Hello, hoopheads! The second quarter of the WNBA season will officially begin when the first two of tonight’s three games reach their respective second quarters at around 7:30 ET, putting 82.5 of the 330 regular-season games in the past tense. The first quarter came to a close, for all intents and purposes, with a pair of lopsided home wins yesterday for the Toronto Tempo and Los Angeles Sparks, bringing the league’s collective home record to 40-42 (.488) after a 7-21 (.250) start to the season. Without a whole lot of storytelling to do, I decided to take Sunday evening off from recaps, but I can tell you that the Sparks snapped a three-game skid while holding the Portland Fire to just 29 points after halftime in an 89-72 rout and Toronto jumped out to a 29-15 edge after a quarter against the Chicago Sky, then never looked back in an 85-68 win behind 25 points from Brittney Sykes. If the playoffs started today, which I’ve already explained to you that they very much do not, the Tempo would be the No. 7 seed and would join last year’s Golden State Valkyries as the only expansion teams ever to make the playoffs. There’s still a long way to go, but the Tempo are strong enough at the offensive end (3rd in offensive rating according to Her Hoop Stats) that they might well have staying power.
The last team into the playoffs, if they started today, which they still don’t, would be the Indiana Fever (5-5), who visit the Washington Mystics (4-5) (7:00 ET, Peacock/NBCSN which I don’t believe exists/local affiliates) and are trying to get back above .500 for the season. Indiana and .500 have been best friends for the last couple of years, as it’s landed on that mark on four of five possible opportunities so far after doing it in nine of the first 10 last year. The Fever are also 32-32 (.500) with Caitlin Clark in the lineup over the course of her three-year career, including playoffs (32-30 in the regular season). There’s no question that Clark has the ability to make an impact on a box score (and, in turn, a basketball game) in ways that pretty much no one else who’s played the sport has specifically been able to do. — she’s averaging 8.5 assists per game so far in her career, the only WNBA player averaging more than 7 in 50+ regular-season games. The more that I think about Clark, however, the harder it becomes to avoid thoughts of Brett Favre, another athlete who racked up unprecedented statistics of both the positive and negative variety over the course of a career whose merits will be debated for as long as people argue about sports. Thankfully, Clark hasn’t committed welfare fraud that I’m aware of, but she does share Favre’s propensity for turning the ball over — Favre is the all-time NFL leader in interceptions while Clark is averaging 5.3 turnovers per game so far in her career, the only player averaging more than 4 in 50+ regular-season games. She also plays defense about as effectively as the Hall of Fame quarterback once did.
None of this is to say that the Fever can’t win with Clark — the Green Bay Packers managed to overcome Favre’s many faults and win a Super Bowl early in his career, after all. Consistency continues to be elusive, however, and I just don’t know if the Fever are capable of meaningfully improving their defense as long as they play Clark alongside Kelsey Mitchell, another player who struggles on that end, in the backcourt. Indiana fell to 0-5 this season when allowing an opponent to post a triple-digit offensive rating (5-0 when opponents don’t) in Saturday’s loss to my beloved New York Liberty, who scored at a rate of 101.2 points per 100 possessions despite having one of the worst 3-point shooting nights in team history. Rest assured, with the exception of two misses by Breanna Stewart, who I am BEGGING to accept that her long-distance shot is never coming back, these weren’t the kinds of 3-pointers the Fever wanted to see Liberty players taking. They were good looks for good shooters who just could not buy a make after Marine Johannes canned a couple of early ones. It easily could’ve been a night when Indiana got genuinely torched on defense had even two or three more rattled in instead of out.
Compounding Indiana’s overall rough night on defense, which also saw the Liberty go to the line 40 times and match a season-low with 11 turnovers, was the fact that Clark, Mitchell and Aliyah Boston, Indiana’s “big three,” combined for 44 points on 34% from the field. The Fever would be lucky to even sniff .500 when that trio puts up those kinds of numbers. As it stands, the Fever offense (9th in the WNBA at 102.8 points per 100 possessions) is just barely outscoring their defense (8th, 101.6 points allowed per 100 possessions), but neither end of the floor is near where at least one of them needs to be for a team to realistically be talked about as a championship contender. Ideally you’d be elite at both ends, but mediocre at both ends definitely won’t cut it. The might not even have all of their stars tonight as they try to get things moving in the right direction. Clark is listed as probable with a “back issue” that will likely be on every status report for the rest of time to keep Indiana out of hot water if it decides not to play her on a given night, but Boston is genuinely questionable due to a knee injury that has been lingering since the spring and briefly caused her to leave Saturday’s loss.
The Mystics have alternated wins and losses over their last four games, and basically over their entire season with the exception of one set of back-to-back losses last month. If their pattern holds, they’ll come out on top tonight and leapfrog Indiana in the standings while getting themselves back to .500 at 5-5. Expectations being the subjective and often unfair beast that they are, Washington getting itself back to a win percentage that basically defines mediocrity would have to be seen as a successful start, while I don’t think anyone would say that about Indiana’s season so far. The Mystics are coming off of their worst showing of the season, a 109-77 loss to the Atlanta Dream on Saturday, but did welcome second-year star Sonia Citron back to the lineup and enter Monday with a clean status report. Citron scored 18 points on 5-for-10 from the field on Saturday and memorably led the Mystics with 30 points in an instant-classic 104-102 overtime win at Indiana last month. Clark had 32 points and 10 assists to go with 4 turnovers and tied that loss with a 3-pointer in the final seconds of regulation while Citron very nearly won it in regulation with a half-court shot that was released just after the buzzer sounded.
Tonight’s other two games both look like one-sided affairs on paper, but I remain steadfast in my mission to give some sort of preview to all 330 contests this season. More people will be in a position to watch tonight’s late game than the one coinciding with Indiana’s, as the Seattle Storm (3-9) visit the reigning WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces (7-3) (10:00 ET, USA Network/local affiliates). The Aces escaped with their third straight win in an outstanding game against the Golden State Valkyries on Saturday behind a 28-point, 14-rebound double-double from the GOAT A’ja Wilson and 27 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, 6-of-8 shooting from deep and just 1 turnover from Jackie Young, the fifth time someone has had 25/5/5/6 without multiple turnovers in a game, with Young the fourth player to do it. Seattle has lost five straight games, posting an offensive rating no higher than 90.1 points per 100 possessions in any of them, which is pretty bleak.
Starting simultaneously with the Fever and Mystics, my Liberty (7-4) visit the last-place Connecticut Sun (2-10) (7:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass), and it’s a testament to the fact that programming executives hate the Sun and Mohegan Sun Arena just as much as I do that this is the only game of the night not being made available to a national audience. That said, the Liberty will probably see their four-game win streak snapped, because that’s the only thing I feel safe saying when they head to that miserable casino basement lest the Researcher’s Curse (often misnamed the Announcer’s Jinx, which does not exist) bite me in my dumb ass. New York still won’t have Sabrina Ionescu, the one player in WNBA history to have two games like Young’s last game, as she misses a sixth straight game since her lone appearance so far. Connecticut won’t have future Hall of Famer Brittney Griner, who is perhaps this team’s only redeeming factor. Go Libs.