Three things stood out to me this past month:

• Minnesota’s defense finally regressed—but Napheesa Collier may erase that problem overnight.

• Golden State has become a legitimate title contender.

• Roster depth is shaping the playoff race in the W more than ever before.

More on this to come… But for now, let’s see how my predictions from the End of June Edition are holding up!

🔮 Prediction Tracker

🔮 Edition 2 Scorecard: 🟢 4 On Track | 🔴 2 Off Track | ⚪ 1 Too Early

🔮 Total Scorecard: 🟢 11 On Track | 🔴 6 Off Track | ⚪ 5 Too Early

Now we will move to this month’s rankings! As always, these rankings reflect my own future-facing projections rather than current standings. Look out for 7 new predictions 🔮, which I will track in next month’s edition

Reminder that I will rank the teams, and then provide a “Buy, Hold, or Sell” recommendation based on where I think these teams will perform in the next month relative to current perception.

-BUY means I’m higher than consensus

-SELL means I’m lower than consensus

-HOLD means the market feels about right

I’ll also provide a key stat for each team, and a prediction for some.

Biggest Movers

📈 Indiana (+2), Seattle (+2)

📉 New York (-3), Portland (-2)

🏆 Title Favorites

1. Minnesota (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

I wrote this about Minnesota in last month’s power rankings:

While I cannot deny the Lynx the #1 spot, I am selling the idea that Minnesota is THIS good. I expect their defense to regress.

Not only did MIN’s defense regress, but they absolutely crashed back down to earth in July. Heading into their July 22nd game against SEA, MIN’s opponents had gone over their projected team totals in 8 straight games.

Despite the defensive struggles, Minnesota somehow went 7-2 the month, leaning on a ridiculous 115.8 ORTG. They got a little lucky with 6 single-digit wins. And now, they have the perfect cure for their struggling defense—Napheesa Collier.

Collier erases mistakes that most defenders can't. In the clip below, she stops dribble penetration, recovers to the shooter, and contests the three—all within four seconds.

Her presence should provide the boost MIN’s defense needs to stay in the top spot, while providing a further boost to the PnR game.

Key Stat: MIN’s DRTG in July was 112.2, third-worst in the W

Prediction 🔮: With Collier, MIN’s defense will rebound to a top-4 unit in August

2. Golden State (Previous: +1)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

The one team that I believe has the best chance to contend with MIN for the #1 seed in the playoffs this year is Golden State.

The Valks have used a 97.3 DRTG in July to claim the #1 spot in DRTG on the season. But what stood out to me when analyzing their team is a small nuance of their offense. Most people know that the Valkyries play very slow—but when I looked at just how slow they play, I was blown away.

Per Synergy, GS spends over 20% of their offensive possessions in short clock situations—defined as possessions ending with less than 5 seconds on the shot clock. The league median? 12%. The only team above 15% is Washington.

GS has survived in these situations largely in part because of Gabby Williams. In this clip, she takes what many would see as a grenade into a graceful rim finish:

Her defensive impact has been as good as advertised, but if she can keep scoring back-breaking baskets on offense, the Valks are going to keep exceeding expectations.

Key Stat: GSV’s net TO% is +4.2% this season, top in the W, helping them constantly win the possession battle.

3. Las Vegas (Previous: -1)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

It’s hard to know what to make of Las Vegas right now, who had a weird July where they only played two competitive games—an OT W vs CHI to start the month, and a 1-point loss at WAS to end the month.

They’re just not turning teams over, and as noted previously, the loss of Chennedy Carter has hurt their offense. We’ll see if they can flip the switch again down the stretch, but I am skeptical.

Key Stat: LVA has only forced a 15.7 TO rate this season—last regular season, they were at 17.2.

Prediction 🔮: LVA falls out of the top-3 by the end of August

🟢 Contenders

4. Indiana (Previous: +2)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

The best team in July, per Net Rating? That would be Indiana, at +12.8. And while the world continues to be obsessed with Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham, it is clear that Indiana’s most important player is Aliyah Boston.

