Hello, hoopheads! The day that many said would never come has finally arrived, and I don’t mean Olivia Rodrigo kinda sorta bringing Lilith Fair back from the dead. No. what I’m talking about is WNBA home teams having gone 3-1 last night to bring the league’s collective home record to 64-62 (.508). That makes this glorious Tuesday the first day this season which home teams have entered with a winning record after going 1-2 on opening night and 7-21 out of the gates. They’re 57-41 (.582) since then, which is quite a bit better than home teams did during the 2025 regular season (.559 win percentage), but not good enough to be on pace to beat last year’s mark. If the league keeps winning home games at the recent rate for the rest of the season, it’s on pace to go 183-147 (.555) at home, which would be just a hair behind last year, atho well ahead of any season from 2021 through 2024. Anything pre-Wubble feels pre-historic and, in this context, involves New York Liberty home games in Westchester, and I prefer to pretend those never happened.
The most notable thing about last night’s games, at least to me, was probably something that didn’t happen. The Atlanta Dream hit a wall in the fourth quarter and came up six points shy of becoming the first team in WNBA history to score 100 points in four straight games, although they still held off the Toronto Tempo by a 94-87 margin and won their fourth straight game. That occurred despite scoring just 13 points in the final frame, mostly due to the 81 points Atlanta scored in the first three quarters. The Tempo also held the Dream to a 13-point quarter in last Sunday’s first quarter, but Atlanta scored an eye-popping 170 points in the 60 minutes of basketball the two teams played between those 13-point frames. Elsewhere, the Indiana Fever bounced back from consecutive losses to the Dream by holding off the Phoenix Mercury 86-77. Indiana improved to 8-2 against teams behind it in the standings compared to 2-5 against the ones tied with or ahead of it. Elsewhere still, the Dallas Wings surpassed their 2025 win total by improving to 11-6 with a 112-110 overtime win at Seattle in the most entertaining game of the night just as long as you’re not tasked with coaching either team on defense. There was another game, but unfortunately the Connecticut Sun won it, so let’s move on.
Tonight’s lone WNBA game is a preview of next week’s Commissioner’s Cup title game, albeit on the wrong team’s floor, and it’s the first matchup of the season between my beloved New York Liberty (11-6) and the Las Vegas Aces (12-4), who’ve combined to win the last four WNBA titles. They’re also among the favorites to win this year’s title, according to the oddsmakers, and also according to the tier list in my mind which has four teams (throw in Atlanta and the Minnesota Lynx) on essentially equal footing as the top contenders. We haven’t had too many showdowns between those top teams so far — five of them to be exact — but the Aces can improve to 3-0 against the other three teams tonight, and would have a win over each. They took down Atlanta by a point in a fantastic game on May 17 and Minnesota by 3 points in an even better one 10 days ago, so the wins weren’t exactly dominant, but they counted just the same. The Liberty are playing just their second game against one of the other top contenders, having won by 14 points at Atlanta 12 days ago. Rounding out the head-to-head records, Minnesota is 1-2 and Atlanta is 1-3.
The Aces and Liberty come into tonight’s game in a three-way tie with the Dream for second in net rating according to Her Hoop Stats (+7.4 points per 100 possessions), which is narratively satisfying even if the gap between the Aces/Dream/Libs and the Lynx (+14.6) challenges my belief that the four teams are on equal footing. The league website’s ratings, which I find less trustworthy AND less narratively satisfying in this instance, have the Lynx with the same rating as HHS, then Atlanta (+8.9), New York (+6.9), Golden State (+5.7), Dallas (+5.6) and finally Las Vegas (+5.4). Back to HHS numbers from here, unless I decide I need the league website for on/off ratings, which I can’t get from HHS. The Aces lead the way in offensive rating at HHS with a mark of 110.3 points per 100 possessions while New York is 3rd at 108.1 (Minnesota is in between at 110.0). The Liberty have the edge on defense, where they’re again third allowing 100.8 points per 100 possessions, while Las Vegas is sixth allowing 102.9. That said, the Liberty have had some issues at the defensive end of late, giving up four ratings of at least 108 points per 100 possessions in their last five games — three straight since Sabrina Ionescu returned to the starting lineup — while Las Vegas held Phoenix and Golden State to ratings under 100 in its last two games.
I want to preface the following by saying that Ionescu is my favorite hooper on the planet because of what she’s meant to the Liberty over the last seven seasons, but unfortunately, I think Bestie is right and Liberty coach Chris DeMarco New Coach Man needs to send her back to the bench. The Liberty played poorly and just barely hung on to win Ionescu’s first game back in the starting lineup, then lost the next two, and while both losses were competitive, I don’t think one can ignore that a team that had just won seven straight games in pretty dominant fashion (including a very impressive win in Atlanta) has since played three straight one-possession teams against teams currently in 8th place or worse. Three games is a tiny sample, but the Liberty have suffered at both ends of the floor in the 80 minutes Ionescu has played in that span — here come those WNBA dot com on/off ratings — with their offense dipping from 127.2 points per 100 WNBA dot com possessions when she’s off the floor to 104.8 when she’s on it while the defensive rating shoots up from 98.8 when she’s off the floor to 120.5 when she’s on it. Do all the math and what you get is an astonishing decline of 43.9 net points per 100 WNBA dot com possessions from +28.3 when Ionescu was off the court all the way down to -15.6 when she was on it. Particularly given that it took until Sunday’s last-second loss in Los Angeles for New Coach Man to apparently believe Satou Sabally had gotten back into sufficient game shape to start, it just seems a bit absurd to be starting Ionescu when she’s clearly not there yet. The other issue is that it’s meant fewer minutes for rookie Pauline Astier, who I believe should be this team’s starting point guard at full strength, and who has a +9.7 net rating differential when she’s on the floor as opposed to off over the last 11 games (since the start of the Liberty’s recent win streak) and +29.3 differential over the last three games. And now, back to the regularly scheduled Her Hoop Stats numbers.
The Aces are largely rolling along and doing Aces things, which it’s clear at this point includes the odd night when they get fucking pasted by an opponent that comes in more focused. They’ve won two in a row by 29 combined points since the last of those nights, a 30-point loss in Dallas last Monday. As previously mentioned, the reigning champs have locked back in on defense after letting the Wings put up an offensive rating of 120 points per 100 possessions one game after sneaking past Minnesota despite letting the Lynx put up a mark of 118.3. With its dominant wins over Phoenix and Golden State, Las Vegas improved to 11-0 when holding opponents to ratings under 110 points per 100 possessions, with the average margin sitting at +13.2 points per game in those 11 wins. In other words, the Aces pretty much just roll when they play even a little bit of defense, although the quality of the opposition has seemingly had something to do with that. Seven of those 11 games have been against Connecticut, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Portland and Seattle, who’d all miss the playoffs if they started tonight. On the other hand, teams currently in the top five in the standings (including my four title contenders and Dallas, which sits tied with the Liberty) have scored at a rate of 110+ points per 100 possessions in three of four games against the Aces so far. It feels a little odd to wrap this up with my only real player-centric comments being a condemnation of my fave, but we’re also about 1,500 words deep and I’m sleepy. A’ja Wilson is the GOAT, discuss amongst yourselves.