Hello, hoopheads! While the WNBA’s odd-numbered membership makes it impossible for every team to wrap up Commissioner’s Cup play on the same day, the league came about as close as it could to scheduling that scenario with six games tomorrow night. That bonanza includes the cup finales for the entire Western Conference, as well the finale of the New York Liberty, who have clinched the Eastern Conference’s place in the title game. As a result, the one game on tonight’s slate doesn’t have a whole lot going for it in terms of stakes, although I can’t imagine the league hates having a standalone Indiana Fever game on the schedule. We’ll get to that one a bit later, but we need to talk about last night first.
Both the most notable and surprising of Monday’s three results was undoubtedly the Dallas Wings’ 96-66 thrashing of the Las Vegas Aces, whose six-game win streak was snapped while Dallas improved to 2-0 against the reigning WNBA champions. It’s certainly worth a mention that both of the losses that bookended the Aces’ win streak were Wings home games, but it’s an impressive feat for the WNBA’s most improved team wherever the games occurred. Dallas jumped all over Las Vegas from the opening tip, pouring in 29 points in the opening quarter and 56 before halftime, while all five starters finished with at least a +22 rating. The lowest-scoring among them, Awak Kuier (7 points) had the best rating (+26), and I point her out first because she was notably inserted into the starting lineup for the first time this season. Even as a forever-fan of Villanova women’s basketball GOAT Maddy Siegrist, whose spot Kuier took, I must admit it was a savvy move on the part of first-year Wings head coach Jose Fernandez, as Kuier seemed to disrupt pretty much everything the Aces wanted to do early in the game. You may or may not remember that Aces coach Becky Hammon name-dropped Kuier in a diatribe about the officiating following the previous loss to Dallas, but I’m guessing that neither Fernandez nor Kuier had forgotten.
Arike Ogubowale led the Wings with a game-high 22 points on 6-for-16 from the field to go along with 7 assists and 2 steals without a turnover, while both Jessica Shepard (15 points, 15 rebounds, 9 assists, 4-for-6 FG) and Azzi Fudd (19 points, 8-for-9 FG) had hyper-efficient nights. Paige Bueckers returned to the lineup from a one-game absence with one of her quieter scoring nights, putting up 10 points on 4-for-11 from the field, but she added 5 rebounds and 7 assists, also without a turnover. She and Ogunbowale became only the fifth pair of teammates in WNBA history to have at least 10/7 without a turnover and the third ones to do it in the regular season. The only others with such a game, chronologically, were the Minnesota Lynx’s Lindsay Whalen and Maya Moore in the first round of the 2014 playoffs, the Los Angeles Sparks’ Chelsea Gray and Odyssey Sims in 2017, the Aces’ Chelsea Gray and A’ja Wilson in the 2021 semifinals and the Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart in 2022. Those are some names!
The Aces are still in the driver’s seat for the Western Conference’s spot in the Commissioner’s Cup title game despite the loss, with a win tomorrow at Phoenix being enough to clinch it. That seems like it’s pretty attainable given the Mercury’s recent play, but they’ve also handed the Aces a beatdown this season, so you never know. An Aces loss would mean that the Lynx can clinch the title game berth with a concurrent win at Los Angeles. If both the Aces and Lynx lose, one of them is going to limp into the title game by virtue of who wins the also-concurrent Dallas-Golden State game, because that team will pull into a 3-way tie with Minnesota and Las Vegas and determine the tiebreaker. If it’s Dallas, the three teams have a split 1-1 record and Minnesota advances because it’s way the fuck out in front on point differential at +111 while Dallas is +51 and Vegas is +14. It’s theoretically possible for the Wings to make up that 60-point gap in one night, but it’s not happening. On the other hand, if the third team tied with Vegas and Minnesota is Golden State, Las Vegas advances because it’s 2-0 in the three-way head-to-head. Either way, the Aces’ six-game win streak came to an abrupt halt, and Wilson also lost her 11-game streak scoring 20+ points, as she finished with a season-low 18.
Elsewhere last night, the Lynx bounced back from their Saturday loss to the Aces by snuffing out the Portland Fire 107-74. Minnesota won for the ninth time in 10 games since a 2-2 start, with Natasha Howard’s 18-point outing leading seven players who scored at least 11 points. Rookie of the Year Olivia Miles was relatively quiet compared to her recent scoring outbursts, finishing with 12 points after scoring at least 19 points in the previous five games, but added 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and 3 turnovers. It’s still early enough that I feel like getting too caught up in her season averages compared to other rookies all-time is premature, but for what it’s worth, her averages of 18.1 points and 5.9 assists per game would make her the third rookie to average 18/5, and this the third straight season with such a rookie, as the others were unsurprisingly Bueckers and Caitlin Clark.
Also cruising to a home win last night were the Golden State Valkyries, who continued their dominance of the rival Los Angeles Sparks with a 78-58 drubbing and earned their first three-game win streak of the season. The Valkyries haven’t fallen to the Sparks since last season’s opener, which was Golden State’s inaugural game. Gabby Williams took the team-high with 16 points while Veronica Valkyrie (Burton) guided the effort with 12 points, 3 assists, 2 steals, 2 blocks and 2 turnovers. Burton also continued her streak of starting every game in Valkyries history, which is up to 60 straight, including a pair in last year’s playoffs. The Sparks had a three-game win streak snapped and fell back to .500 for the season.
And that brings us to tonight’s lone game, which sees the Toronto Tempo (7-7) visit the Indiana Fever (8-5) (7:00 ET, USA Network/local affiliates), who are looking for a fourth straight win. While the wins are what ultimately counts, the Fever can’t — or at least shouldn’t — be happy with having let a trio of teams among the bottom five in the standings (Washington, Chicago and Connecticut) erase double-digit leads and hold fourth-quarter leads during the first three wins in this streak. Toronto is better than those teams, and perhaps most importantly, quite a bit better on the offensive end. The Tempo are, in fact, ahead of the Fever in offensive rating, while the Mystics, Sky and Storm are all ranked 12th or worse. Toronto is currently sitting 5th at 106.5 points per 100 possessions according to Her Hoop Stats, in the middle of a pretty tight pack of teams ranked from 3rd through 8th, while Indiana is a few points per 100 possessions behind that pack in 9th at 102.9. The league website, which uses a slightly different formula than HHS to estimate possessions, has Toronto in 7th at 108.3, with a bit of separation between it the teams in 3rd-through-6th, and Indiana a bit closer to Toronto at 107.1, although the Fever still sit in 9th in those rankings. Whatever the exact number of points is that the teams actually average per possession (or 100), the Fever probably don’t want to endure a lull of the type they did in the last three games against an offense as potent as Toronto’s can be. On the other hand, the Tempo have dropped two in a row, with that offense sputtering out a bit and the team falling to 1-6 when HHS has it with a rating of 105.1 or worse in a game while it’s 6-1 when it’s higher than that.