The WNBA’s marathon of playoff games continue and our postseason coverage at No Cap Space tries to keep up with the blistering pace of women’s basketball news. In the last week, we were treated to a slate of regular season awards (and the discourse that inevitably follows it) as well as some of the broader discussions around the W from the Connecticut Sun to the Chicago Sky.
Noelle Quinn and her staff were let go in Seattle, New York Liberty players seemed mum on their commitment to the franchise ahead of a box office free agency period as some of the best elimination playoff games in recent WNBA history were played. In short, there’s never been a better time to be a women’s basketball fan and a subscriber to No Cap Space. As our W coverage rolls here and on YouTube, we also are ramping up our NCAA coverage heading into October.
Our Luxury Tax interview series continues this week, with South Carolina superstar Joyce Edwards and UConn transfer Serah Williams join the show. Those that pay into the ‘Ball-Knower’ tier here on NCS will get early access to those interviews along with a companion feature on each player. Keep an eye out and stay tapped in with us on all ends of the WBB spectrum!
Now, to the column…
1. Let’s Talk About Awards Season…
A’ja Wilson made history with her fourth WNBA MVP honor, making her the first player in league history to earn such a distinction. On top of that, she joins Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lebron James as the only American professional basketball players to win four MVP’s before the age of 30. And how’s this for a cherry on top? Wilson is the first player in the history of the W to average over 20 points and 10 rebounds in two straight seasons.
That’s the kind of dominance we make GOAT arguments for.
Personally, I find it hard to root against Wilson. She, in a lot of ways, has the pro athlete hero’s journey that we ask of our athletes. While the former South Carolina superstar was immediately impactful from the moment she set foot in the W, the path to being a face of the league wasn’t easy. The Aces had a few postseason false starts, with Wilson herself having a “she’s great but can she win the big one” moment in 2022 with a possible game winner being blocked at the rim by Brittney Griner in the playoffs. The Vegas forward’s response over the next three years was to be one of the most dominant players that the league has ever seen.
If you’re purely assessing value, I think it’s hard to vote against Wilson for MVP. She’s clearly the best player in the W right now and, when off the floor, the Aces simply aren’t a title contender. Here’s where the voting needs a degree of consistency…
Alanna Smith was named a co-Defensive Player of the Year, Natisha Hiedeman didn’t get Sixth Player of the Year and Cheryl Reeve got just two votes for Coach of the Year. There’s a legitimate question about what other Lynx players end up on the All-WNBA list. If a voter’s argument against Napheesa Collier was rooted in value and based on the comparative success of Minnesota without her in the lineup, shouldn’t the voting boost other players and coaches? Reeve, in particular, feels like a somewhat egregious omission even with Natalie Nakase rightfully deserving the honor. It just was surprising to see it not end up that close.
As we head into the next few years, it would be nice for us to get the voter transparency we require. At the very least, it would put an end to some of the general accusations of conspiracy or a shadowy cabal of voters aligned against specific players. At the absolute best, it lets players truly get to sit in their well-deserved award and not have to answer questions about anyone or anything else.
2. Seattle’s Coaching Search Is The Most Important in Franchise History
Noelle Quinn and her staff were let go by the Seattle Storm after a second straight underwhelming season and early playoff exit. Despite stacking the deck with Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins in 2023 free agency, the Storm haven’t been able to recapture the form of a consistent finals contender that they’ve enjoyed for the better part of the last two decades. Quinn, a former player who stepped almost immediately into a WNBA coaching role, was a good-but-not-great coach who seemed to be developing a reputation for fostering a poor team culture. Jewell Loyd left in 2024, alleging a toxic work environment, while exit interviews from this past week led fans to draw a variety of conclusions about what happened this year.
