Happy Thursday, Ball-Knowers!

As promised, Ball Up Top: A WBB Podcast is here and nestled into its new Thursday home. Chauny and Greer are in the chairs this week rattling off some quick thoughts on the Toronto Tempo’s first ever WNBA game as well as the breakout players whose agendas will be pushed by us at No Cap Space this year (More on what I mean by that below).

Onto the newsletter!

Our WNBA Team-by-Team previews started this week with the Portland Fire…

Continued with the Toronto Tempo…

The Connecticut Sun…

And now the Seattle Storm…

As I’m sure you’ve already seen, ESPN put out their Best 50 Players in the WNBA list. I never think of much of them as anything more than fun bits of engagement content. Do they sometimes get used purely for the express purpose of rage baiting? Of course. But I’d imagine it’s part enough to wrangle four or five people and get a good consensus on every single player.

But it did get my brain going and I made a list of my own. Whenever I make a ‘Best of’ list, I try to consider the totality of what I’m voting on. I don’t necessarily think accolades (All-Star vs. All-WNBA etc etc) really matter as much as your stats, advanced stats, team success and eye test. Basically, a way to try and measure the tangibles and intangibles of what makes a player great. It’s an impossible and ever-changing metric, with the criteria being different from person to person.

That’s what makes it all so fun!

So here’s my own Top 10 list. I’ll have 11-20 and 21-30 in future newsletters. Feel free to agree, disagree, comment, share or forward to others with your own. Have fun with it!

It’s still preseason, and there’s only so much you can glean from players that score a lot of points and win the effort battles. These are full speed games, mind you, but I just think there’s a different energy that teams take into the regular season and eventually playoffs. Will Flau’jae Johnson be able to regularly replicate these stat lines in just a few weeks? It’s anyone’s guess. But I have a feeling she’s going to figure it out regardless.

More than anything, the kid is just an unbelievably joyful individual. I remember interviewing her during Team USA tryouts for the 2025 FIBA Americup and I came away really impressed. Not just by the fact that she was a great interview but that she just really does seem to put all of herself into every interaction she has.

Channeled in the right way, that can make a star. I mean, just look at this picture.

I know there was a lot of crossover cultural opportunities if Johnson had been selected and held on to by the Golden State Valkyries. But over the last week I can’t help but wonder if Flau’jae might prove to be something of a Damian Lillard-type in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a bit of similarity in playstyle, Johnson is a bigger of a hip-hop star than Dame ever was, but they both seem to carry themselves with a serious sense of personal values and loyalty.

Where Lillard’s more reserved style seemed to fit the quiet vibe of Portland, I’m fascinated at how Flau’jae manages to break into Seattle’s cultural lexicon. This is a place that has a term — Seattle Freeze — for the antisocial phenomenon that occurs when out-of-towners move to the city. But if there’s anyone that can penetrate those storm clouds, the Storm’s rookie guard may be the one to do it. And wouldn’t that be one heck of a conclusion to a really strange draft night story.

Chauny and Greer are holding it down on the podcast, giving us what I like to call ‘The Agenda Hour’. One of the things that Chauny always talks about is the art of ‘ethical hating’. Essentially, it’s declaring any biases you may have as a media member upfront and that way the audience can decide whether or not they want to engage with, enjoy, detest or debate your content. At the end of the day, almost every sports reporter has some team in their life that resonates with them. There’s always a player you find yourself rooting for.

Conversely, there’s players that maybe you can’t stand or teams that you just love to watch lose. You sometimes can’t explain where it came from, but you at least can make a reasonable argument on the merits for why your haterdom is what it is.

With that, comes the notion of ‘The Agenda’. It k.can be a player, a team, a storyline or narrative that you just feel as a reporter or talk host that you want to be married to for a whole season. If you know my writing and content well enough by now, you know that my Connecticut Sun/Rachid Meziane agenda continues to go strong.

Chauny and Greer reveal their agendas — for Chauny, it’s Han Xu time yet again and, for Greer, Arike Ogunbowale is ready to dial back the clock to Notre Dame Arike — on Ball Up Top. You can catch it on Apple, Spotify, Pocketcast or wherever you get your pods. Video version will be on YouTube later this evening along with a mailbag for the Ball-Knowers!

Jeff Brown adds some additional thoughts to Seattle’s preseason win over Portland…

Brian Fleurantin is a longtime Ball-Knower who also holds it down at Black Rosie Media with the WBB Roundup. Another great newsletter to follow if you haven’t already!

Noa Dalzell is one of the brightest young names in basketball media right now, on both the men’s and women’s side of things. She podded with IndyStar beat reporter Chloe Peterson (Another good follow on the Fever front) this week to discuss Indiana training camp and the Fever frontcourt.

Eden Laase writes for HoopsHQ and you’ll sometimes catch her work in The Athletic. Her basketball newsletter, Inbox-And-One is a pretty cool repository for some of her features and other women’s hoops related work. Always a treat to see it when it drops into my inbox.