Without being too hyperbolic, this has been one of the better WNBA late season playoff races I can remember. While there’s been plenty of jockeying in the standings at this point in prior years, there’s something about there being three (maybe even four) true Finals contenders in the mix. But before we dive into that, let’s welcome you back to Five Out now that we’re reformatted and back to our normal style.
As we mentioned last week, the column will now include a Monday podcast that comes from our Sunday live wrap shows on YouTube. It’ll cover the biggest games of the day and some of the biggest news items between Thursday and the end of the week. Ball Up Top: A WBB Podcast will now be dropping every Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday to give you two evenly spaced out podcasts that talk women’s basketball!
Keep an eye out for more Overtime Select coverage this week as well. Chauny was down in Atlanta for the weekend getting you caught up on the next generation of women’s hoops stars and the WNBA legends they’re working with this summer (and that’s before we start to get into NCAA previews). In short, it’s a great time to be a women’s basketball fan!
Now, to the column…
1. DiJonai Carrington Has Found New Life In Minnesota and Made The Lynx A Juggernaut.
Legendary Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski once said this about Christian Laettner…
“His energy is like a furnace. If you harness it and use it the right way, it’ll heat your entire house. But if you let it get out of control, it’ll burn the whole f&%king thing down.”
It was a quote that’s been stuck in my head lately when thinking about DiJonai Carrington. She’s intense, proud and occasionally stubborn but wants to win above all. Players (and people, in general) like that, in my experience, typically crave positive structure whether they know it or not. They’ll require a coach that can nurture them but be willing to head off their intensity by maintaining a rigorous routine and program. It’s why when the 27 year old guard was traded from Dallas to Minnesota, I said on our YouTube show that it was probably going to turn out well for her.
In Minnesota, Cheryl Reeve has a system and the hardware to back up her methods. In Dallas, Chris Koclanes is a first year head coach that is still trying (and sometimes failing) to figure out what it takes to run a team at this level. It makes a lot of sense that Carrington immediately arrived in Minneapolis, took a bench role and fit seamlessly into what the Lynx do. In just her first three games, she’s averaged a shade over 13 points, four rebounds, two steals and 1.7 assists. For someone that is, in essence, the seventh player in the rotation that’s pretty damn good.
Defensively, she gives the Lynx an entirely new dimension and can seamlessly operate alongside any of Kayla McBride, Courtney Williams or Natisha Hiedeman and allows Reeve to play smaller when a team like New York throws out bigger but potentially slower lineups. It’s why in the third quarter of Sunday’s game Minnesota was able to run the Liberty ragged, take advantage of screens and switches and hit deep three after deep three. For all of the flack that Carrington has gotten this year from media members like me — sometimes fairly and other times unfairly — she’s an interesting teachable moment for managers and workers at every level. Fit matters and there are sometimes things that we can extrapolate from the outside looking in but can’t necessarily draw a true conclusion on until a tenure has ended. I still maintain that she and Chris Koclanes brought out the worst in each other and it made for one of the worst player - coach marriages we’ve seen in the WNBA in quite some time. But generally, we’re rooting for everyone here and while Koclanes’ fate remains to be seen, it’s nice to see Carrington end up in a role that probably was always best for her.
2. Atlanta’s Dream Season Continues As They Cement Finals Contender Status…
I’m ready to say it.
Atlanta is a bonafide WNBA Finals contender.
With eight wins in their last ten games, including three key dubs over Phoenix and a notable road victory over Minnesota, I am officially Smesko-Pilled. The Dream have flirted with this distinction for most of July and August but this recent run of form gives me hope that they actually might be the team we’ll see in the Finals against Minnesota instead of New York. Stack up the resumes and their case becomes pretty solid.
While there’s been the occasional head scratching loss to teams like Dallas, Golden State or Connecticut, most of their dropped games have come against the top teams in the league. Their series against Minnesota and New York, in particular, are quite revealing when you look at the game flow and final score. Atlanta is one of the few teams in the WNBA that has beaten the Lynx this year and their two losses to New York have come by five and four points respectively. If not for a go-ahead jumper by Ceci Zandalisini with 3.9 seconds to go in late July, the Dream would be riding an eight game win streak.
