Five Out: The Sky May Be Falling, Stormy Skies in Las Vegas and Caitlin Clark's WNBA Origin Story is Finally Here...

With more data points, we are starting to get an idea of where each WNBA team is as the season starts to fall into a routine.

Candice Ward-Imagn Images

The first Five Out of any women’s basketball season, be it WNBA or NCAA, is always hard because it feels like the overreaction column. You’ve got one or two data points and you’re having to write some compelling conclusions that could be proven either extremely right or extremely wrong in just seven days. With a few more games under every teams’ belt, it’s easier to at least get a nuanced beat on where everyone in the league is as we prepare to make the turn into June.

On this Memorial Day, a big shoutout to all those who have served, are serving, given a little, a lot, or the most for this country.

We’ve got some good content coming your way this week on No Cap Space WBB and are also continually expanding our social footprint as well. So you can find us on basically every platform now, trying to preach the good word of ball knowledge and some (hopefully) rational thought in a sea of algorithm extremity.

Anyway, on to the column!

1. It’s early, but Chicago is in some serious trouble. What happened?

I wanted to wait on smashing the DEFCON button on the Chicago Sky until I saw them play against what I deemed ‘similar’ competition. But what I watched over the weekend against Los Angeles was slightly unnerving. Angel Reese had a decent bounceback after a dreadful 0fer performance in the home opener but it still wasn’t enough. The fact of the matter is that through three games the Chicago Sky just don’t seem to know what they are, who they are or who they want to be.

Given that this is a three game sample size, there is still a lot of grace to be given here. I’m a believer in Tyler Marsh and I don’t necessarily think the offseason moves were that boneheaded. Personally, as good as I believe Sonia Citron to be, I don’t think she would be the difference between this team being decent and being what they look like currently. Chennedy Carter also wouldn’t have been the answer either. If you believe that there is an argument to be made that Teresa Weatherspoon deserved another year because she clearly understood the players and how to get the most out of them, I can get behind that. The biggest concern that I have isn’t actually anything schematic or tactically. There’s a lot of season to figure that out. The more pressing concern appears to be the lack of intensity and signs of frustration after just a week of playing together.

The fact of the matter is that everything makes a lot of sense when you consider this concept: Sky management and ownership expected a year 2 leap out of their 2024 first round picks. Had Angel Reese given us flashes in the first two weeks that she had expanded her range, worked on her interior shooting and became a bit more of a floor spacer, then the vision is clear. Instead, it’s looking more like Reese is actually best as a somewhat undersized center in this league. But if that’s where she may actually fit best what becomes of your actual center in Kamilla Cardoso? Are staggered minutes really what the Sky were thinking when they drafted both players and is it what Tyler Marsh was expecting when he took the job?

While the guard rotation is a clear downgrade from last season, I still see the vision from a roster construction standpoint. But the vision isn’t the reality currently and it’s clear that Courtney Vandersloot might not be a starter caliber guard in this league anymore and that the Kia Nurse/Ariel Atkins combo has to give you significantly more. If DEFCON 1 is the worst things can get, consider us at DEFCON 3 right now. Things can still be figured out but they need to be soon or things could get really ugly in Chicago.

2. Seattle looks invigorated but Las Vegas looks tired. Can the Aces find their groove again?

Alright, so remember what I said in Five Out earlier this month about super teams in year two? Yeah it feels like Seattle is following the model. After an uneven 2024 with a stacked roster of superstar talent, the Storm have retooled and are running out of the gate playing some pretty good basketball. Skylar Diggins is putting up First Team All-WNBA numbers early and Nneka Ogwumike has been unbelievably efficient. Their 102-82 beatdown of the Las Vegas Aces on Sunday even gave us some Dominique Malonga minutes, allowing fans and media the chance to see extended periods of play from the 19 year old French phenom. She’s got a long career ahead but the rebounding, spacing and perimeter shooting were tantalizing glimpses, to say the least.

But however interesting Seattle looks, I’m a little concerned about the Las Vegas Aces.

It’s important to qualify some of this because, again, it’s early. Vegas still doesn’t have Cheyenne Parker-Tyus yet and I think she’ll be a major difference maker when she returns to the team after she gives birth. But there are just too many places on the floor where I feel like the Aces have minimal contributions. Yes, Kiah Stokes made a game winning play against the Mystics in a 75-72 Friday win. But she has yet to score a single point in four games, has three total assists and two total blocks. You can’t be a championship contender and have one of your starting five be out there for rebounds and vibes. It just doesn’t work that way given the talent in this league.

