Happy Tuesday, Ball-Knowers!

If you spent some time away from social media this weekend, consider yourself blessed beyond measure. The dialogue and discourse following the Indiana Fever’s loss to the Portland Fire ranged from measured to outright insane. Skip Bayless, the original debate goblin who immeasurably destroyed American media writ large along with his bloviating counterpart Stephen A. Smith, got duped by a fake tweet that Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White was fired. It took all of 30 seconds for the franchise to refute that as Bayless officially enters his ‘Fat Elvis’ era.

But beyond the mess, there was a lot of really interesting things that happened in the world of women’s basketball this week. We’ve got a lot of really cool things to touch on and some great content ahead, so tap in and prepare to share.

For now, we leave you with the Monday (well, Tuesday. It was a long start to the week…) column to get yourself mentally ready for what’s to come this week in the WNBA.

Off we go!

We will have Boots on the Ground for a few games and events this week. Overtime Select, the centerpiece event for the top prep women’s basketball players in the nation, goes down in Atlanta on Friday and Saturday. Chauny will be on hand to get you up to speed on the next generation of stars. Our resident Hater-in-Chief will also be present for Mystics vs. Dream the following day.

Tyler and I will be live on YouTube late Thursday night after Atlanta and Indiana face off in Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese’s first matchup of 2026. We are also planning on having Greer in Los Angeles on Friday providing coverage for the Wings first trip this season to Southern California.

All that to say there’s some great subscriber content coming your way, so gird your loins!

After a blowout opening night victory over Las Vegas, the Phoenix Mercury have turned into the proverbial pumpkin. Outside of an eight point win over Chicago, it’s been loss after loss for the Merc as teams have attacked the rim relentlessly. New York bested them twice in the Big Apple, Atlanta held them off late while the high flying offenses of Los Angeles and Toronto won in a pair of track meets. Last night’s historically bad blowout loss to Minnesota is a new low point.

As I mentioned last week in the newsletter, the biggest concern is twofold: defensively, Phoenix is getting crushed and especially at the point of attack. They aren’t picking up assignments down court in the same way they used to and are getting beat off the dribble time after time. The other problem is two of their best three point shooters, Kahleah Copper and DeWanna Bonner, have not gotten out of their early season slump. They’re averaging 16.1% and 17.1% from beyond the arc, respectively. While Bonner hasn’t been in the starting lineup as of late, there is a question about usage for the 38 year old scorer that is worth asking.

The good news is that help is on the way. Monique Akoa Makani returned to the lineup and made a difference in her first few games back, even as she adjusts to the new officiating this year (fouled out vs. New York on Friday). Just this Monday, Phoenix also brought back Lexi Held, who was a nice rotational piece that was a part of their WNBA Finals run last year.

Nate Tibbetts’ job is not in jeopardy in any way just yet but the clock is starting to tick. We’re somewhere between 8 and 10 games into the year. Unfortunately, in a 44 game season that’s anywhere from 18-25% of the year already gone. Any coach can argue that it may take some time to experiment early in the year but at some point you have to figure out what works and what doesn’t. As the what gets separated from the chaff and playoff teams keep winning games, Phoenix is rapidly finding the hole they have to climb out of is getting larger and larger. Monday night’s absolute shellacking at the hands of Minnesota all but proved that. Tibbetts seems to believe that there’s time to right the ship, but with a June that includes two games against Indiana along with matchups with Golden State, Las Vegas and Dallas, to name a few, it’s going to have to get figured out and fast.

Since Jose Fernandez got on the mic and dropped his now infamous bar about selfishness in his Dallas Wings locker room just three games into the season, his team has played like one of the best in the WNBA. While Alanna Smith, one of the Dallas’ high priced free agency signings, is still struggling to the point of not even being in the starting lineup anymore, things are otherwise going pretty smoothly. Azzi Fudd has put up two 20+ point performances in her last three games and appears to be settling into the flow of the WNBA. Jessica Shepard has proven to be a revelation and leads the team in rebounds and assists, while Arike Ogunbowale has proven wrong every detractor (It me, I am every detractor) who wondered if she would be willing to accept a role that included less shot attempts.

For all of the early hand wringing about whether or not Fernandez’ blunt and brash presser style would work at this level, it appears that the former USF head coach adapted pretty quickly to his surroundings. He still displays a Gregg Popovich level of cantankerousness that I find enjoyable and, personally, I hope he never loses it. That act can get tired when you’re losing but is the type of Curt Miller-coded entertainment that is really fun when you’re winning.