In some ways, it doesn’t portend anything positive for the WNBA. There are now no black women in head coaching positions and it doesn’t feel as though there is a super flush pipeline of talent on the way up. A lot of the ‘next generation’ in the college ranks, from Joni Taylor to Niele Ivey, have some degree of risk to them. The group below them, including Ashley Langford at Tulane and Dawn Thornton at Alabama A&M, probably need a couple more years before being attractive to a WNBA franchise. There’s former W players like Kristi Tolliver and Briann January, who should be among the first phone calls. Then there’s women in the NBA like Sonia Raman, Lindsey Harding Jenny Boucek and Mery Andrade who have the bonafides to return. The question is if they have the desire.
Whoever Seattle picks, it has to be a hit. As the complexion of the league changes, franchises come online and the balance of power starts to shift, the Storm cannot let themselves be left in the dust. That means Talisa Rhea, Seattle’s General Manager who has skated a bit on criticism of the last two years, needs to ace the hire and make some big signings in free agency. There’s a massive choice to make here and I’m curious how the coaching hire provides insight into her calculations. Do you throw it all out and build around Dominique Malonga, who has all the makings of the next league superstar? Or do they decide to continue to bridge generations, keeping Nneka and Diggins while trying to transition Malonga into the next woman up? History tells us that doesn’t usually work and the 19 year old French phenom is simply too good to mess around with. The Storm, for decades, have been the gold standard of the WNBA. But after a few years in the wilderness, and a gem of a prospect locked in on a long term, cost-controlled contract, it feels like there’s a fork in the road for Seattle. Hopefully, they choose right. This league is better when the Storm are contenders.
3. Indiana, Rising Tides and The W’s Cinderella Team
The Indiana Fever have, somehow, become the Cinderella team of this playoffs. Without a large chunk of their backcourt, including a top 3-5 player in the league in Caitlin Clark, the Fever managed to walk into Michelob Ultra Arena and steal Game One of the WNBA Semifinals away from arguably the hottest team in the league right now. Kelsey Mitchell put multiple Vegas players in the torture chamber as she led Indy with 34 points on 12/23 shooting, including a 4/6 outing from three point land. Natasha Howard and Aliyah Boston controlled the boards, combining for 22 of the Fever’s 35 while Odyssey Sims proved (once again) why she should be on a full-time WNBA roster.
It was a remarkable statement win for a franchise we half expected to just be happy to be there. Stephanie White has done a remarkable job coaching up this group, particularly getting point guard after point guard to step up when needed in the wake of Clark, Syd Colson, Aari McDonald, Chloe Bibby and Sophie Cunningham’s injuries.
In a lot of ways, this was the intended result of the Caitlin Clark effect. The former Iowa superstar brought a tidal wave of eyeballs and interest in the sport and the idea was that those eyes would eventually latch on to other teams or players, bringing the overall interest in the league up. While there’s been some less-than-enjoyable consequences of that, what we’re seeing happening in Indiana right now is what the Clark Effect looks like when it works. After years of uncertainty, the Fever brought in Kelly Kraskopf and Amber Cox to run the team. They went out and got White and brought in a bunch of players from Natasha Howard to Bri Turner, who are making a difference now. Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston’s are household names in the Indianapolis metro area and people are tuning in from all over the country to see a Fever team that doesn’t even feature Clark on the floor.
I know that it’s sometimes hard to look past the bad faith actors that entered the league with Clark. But the reality, when we get off Twitter and off the worst parts of the internet, is that most people found a love and enjoyment of this game through her and are now willing to stay without her. A little while back in a prior Five Out, I wrote about how that phenomenon was helping boost Indiana to the same type of geography and TV exposure was helping them enter the Dallas Cowboys/America’s Team territory. It feels now like we’re really getting there. The Fever are people’s gateway drug into the W. Given the fact that ratings exploded (1.8 million viewers on average this regular season, per ESPN) without Clark (and Angel Reese, to a different extent), I think it’s pretty easy to conclude that people didn’t turn their TV’s off en masse when the biggest young stars in the league sat on the bench. That’s good for the league, the playoffs, the Fever, and yes, all of us as well.