Jewell Loyd has also had a somewhat uneven start to the year as well after a much heralded arrival from Seattle. She had a game winning three pointer in that same game against Washington and a 20 point effort against a still-winless Connecticut Sun. But if the whole purpose of bringing her to Vegas was to give the backcourt a more consistent scoring option than Kelsey Plum then I’m unsure if whoever is running the front office really understood what they were getting. Chelsea Gray, while fully healthy coming into this year, has regressed and isn’t the force multiplier of a point guard she was during the two title years while Dana Evans has also been an inconsistent shooter as well.

I’m glad we finally got to see some Liz Kitley minutes, even if they came when the game against Seattle was well out of hand. But with Stokes having the struggles she’s had, it’s just really surprising that you don’t throw the 6’6 Kitley out there just to see what you have. If nothing else, this is the time to see what sticks even if you might drop a game here or there.

My main concern is about A’ja Wilson whom as of this writing, leads the Aces in every single statistical category. It’s a dominant display from the best player in the league but it’s also somewhat worrying. For starters, do MVP voters start to look at the numbers differently if this is what it’s going to look like each game? And beyond that, can Wilson herself sustain being the straw that stirs the Aces drink for 44 games while every team is throwing the kitchen sink at her night-in and night-out? The sample data is small but what I’d be a little unnerved by as an Aces fan is the idea that the rest of the league worked to make their rosters better while Vegas kind of stood pat. Given the whole goal should be to maximize Wilson’s championship window, I’m left wondering if they did enough or if they’re content trying to run out their core while aiming to do a Golden State Warriors style bridge? Because if they do, that might not yield the results they want.

3. In a loss to the Liberty, Caitlin Clark is starting to begin her WNBA narrative arc (a real one).

My biggest critique of the WNBA’s front office and executive leadership is that sometimes it feels like they don’t believe in their own product the way their diehard fans do. It was an easy thing to try and package Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark as a rivalry especially after the LSU - Iowa national title game in 2023. But the thing that was missed last year by Cathy Engelbert was a simple understanding of how sports narratives work. They need to unfold naturally and, to go a step further, you need to allow your superstars to undergo the hero’s journey.

People just joining the league might not realize it but A’ja Wilson, for example, had that journey and it’s why her ascent to multi-time MVP status and position as the best player in the league feels narratively earned. Our job as media, whether we work for the WNBA or a Substack with a small-yet-mighty following, is to tell stories properly. What we lost in positioning Clark vs. Reese so heavily is that

A. While I personally don’t think they like each other very much it isn’t a rivalry right now in terms of player skill and ability.

B. The teams themselves don’t appear to currently be in the same weight class.

C. Neither have accomplished anything in the league beyond their individual accolades.

The entire narrative positioning of ‘the next big thing’ or ‘the chosen one’ is that there are figurative Gods for them to defeat before they themselves can become one. Caitlin Clark wasn’t supposed to enter the league and be Angel’s rival. She was supposed to be challenging A’ja, Stewie, Phee, Sabrina, Jackie Young, Rhyne Howard and other top players in the league.

Which is why that game against the Liberty felt like the perfect opportunity for all of women’s basketball media to pivot how they discuss Clark and frame her story away from more culture war driven dialogues to more traditional basketball-centric ones. She and Aliyah Boston helped lead a comeback against the defending champs — who look like a juggernaut, mind you — and nearly toppled them in front of 18,000 in Gainbridge Fieldhouse. But on the last possession, she gets locked down (argue with a wall, it wasn’t a foul and definitely wasn’t a shooting foul) by a seasoned vet who joined New York as a missing piece to a dynasty. And now, we have a story. Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston and the young budding upstarts against the goliath that is the most valuable franchise in women’s sports and the WNBA’s reigning champion.

THAT is how you sell women’s basketball. Clark and Boston vs. WNBA Thanos.

National media, you’re up.

4. The MVPhee campaign is already on.

I’ve held off on discussing the Lynx in the last week or so because the quality of opponent just hasn’t been there. Yes, they’re 4-0 and looking every bit as potent as they were last year. But they’ve played an 0-4 Dallas twice, 0-4 Connecticut once and a 2-3 Sparks team that they admittedly breezed by. I never like to do the schedule game but you can only play the teams in front of you. It just is a bit harder to write a weekly column saying that Minnesota is primed for another finals run when I don’t have a single good data point to make that argument for me yet (whereas New York now has two).

With that said, Napheesa Collier’s MVP campaign is already in full swing. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who you play when it comes to individual statistics. And, in the case of Los Angeles and Connecticut, it isn’t as thought their frontcourt is bereft of true talent.