While the big names are stealing the show in the headlines, I do think it’s worth noting that the real X-factor in this Wings resurgence is Awak Kuier. In games where she plays over 20 minutes, Dallas is 3-0 this season. The Finnish forward was out against Seattle with a wrist injury but she adds a dimension of length, scoring and defensive intensity that many fans have been waiting to see since she got drafted in 2021 at the age of 19.

I don’t know what all this means in the long run for Dallas but surely they’re now a team that can officially be in the contender conversation with some of the other top four units in the WNBA. Time will tell if that means Finals contender, but they’re at least in the mix one month into the regular season.

No, I’m not saying that Leila Lacan is the MVP of the WNBA. But if you’re tying value specifically to the idea of “This team quite literally can’t win without this player starting” it feels pretty hard to argue against the young French guard’s contributions. You want a statistic to prove this? I got you.

Last year, Connecticut won 11 games in total. Nine of them came with Lacan in the lineup. Against Los Angeles over the weekend, the Sun put up season highs in steals and blocks (11 and nine, respectively) and that was with their 24 year old starting guard in foul trouble. She scored the team’s first seven points and, when she did head to the bench because of early foul trouble, the Sparks put up a 12-2 run in the span of two minutes.

That’s not to say that Lacan is the type of valuable that A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark or other superstars might be. And yes, some of this value is also a bit of an indictment on Connecticut’s front office and coaching staff and their inability to find a way to win without her. But you can’t argue that when Leila Lacan is on the floor, the Sun are a completely different team and one that resembles the plucky unit many of us fell in love with last year.

As Lacan returned, Hailey Van Lith hit the waiver wire. Connecticut did turn around and re-sign the former TCU guard to a development contract, so all was well that ended well. But it continued a conversation that has been simmering underneath the surface of the WNBA for the better part of the last two seasons. With more money coming into the league and higher salaries along with them, the concept of the W being a truly global league punctures some of the myth around our own American athletic exceptionalism.

Whether it’s the Golden State Valkyries or, lately, the Portland Fire, I’ve noticed a somewhat alarming trend of xenophobia, trending from subtle to outright, around the league in response to the influx of European players coming over. Now, in defense of the skeptics I do think there is an interesting thread to pull on regarding the potential short-sightedness of WNBA front offices. Yes, you probably have a better shot of a higher floor when you sign a 26+ year old journeywoman that has been plying their trade in Europe for the last handful of years over a young college player who is just finding their footing in the pros. Just ask Phoenix what the downsides are of stacking the deck with win-now pieces at the expense of your future.

And yet, if the goal is to win games then front offices don’t seem to have much of a choice. There’s a lot of really good international players that haven’t ever made their way over to the states because the money simply hasn’t been there. Shoot, imagine if Alina Iagupova had million dollar contracts when she was in her prime. The Ukrainian superstar, who for my money was one of the best guards in the world in her time, may have actually taken the L.A. Sparks up on their offers and taken the plunge to come to the WNBA.

It also doesn’t seem fair that the two teams that have taken the brunt of criticism around prioritizing European players supposedly over Americans are two expansion franchises in Golden State and Portland, who are operating under much different parameters than, say, a legacy franchise like the Sparks or Liberty. As WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert seeks to globalize the game and export women’s basketball to the rest of the world, I anticipate more international arrivals to the league.

How will that be received for a country of fans that genuinely have owned the basketball spaces since its inception? In the way that the English claim soccer as their birthright in the global dialogue, Americans do the same with basketball whether they know it or not. As France continues to catch up and other nations around the world start to pour money and resources into their women’s programs, are we prepared for a world where our favorite college players will have a steeper mountain to climb competitively? There’s a very understandable concern — the WNBA has had a history of, shall we say, ‘whitewashing’ some of the cornerstones of this league, from its LGBTQ+ to its Black representation — that certain kinds of players may be prioritized over others. But when you look at the pastiche and diversity of women’s basketball globally, we may actually end up looking at a more intersectional game than we ever have.

Alright, let’s talk about the Indiana Fever…

In some ways, I’m really glad that the day job occupied me enough that I didn’t have this thing written on Monday morning. My column on this whole thing probably would have aged like milk in light of the practice comments Caitlin Clark and Stephanie White gave to the media after practice that afternoon.