Naz Hillmon is the Sixth Woman of the Year frontrunner and locked in a tight battle with L.A.’s Azura Stevens for Most Improved Player. Allisha Gray remains a First Team All-WNBA lock and will likely finish in the top four of MVP voting by season’s end. Even with Jordin Canada picking up an injury in the closing minutes of Sunday’s game against Phoenix, rookie guard Te-Hina Paopao stepped in and immediately showed up in two critical defensive possessions. Mind you, this is a playoff level performance with Rhyne Howard being ejected after going 0-7 in a ramp up game after a long injury absence. When she (and Brittney Griner, for that matter) are fully healthy come the playoffs, the sky is truly the limit for Atlanta.
I’ve been critical of the Dream’s front office and ownership in recent years, frustrated that a franchise that I perceive to be one of the cultural centers of the WNBA had been languishing in the maw of 19-21 records. But boy, did they ace every single component of this past offseason. From the hiring of Karl Smesko to the signings of BG and Jones, the integration of Canada back into the lineup and the emergence of Allisha Gray, the Dream may be one of the best stories in the league right now. On the floor, it feels like they’ve proven themselves worthy of contender status. Now we get to see what the rest of the year has in store.
3. Meanwhile, The Wings and Sky are Waiting For Their Nightmare To End…
Dallas, Los Angeles and Chicago took swings, and for that I think they deserve a degree of respect for trying. Many teams tried to microwave deep playoff runs this year with the expectation that they’d put themselves in prime positions to entice free agents in the 2026 cycle. So far, L.A. has proven to be the only one of the three that is seeing a degree of return. While the Sparks appear to be ready for a stretch run that could see them sneak into the playoffs after a 5-13 start to the year, the Wings and the Sky are in a death spiral that could lead to a wide variance of outcomes this offseason.
Let’s start with Dallas, who may not admit to tanking but sure as hell looked like they got the memo in the second half of Sunday’s game against Washington. In Scooby Doo, Velma would always exclaim ‘jinkies!’ when discovering a clue. For basketball fans, we have ‘Hinkies’ whenever we get an idea that someone is deliberately commanding the tank. If that’s the case, Curt Miller deserves a measure of credit for not trying to hang on to something that clearly isn’t working. But will he apply that same standard towards his head coach, who has at best looked in over his head and at worst looked completely unprepared for the job? I’ll tell you this: it is a really bad sign when players are having to openly beef with fans who are chanting every night for your assistant to replace your head coach. Paige Bueckers has gotten some flack for not elevating this team the way we expect some Rookies of the Year to do but I really don’t know what she can do when there is just no frontcourt defense whatsoever. Juxtaposed against Caitlin Clark, who is Paige’s Aliyah Boston? And while Bueckers has Arike Ogunbowale, I personally find there to be a huge difference between trying to win with two All-Star-or-Better level guards and one All-Star-or-Better level guard/big combo. Which is also why I’d caution folks on a ‘Pazzi’ reunion in the DFW. If the tank is on, it’s for Lauren Betts or Awa Fam.
Meanwhile in Chicago, Jeff Pagliocca probably needs to be fired. I don’t like to openly call for people’s jobs in the column but this situation has gotten so egregiously bad that I don’t know how you can allow this to continue if you’re Michael Alter. What boggles my mind is how good Pagliocca’s tenure started relative to where it is now. He managed to get a mighty haul for Kahleah Copper and Morgan Bertsch, signed Chennedy Carter and traded Sika Kone for the pick that eventually became Angel Reese. When the draft came along, he managed to snag the highest ceiling big (Kamilla Cardoso) and then lucked into Reese at pick seven.
The Marina Mabrey trade netted them two more first round picks and it felt like, in spite of a slightly chaotic 2024 season, the Sky were on the right track. But then, in spite of all that goodwill, Pagliocca fires Teresa Weatherspoon, brings on Tyler Marsh and begins making a litany of trades and signings that have aged about as well as Donatella Versace. What makes things even more nonsensical is that the roster doesn’t even seem constructed for what Marsh wants to do as a head coach. So what exactly was the plan here? Where is the alignment?
Dallas at least has some picks in future drafts while the Sky mortgaged a big piece of their future on a present that is as bleak as any in the WNBA. In time, we’ll figure out who carried the most culpability but both fanbases deserve better than the nightmare they’ve been living through this year.
4. Dominique Malonga Has Arrived And Our Collective Reality Is Coming.
Congratulations to Dominique Malonga for winning the honorary Rickea Jackson ‘Where the F*** Has This Been All Year!?’ Award. For those that remember last season, Jackson started in a bench role for Los Angeles as it became clear the tank was on. But by the end of the season, the former Tennessee Vol went on a tear that would’ve put her in Rookie of the Year contention if not for the fact that her stat sheet might as well have been two different seasons.