Through her first four games, Collier is averaging 29.5 points and 7.3 rebounds per game on 56% shooting while maintaining the same defensive counting stat averages she did last year. If the points per game number were to hold, it would obliterate A’ja Wilson’s league record 26.84 PPG that was set in her MVP season last year. Now, that is an incredibly lofty proposition but it looks like Phee hasn’t lost a step this year despite burning some energy in Unrivaled this offseason. Like any player that was in the 3x3 league, stamina over the course of the summer is going to be a storyline worth watching but if anyone can buck that trend it’s Minnesota’s superstar forward.

The tricky thing with the Lynx is they are more like the San Antonio Spurs than any other current WNBA team. They beat you through utterly malicious competence. While they’ve looked a bit shakier defensively through the first four games of the year (a storyline worth tracking considering Cheryl Reeve’s preseason comments about the subject), they can just wear you down in so many ways. The re-addition of 6’4 Jessica Shepard has been a massive pickup as she’s given Minnesota a completely new dimension in size (8.5 RPG through four games) and scoring (10.5 PPG). Keep in mind we still haven’t seen Kayla McBride step on the floor yet, gotten just limited minutes for Diamond Miller (who has looked great in the little time she’s gotten) and Courtney Williams isn’t shooting as well as she is capable of to open the year.

Minnesota takes on a surging Seattle team on Tuesday and, after that, I’ll finally have the good data set to see if the Lynx are the challenge to New York that we’ve been looking for.

5. The 2025 rookie class looks ready for the moment and the youth revolution may be here.

‘Reality is coming’ may have been more prophetic a statement than Diana Taurasi was expecting at the time. While the 2024 class clearly has the high ceiling of superstar talent led by Caitlin Clark, the 2025 rookies so far have been a really great addition to the league.

While Dallas has been a little bit of a mess, I find it hard to attribute all of that to Paige Bueckers who has done her best trying to keep the Wings above water in most of these matchups. Truth be told, I’m actually pretty impressed with how high Paige’s floor has been even if there’s been a couple of rough shooting outings sprinkled into the current sample size.

Chauny, long known as Paige’s biggest hater on this site, actually coined something on Ball Up Top that I think might age extremely well as time goes on. If Caitlin’s best current WNBA analog and ceiling is Diana Taurasi then it’s looking more and more likely that Paige’s comp could end up being Sue Bird. Both, as longtime women’s hoops fans know, had incredible careers filled with championships and All-WNBA selections. But fundamentally, they were different players who gave you different floors and ceilings each night. While Clark is probably a bit more of a true point than DT was, I think the analogy is apt given the first few games of the season for both. CC can give you the ‘wow’ moments Taurasi did while Paige is a high-floor engine that can command an offense and occasionally give you some real nice scoring performances while doing everything else well.

Past the top pick of the draft, we got glimpses of Dominique Malonga on Sunday and what she can be in this league. Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen are both fantastic players, so much so that Chicago Sky fans are now openly wondering if the Notre Dame guard would’ve solved their backcourt issues. Iriafen, for her part, has shown to be a double-double machine who is scared of absolutely no one in this league. Te-Hina Paopao was starting for Atlanta before her injury while Sarah Ashlee Barker, Saniya Rivers and Aneesah Morrow are banking good minutes for their respective franchises.

There’s been your usual derisive jokes that the WNBA is getting out of its ‘plumbers and electricians’ era right now and while I think that’s unfair to the superstars of past ages, there’s a kernel of nuance to consider. For starters, every prodigal women’s basketball player from post-Title IX on could play at this level now. While the strength and conditioning programs are different then vs. now, I do believe there’s less of a true athleticism gap between, say, Cheryl Miller and Caitlin Clark than between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lebron James. For that reason, I think women’s hoops is unique in that superstars can truly transcend any era here.

But the rub with that is that the depth of the league is clearly better than it’s ever been, powered by each subsequent rookie class. The WNBA has long been considered the hardest league to make a roster in but the tricky component of that assessment is that true talent isn’t always necessarily the thing that keeps you on a roster. Just ask Chennedy Carter. What’s been incredible to see about this 2025 class so far is just how ready for the moment they seem to be. 2024 had the same vibes to them too and, if you’re up on game at the college level, the 2026 class and beyond will have the same pool of talent. This doesn’t need to be used as a cudgel or a bad-faith assessment of past rotational talent in this league. If anything, it’s a reason to celebrate youth investment in women’s basketball and women’s sports in general where girls are getting similar opportunities for growth as their male counterparts. Now, as they come of age and enter the pros, they’re ready for the moment. And we all get to benefit.