4. The 1-1-1 Format For Round One Was a Success. What Comes Next?
I can understand Karl Smesko and Becky Hammon. If I were a higher seeded team in the playoffs, I’d despise the 1-1-1 format of the first round as well. All of the advantage of two games at home effectively disappears and can be a lot trickier for teams that felt a high seed would buy them a better chance to advance to the semifinals. Now that the WNBA has charter flights, I think some of the concern around travel is unfounded. But it does make things harder if you don’t have the juice to really make a deep playoff run.
To that end, I absolutely love it.
To me, it separates the contenders from the pretenders. While still a three game series, every matchup has a little bit of win-or-go-home to it. Each elimination clash felt like something pulled straight out of March Madness. The SAP Center in San Jose felt, at times, louder than Ballhalla. Gabby Williams gave us a flashback to the 2024 Summer Olympic gold medal game (unfortunately for her, I might add) while Atlanta’s finish with Indiana was so chaotic I don’t think I can adequately describe it in print. Even in Phoenix, where the game didn’t come down to the last ten seconds, we saw individual greatness the likes of which we haven’t seen all season. Alyssa Thomas put up a historic 20-11-11 in an elimination game while Breanna Stewart put the entire Liberty franchise on her back in the fourth quarter and finished with 30 points and 9 rebounds. It was the perfect advertisement not just for the league but what the semifinals are likely to promise us.
5. Did New York’s Title Window Already Close?
I don’t necessarily blame Sabrina Ionescu for being a bit mum on whether or not she’ll stay with the Liberty. Assuming there isn’t a work stoppage while the collective bargaining agreement is being worked out, this upcoming free agency period will be the most pivotal in league history. If you’re a player that isn’t under contract and you’re committing to a franchise straight up, then you maybe need some words of wisdom from your agent. Ionescu is likely to have a multitude of suitors this offseason, particularly from the upstart Golden State Valkyries (Sabrina is from Walnut Creek, just outside of the East Bay). If she does decide to try something different, it calls into question the title window for the Liberty and what this big three may look like in the future?
Breanna Stewart was able to turn back the clock in the fourth quarter of their first round elimination game but got (statistically) next to no help to try and keep New York’s dream of a repeat alive. Jonquel Jones shot 1/10 from the field and 0/5 from three while looking completely out of sorts mentally. The Liberty’s supporting cast of Leonie Fiebich, Kennedy Burke and Emma Meesseman combined for 4/16 from the field while Natasha Cloud tried to contribute in different ways than just the scoring column. Meesseman, in particular, had a brutal series and calls into question the wisdom of assuming that her addition made the Liberty unbeatable (a take that I eat with shame).
The clear player missing this season isn’t Kayla Thornton — although she has been very missed — but Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. While she had taken a back seat as a scoring option with Ionescu taking more of the attempts in recent years, Laney-Hamilton’s defensive versatility and ability to be another player that could get her own shot in a pinch was vital to their title run in 2024. Without her, the holes were pretty clear and, without Thornton to help patch them, it made New York beatable in a way that even I wasn’t expecting.
So what comes next? Stewart is on the other side of 30 now and hasn’t looked like the same player that was on a GOAT trajectory a few years ago. Ionescu is an effective albeit flawed guard that you’d put in the same category as Kelsey Mitchell, Satou Saball and Kelsey Plum, to name a few. They can give you 37 as easily as they can give you 11 on 4/18 shooting. Jones has so many moments that remind you she was the 2021 MVP but something just didn’t click this year. Some of that can be explained away by the revolving door of rotations due to injury this year. The idea that teams can just flip the switch when everyone comes back isn’t really rooted in reality and a secret to that 2024 run was their health as a team. But with free agency providing a siren song of more money, options and flexibility, New York has a chance to either retool the franchise or go back in with this group of three and try again. The question is if they want the same.