This year, that’s been Dominique Malonga’s story. The concern with her being drafted by Seattle was always the idea that she’d be buried on the bench behind Ezi Magbegor and Nneka Ogwumike as the Storm tried to make a win-now title push. But lately, we’re starting to see the 19 year old French national come into her own, making WNBA history as the youngest player to ever have a 20+ point double-double in a game. To remind us that it wasn’t a one-time fluke, Malonga turned around and did it again the very next matchup. Everything about her as a player is tantalizing. She moves well, finishes at the rim with great touch, recovers on defense and is able to affect plays with her length and athleticism. It was always going to take her a second to adjust to the American style of play but it’s very clear that she’s the future of the sport.
I understand why Los Angeles would’ve rather dealt the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft away once it became clear that most of the best point guards after Paige were returning to the NCAA. But it’s hard to not to sit and wonder what a frontcourt with Malonga, Cameron Brink and Azura Stevens would look like in Lynne Roberts’ system. In any case, the Storm can rest easy knowing that even if this season doesn’t finish the way they had anticipated, they have a franchise cornerstone to build around for the next decade. Oh, and we still haven’t even gotten the in-game dunks yet.
To quote the venerable Diana Taurasi, reality is coming. God help us when it does.
5. America’s Team, TV Coverage and The Indiana Fever…
Back in 1979, NFL Films created a moniker — ‘America’s Team’ — for the Dallas Cowboys. Essentially, the argument wasn’t based in on-field achievement (although Tom Landry’s Cowboys were one of the best teams of the 70’s) but rooted instead in TV ratings and fan exposure. With a fanbase that was based in the DFW and extending out through almost the entire center of the country, the Cowboys were on national TV almost every Sunday. More often than not, they would win that game and give fans with no team in their immediate vicinity a consistent group to watch every weekend and root for. Hence, ‘America’s Team’.
In my mind, there are a few other franchises befitting of that title in other sports. The Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, New York Yankees and (as of late) the L.A. Dodgers come to mind. Basically, they’re the teams that people in any state will pick up and root for because it’s what they watch on TV and are accustomed to seeing.
While watching the Fever dismantle the Sky on CBS this weekend, I couldn’t help but wonder if the WNBA’s decision to try and center Caitlin Clark’s singular stardom was actually creating Indiana as ‘America’s Team’ instead. The risk in TV programming in any sport, but particularly basketball, is centering a player above all and then they get injured. This Saturday’s matchup between Indiana and Chicago, for instance, was completely bereft of the advertised star power that I genuinely wondered how many people would be willing to tune in. But what viewers were treated to was an Indiana team excited to embrace the spotlight. Lexie Hull, Kelsey Mitchell and Sophie Cunningham hit three pointer after three pointer while Aliyah Boston ran the floor, smoothly finished around the cup while Caitlin Clark was on the bench booing her own coach. While serious WNBA fans know exactly what Chicago is this year, most casuals that are tuning in — for what’s become a somewhat manufactured rivalry, I might add — don’t. So when they see a Caitlin Clark-less Fever bury their advertised rival in a fun way, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was games like this that create the conditions for an ‘America’s Team’ to sprout. If you believe that criteria can be fulfilled by TV programming and wins in those windows as opposed to repeated success and title over years and years, then it sure feels like we’re headed to that conclusion.
In some ways, I think the positioning of Indiana in this way may be a net good for our overall discourse. Since she arrived in the league, conversation around women’s basketball has narrowed in on Caitlin Clark for a variety of reasons. Since she’s been injured, however, it’s allowed for Kelsey Mitchell to make a push for First Team All-WNBA and Aliyah Boston to assert herself as a top five big in the league. Lexie Hull and Sophie Cunningham are capturing the attention of America — some for basketball reasons and some not — while Clark is able to actually show some of the humor that she didn’t seem allowed to display last year.
I’m sure there are non-Fever fans or others that have rolled their eyes at this portion of the column and if so, I can understand why. But, to me, the best thing a league can do in today’s media ecosystem is to make the teams bigger than the players themselves. The NFL is a behemoth because the shield and the franchises are the stars. The NBA has wild variance in attention and enthusiasm because it centers its players above its teams. The WNBA, as it currently stands, feels like it’s done a good job of marrying those two concepts together. If that means we have a Fever as ‘America’s Team’ concept instead of Caitlin Clark as ‘America’s Player’, I think that’s a net good for how we discuss, debate and cover the W.
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