Happy Tuesday, Ball-Knowers!

There are no WNBA games on tonight which should allow you a second to breathe as we settle into the regular season. We’ve got a lot of good content coming your way here in the next week or two including some features, new segments and a return to the analysis and ball knowledge you know and love.

Before we dive into the newsletter, enjoy a masterclass in meme-ery from the Portland Fire’s digital media folks. It’s good to see the old ways of the internet are still being practiced in some way.

Now, onto the newsletter and some great stories and videos from us and others!

Five Out, in video form…

A note from Haub: The end of Monday’s video concludes with a tribute to an old friend of mine, Adam Munsterteiger, a longtime pillar of the University of Colorado press corps. He unexpectedly passed away last week and leaves behind his wife, Liz, and their children. Adam lived life, whether he meant to or not, with a pattern of leaving things better than he found them. You’d be hard pressed to find a sports journalist who came through CU from around 2008 to 2026 who wasn’t influenced, trained, counseled or coached by Adam. To say his loss leaves a hole in the CU press corps would be an understatement, let alone to the people he personally left a mark on. If you want to help out the Munsterteigers as they navigate the next step of life, either by donating or just sharing, the link to their gofundme can be found here. I greatly appreciate it and know that everyone that has worked with him does too.

Noa Dalzell, SB Nation national WNBA writer and host of WNBA Today on CLNS, joins us on this week’s Luxury Tax…

And available in podcast form for those who love the audio medium…

How about the Portland Fire?

Much like last year’s Golden State Valkyries, one of the WNBA’s newest expansion teams is proving that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There isn’t a traditional superstar to speak of in the Rose City, but somehow a patchwork of Bridget Carleton, Sarah Ashlee Barker, Carla Leite and a host of other rotational players are making themselves known on the national stage. Barker, in particular, has been a revelation that makes you wonder just how sick the Los Angeles front office has to be that she was picked up in the Expansion Draft this offseason. Carla Leite is also turning into a player with a top-end clutch gene and a play-style that is immediately endearing.

I’m not sure if it’s Alex Sarama’s constraints-led-approach to coaching that’s fueling this team or if these players are just criminally underrated. Whatever it may be, the Fire look like a legitimate dark horse for one of the lower end playoff seeds this year. Who know if they’re able to keep this pace up for the entire 44 game season but there’s just something impressive about how well they play together and how much they seem to enjoy torturing the New York Liberty specifically.

Speaking of New York…

I know I wrote in Five Out yesterday that I’m not overreacting to these recent struggles just yet. But in the wise words of a certain detective on the classic ABC soap opera, General Hospital…

Look, I get that injuries are keeping us from really understanding what this Liberty team is capable of. When you are out Leonie Fiebich, Sabrina Ionescu and Satou Sabally it sort of throws everything out of whack. Those are not just three rotational pieces that give you that extra boost off the bench. Those are three key pillars of Chris Demarco’s entire system and everything he’s trying to do. That being said, you should still be able to beat an expansion side with just Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones.

While Stewie has done her part in trying to keep New York in these games, Jones does not appear to be benefitting from this new offense and looks adrift without her reliable PnR partner in Ionescu. But more than that, the Liberty look slow and somehow tired even though the regular season just got started. It makes a bit of sense, given the amount of miles on Jones and Stewart. The problem is that the rest of the roster similarly looks depleted and not up to par defensively. There’s plenty of time to figure it out and I’m not ready to go full doomer just yet.

The clock, however, is ticking.

As we get ready to watch Victor Wembenyama and the San Antonio Spurs take on the Oklahoma City Thunder to decide who will face MY NEW YORK KNICKS IN THE NBA FINALS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 27 YEARS, take a moment to consider the nation of France.

For the last decade or so, the European state has tirelessly built up a major basketball infrastructure and leveraged their former imperial status (complex as that may be) to create a program that is starting to rival Team USA. This WNBA season, it feels like the French players have hit the states like The Beatles in 1964. While they lack the multitude of superstars that the Americans do, they can field a roster almost entirely comprised of All-Star caliber players.

In the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, both nations met in the Gold Medal game of both men’s and women’s hoops. By the hair of their chinny-chin-chins, the Americans won both matchups. But that may not be the case in 2028, or even at the FIBA World Cup this fall in Germany.

Whether it’s up-and-coming stars like Dominique Malonga, Leila Lacan to established pieces like Gabby Williams and Janelle Salaun or future pieces from Carla Leite to Alicia Tournebize, there is a legitimate golden generation of French women’s basketball players on the way. While the French LFB lacks the top-end Euroleague contenders that exist in, say, Spain and Turkey, things are rapidly changing. Academies are springing up and young French women — as well as Africa diaspora kids of former French colonies — are flocking to the game. It makes for exciting hoops stateside but it’s also worth watching as a portent of global change and growth. Don’t be surprised if the 2026 FIBA World Cup is another dogfight between the French and the Americans with a gold medal on the line.

Rachid Meziane, I’m always going to be a fan. But if you’re gonna go out, it can’t be like this…

The Connecticut Sun are 1-7 after yet another blowout loss, this time at the hands of the Golden State Valkyries. Brittney Griner is still working through a rib injury while Leila Lacan is finally slated to play this weekend against the L.A. Sparks.

Obviously the French guard is a force multiplier and Meziane’s system relies, it appears, entirely on her success and ability to orchestrate the offense. But I’m a little concerned that even Lacan’s arrival won’t fix the problems that seem to exist in Connecticut. As of right now, Meziane is rotating through players at a blistering speed, going deep into his bench before the first quarter is even over in some cases.

Where last year this was a Connecticut team that played with the same kind of moxie we are seeing from Portland, this year’s Sun appear to be unsure of themselves and almost tepid at times. It’s a far departure from last year, when Meziane told the media that he had to reflect after the All-Star break and understood that he needed to be more vocal and in control of the flow of the game. I wonder now if he’s over-indexed on that, going from being too quiet himself to not feeling as though he owes an answer to fans, media or even his own players. Some of the press conference hijinks is fun when the vibes are good, and sometimes they can even persist if the team isn’t winning.

What’s happening in Connecticut doesn’t feel as happy-go-lucky anymore, and I would hate to see the last season of the Sun go out with a whimper instead of the bang that the franchise genuinely deserves.

Juste Jocyte reveals first impression of Valkyries before hyped-up debut by Kenzo Fukuda, Clutch Points

The WNBA has a new clutch-time superstar by Noa Dalzell, SB Nation

With the Portland Fire, Emily Engstler is turning into one of the WNBA’s elite defenders by Nik Streng, The Oregonian

Nick U’Ren has earned a look from the Sixers by Harrison Grimm, Liberty Ballers on SB Nation

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