When it comes to the interaction the Fever superstar had with her head coach on the bench in Indiana’s surprising loss to Portland, I don’t have much of an opinion on it. This is a player that has vacillated anywhere from passionate to punkish since high school and I don’t expect her to stop now. As I’ve mentioned in prior columns, she reminds a lot of Christian Laettner in that if a coach is able to channel Clark’s energy properly, she’ll take a team to a championship. If they don’t, they run the risk of disrupting the entire flow of a team. Our buddy Sean Highkin over at Rose Garden Report has an even better and more timely comp: Luka Doncic. A singularly gifted offensive superstar with defensive shortcomings whose antics with officials can grate on people over time if left unchecked.

It is worth noting, however, that while Clark’s antics on the floor can grate many a WNBA fan, there really isn’t a lot of meat on the bone that would lend itself to her being a pain in the ass in practice or around the team facility. In fact, pretty much every player in Indiana that gets interviewed about the subject says that the superstar guard is a pretty good hang, all things considered. That’s why, while I don’t love when she’s popping off in game, I don’t think it has an outsized effect on what the actual dynamics of the team are.

With that done and dusted, let’s talk about the defense. Ultimately, that’s really the issue here.

The WNBA as a whole doesn’t hunt one-on-one matchups the way their male counterparts do. There are certain players, Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu among them, who have long been targeted throughout their careers. Clark is no different and has legitimately worked on that aspect of her game for the last few seasons in the W. But what Stephanie White seems to want is a player that can adequately replicate the system that won her a lot of games in Connecticut. Namely, a defense that can switch one-through-five, can switch at-will, trap and give good help to force turnovers and get out in transition. While many want the so-called ‘Caitlin Clark offense’, White seems to be really married to the idea that it comes when you’re able to clamp on the other end of the floor first.

Some may disagree with that ideology, and I don’t begrudge them for it. Anyone with a working brain can see that Clark’s a legitimately difference making offensive player so of course you’d want to see a system that prioritizes her strengths over trying to make her into something she’ll never be. It’s why you’ve seen a lot of ‘Man, what would she look like with Sandy Brondello as her coach?’ (You don’t want this, by the way).

At some point though, White needs to figure out when it’s time to stop experimenting and commit to a lineup and set of rotations that work. There’s plenty of speculation around the calculus of who plays when and why and which players are trying to be spelled to keep them healthy throughout the year. But in a 44 game season there just isn’t a huge window of time to be able to figure out what’s best. The Fever are almost 20 percent of the way through the season and sitting outside of the playoff bubble. I openly wondered last week if the Golden State Valkyries matchup was an inflection point in which the Fever would start to figure themselves a bit. As a token of gratitude, Indiana turned around and lost their next two games including this surprise against Portland.

Does it mean the sky is falling? No. It does, on the other hand, mean that the Fever organization have to figure out what works for everyone here.

Clark is in the unenviable position of having to try and stick to her controllables while not giving power to two major uncontrollables: the media, who cover her with the same vigor (for better or worse) that they did Lebron James in the early 2010’s, and her own fanbase, who amplify and drive those calls for White to be cut loose.

White needs to figure out her rotations and how to better hide Clark defensively, or at least give her some more help through less switching or better rotations so this type of hunting doesn’t continue.

And the Indiana organization has to wake up a little bit. Last season, even before her injury, it seemed as though there was vertical alignment and an apparatus in place to protect Clark’s mental and a commitment to making sure everyone is paddling in the same direction. I’m not sure what’s happening early this season, but Indiana has built up a lot of goodwill after a few post-Tamika Catchings years in the wilderness. I would absolutely hate it if they squandered that opportunity.

I love this from Meg Gustafson, clipped by our buddy Brenna Greene over at KOIN6 in Portland. As someone that’s doubted Meg myself, there’s a lesson here in betting on yourself and how fit really can be the thing that makes or breaks a player in a professional sports league.

When Rachid Meziane was hired in Connecticut, I was told by some Euroleague coaches that he could best be defined as ‘fiery’. After a first season of surveying the league, we are finally getting Belgium National Team Rachid Meziane. And I love it.

Chicago Sky (3-5) vs. Washington Mystics (3-4): 7:30 PM ET

It may not be the best matchup on the docket but this game really interests me for a number of reasons. The Sky have tapered off after a 3-1 start to the year and clearly miss Rickea Jackson’s scoring prowess. Washington, on the other hand, are still trying to figure out what to do at the point guard position. Alicia Florez, the young Spanish signing, is starting to cut into Georgia Amoore’s minutes as the former Virginia Tech/Kentucky star has had a really rough go of things lately. It feels like one of those semi-important early season matchups as both feel like they’ll be jockeying for the same low-seed playoff spots come the end of the year.