Connecticut and Toronto briefly brought the league’s collective home record to .500 at 80-80 before LA’s win pushed it back above water. If home teams don’t win at least two of tonight’s three games, the league’s collective home record will be no better than .500 heading into the beginning of the (literal) second half of the season tomorrow. Technically, the first game to end tomorrow night is the exact halfway point of the season (game No. 165 of 330), but the second half’s first game tips off simultaneously, with another game to follow them tomorrow night. For all intents and purposes, after tonight (ooooooooh) we’re halfway there. One of tonight’s home teams is favored by a double-digit margin, but it’s also the matchup I’m most interested in as the Seattle Storm (6-17) visit the free-falling Atlanta Dream (12-9) (8:00 ET, Prime Video).
The Dream, who were my picks to win the WNBA title, have dropped five in a row entering the final game of the first half of their season, coming up short of 105 points per 100 possessions according to Her Hoop Stats in all five losses including four offensive ratings under 100 and three under 90. The Dream have slipped to seventh in offensive rating at Her Hoop Stats as a result, although their actual rating (104.1 points per 100 possessions) isn’t drastically different from last year (105.9) when they were second. The drop in ranking is more a function of the league-wide offensive explosion than anything else, but it does increasingly look like the Dream are being left behind as a result. They’re 0-6 when held under 100 points per 100 possessions this season and 5-8 (.385) when held under 105, which you probably already know is my new threshold for a good performance. The Dream are 7-1 (.875) when they get to that threshold, but they fail to get to 105 points per 100 possessions at the fifth-highest rate in the league (13 of 21 games, 61.9%). Only the Sun (77.3%), Washington Mystics (75.0%), Portland Fire (71.4%) and tonight’s opponent the Storm (65.2%) join Atlanta in coming in under 105 in at least 60% of their games. On the other hand, six teams have gotten to 105 in at least half of their games — Dallas, Indiana, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minnesota and New York — while Golden State has gotten there in 11 of 23 games, which might as well be half. I know which of those groups of teams I’d rather be hanging out with halfway through the season, and it’s not the one that has Atlanta in it.
Seattle has won three of five since a franchise-record 11-game win streak, with one of the wins in that span also being the third loss in Atlanta’s skid. That was specifically the one time Atlanta had an offensive rating over 100 during this streak (102.3), but only while allowing Seattle to put up 105 points and a rating over 128 during a 15-point win Saturday before last. Flau’jae Johnson led the Storm with 24 points on 9-for-12 from, with Awa Fam (21 points, 8-for-9) and Natisha Hiedeman (20, 6-for-10) joining her to form a trio of 20-point scorers. It had been a bit longer since the Storm had a 20-point trio than the Sparks, as Seattle’s previous instance was all the way back in May 2024 (Jewell Loyd, Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins, a trio which feels like a distant memory from another life). The one before that, way back in June 2021, was perhaps even more mindblowing in retrospect, if only because it involved Stephanie Talbot (as well as Loyd and Breanna Stewart). Johnson has scored 20+ point three times in the last five games the first three times she’s done that in her career and coinciding with Seattle’s three wins in that span (pay no mind to the 12 points she scored in the two losses in that span combined). Dominique Malonga also had 16 points on 7-for-13 from the field in the previous meeting with Atlanta, which was without hyperbole the best night of the Storm’s rebuild so far. They lost the next two games in pretty dispiriting fashion, but bounced back last game with an 18-point win at Los Angeles. That win came behind an offensive rating of 96.5 points per 100 possessions (which should tell you how bad the Sparks were to lose by double digits on this occasion) and was Seattle’s first win this season when failing to post an offensive rating of at least 100 points per 100 possessions (it’s now 1-12 when that happens).
The second half of tonight’s BezosVision doubleheader features the Indiana Fever (12-9) at the Phoenix Mercury (8-13) (10:00 ET, Prime Video/local affiliates). The Fever are, of course, on a back-to-back following last night’s loss in Los Angeles, and are not expected to have Caitlin Clark 24 hours after she made her return from a two-game absence. The “Fever are better without CC” crowd will certainly make some hay if the Fever win for the third time in four games, with all of the wins coming without her, and it’ll be hard to blame them. I’m of the opinion that Indiana is a low-end playoff team with her and would be a low-end playoff team without her, but I don’t think it’d be better. Phoenix is coming off of an 11-point home loss to Chicago on Tuesday after winning three in a row and four of the previous five. The Mercury would do themselves a huge favor by getting a win tonight over one of the teams from whom they’re ostensibly trying to steal a playoff spot, particularly with visits to Las Vegas and Minnesota the next two games.
Speaking of the reigning champions, the Las Vegas Aces (15-6) visit the Portland Fire (9-12) (10:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass) for their first game since making waves by waiving Chennedy Carter. She was one of the best stories of the season’s first month, mysteriously absent due to an unexplained illness for most of the second month, and now has been unceremoniously released early in the third month, marking her fourth early exit from a WNBA franchise since being drafted six years ago. There was definitely a sense when she signed that Las Vegas understood it would be a project to make it work with Carter and was willing to work with her, and also that this might well be her last chance in the WNBA, but I hope that she lands on her feet whether in the W or elsewhere. Las Vegas signed former Fever developmental player and Vanderbilt guard Justine Pissott to a rest-of-season contract after waiving Carter, but Pissott is not yet with the team while Janiah Barker remains out, Dana Evans is listed as doubtful to make her season debut and the GOAT A’ja Wilson is listed as questionable with the “right leg” injury (aka rolled ankle) that’s kept her out for the last 10 days. That’s the same status as the night before the last three games (including the Commissioner’s Cup final), all of which Wilson missed, but they’ve had the last three days off and I wouldn’t expect Becky Hammon to tell us anything more about her superstar’s status than she’s required to. Portland snapped a three-game skid in its last outing on Saturday, which was its only game since its quadruple-overtime loss at Washington on June 28. The Fire are 4-9 since a 5-3 start, however, and lost by 16 points in the Aces’ previous visit last month (albeit with Wilson scoring 32).