Season Preview.
Buckle-up y’all, the 2025 WNBA season is about to start. It has the feel of a new dawn about it as new players and new teams are here or rumoured to arrive soon. A number of league stalwarts have announced their retirement, most notably Diana Taurasi. Last season, Taurasi added yet another Olympic gold medal to her award-laden career haul and, furthermore, seemed to develop a mature line in dignity. Not always a very evident characteristic in the WNBA. It suggests that any punditry that comes her way might actually be worth listening to.
There remains little doubt that the league’s main attraction this year will, again, be Caitlin Clark. Only her games sell out the largest stadiums, home and away, and they dominate the TV schedules. Her first professional, “rookie”, season exceeded all expectations and her off season training schedule has attracted as much interest as any actual basketball played during that period. To see her stroll around the midfield area nonchalantly bouncing the ball whilst the opposition retreat in front of her evokes images of Johan Cruyff in his prime. Should Clark get injured or otherwise not play, crowds and viewing figures are likely to plummet. Her team, the Indiana Fever, has a new coach and several new and experienced players. If they support Clark better than her team-mates did last season, then the Indiana Fever could progress further than the playoff place they secured last year.
The league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP, a sort of bouncing ballon d’or) was A’ja Wilson. She also has a number of new team mates at the Las Vegas Aces. An exodus by some of last year’s squad seems to have been triggered by Wilson’s implication that they weren’t good enough to play in the same team as her. Another player to watch is DiJonai Carrington, now at the Dallas Wings. Carrington is a 5’ 10” powerhouse who compensates for her relative lack of height by identifying as a complete snide.
The new team this year is the Golden State Valkyries, based in San Francisco. They were allowed to raid other squads for some players to help them get started. They selected an interesting ”roster” including Kate Martin, who has a cult following despite not getting much game time last season at Las Vegas, and Temi Fagbenle. Fagbenle grew up in London and is a sort of Lee Chapman figure managing to be in the right place at the right time in order to score frequently, rather than possessing the slickest of ball skills.
Other notable teams are the reigning champions New York Liberty, who will be keen to show that they don’t need to rely on dodgy refereeing decisions to win again this year, and Chicago Sky. Chicago Sky had a hugely disappointing season last year and, maybe, players like Angel Reese should decide if they are serious about a career in basketball or whether their scantily clad social media presence is more important to them.
So, off we go. As far as I can tell, 13 teams split into 2 conferences each contrive, somehow, play 44 matches or so right through to September. The top 8 teams, seemingly regardless of the conference they are in, go forward to the play off knockout games. Apparently, these are the best of 3 or 5 or 7 games or something. We’ll worry about that when we get there.