Indiana’s two worst performances this month were a 14-point loss to the Sparks and allowing 107 at home to Seattle. The common denominator? Boston missed both games.

Key Stat: Over the past three seasons, Indiana’s ORTG and DRTG are 4.4 and 3.9 better, respectively, with Boston on the court.

🟡 Playoff Locks

5. Atlanta (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

Brionna Jones is back. Jones’ interior presence allows the Dream to use Angel Reese as a cutter, and the early returns are promising. Jones’s interior gravity forces defenses to react, creating cutting opportunities for Reese.

She also makes ATL deeper, which will be key for a team that needs more production outside of their starting-5, who own the highest 5-player lineup Net Rating in the W this season.

Key Stat: ATL is 14th in the league in bench scoring, at just 16.7 PPG.

Prediction 🔮: ATL finishes August back in the Home-Court Advantage position, with Jones playing a key role in their ascent.

6. Dallas (Previous: +1)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

Azzi Fudd put on quite the show in the 3-Pt Contest, and DAL is fun right now. They are winning by controlling the possession battle, and while I wrote in my most recent episode of “The Scout” that they are susceptible inside, teams have not fully taken advantage.

In the next 4 games, they face ATL, CON, and WAS twice—all rank in the top 4 of shots attempted at the rim. We’ll see if they can continue to hold up, but I am skeptical.

Key Stat: DAL is 3rd in the WNBA in turnover margin (+2%), and turns the ball over less than any team in the league.

Prediction 🔮: DAL slides in DRTG this month, as teams attack them more inside.

7. New York (Previous: -3)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

New York needed two wildly fortunate one-point wins to make it to the break above .500. It is hard to understand what is going on with the Commissioner’s Cup Champions, but it is likely that not having Fiebich, Satou, and Laney-Hamilton in the lineup has contributed to the defensive challenges, as New York ranks 2nd-worst in Defense in July.

Speaking of Laney-Hamilton, I don’t understand her relegation to the bench in favor of players like Gardner, Carrera, and Fauthoux.

Despite New York’s struggles, Breanna Stewart has been sensational this season.

If New York can get healthy, she gives them a chance.

Key Stat: NYL had the worst transition D in the league in July.

🟠 Bubble Teams

8. Washington (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

The Mystics head into the break off a win against Las Vegas, and their “vibes” seem to be at an all-time high, as head coach Sydney Johnson celebrated memorably after the win. Yes, this is an analytics site, but you just can’t ignore this type of performance:

Washington still struggles with turnovers and is not getting what they need out of rookie PG Georgia Amoore, but Shakira Austin is a sleeper DPOY candidate, and the Big-3 of Austin, Irafen, and Citron is formidable.

Of all the potential Skylar Diggins landing spots, this is my favorite.

Key Stat: WAS commits the most turnovers in the league (16.8), and the second most per game of any team since the 2022 season.

9. Phoenix (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

I’m still buying PHX stock. Whitcomb, Akoa-Makani, and Mack are all positive impact players and have yet to play together this season due to injury. They are all healthy now, and it’s not too late for PHX to make a playoff push.

Key Stat: All 6 of PHX’s best 5-player lineups last year (min 20 minutes played) included at least two of Whitcomb, Akoa-Makani, and Mack.

Prediction 🔮: PHX will emerge as the biggest threat to WAS’s playoff aspirations.

🔴 Out of the Mix

10. Chicago (Previous: +1)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

CHI has played pretty well since the Diggins injury, but continues to lose games in excruciating fashion. I don’t have much to say here, as I think this Reddit post captures it all:

With Diggins out, CHI has surpassed expectations, going 6-1 ATS. As long as Taylor continues to be featured, they will still be fun to watch and competitive.

Key Stat: CHI is 0-5 this season in games decided by one possession or in OT.

11. Los Angeles (Previous: -1)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

Los Angeles would be ranked a lot lower than this if it weren’t for the recent encouraging Kelsey Plum injury update. Ariel Atkins and Erica Wheeler were unable to step up in her absence, and continue to have the worst 3-point shooting seasons of their careers. Perhaps with Plum back, they can find some rhythm. But Plum isn’t going to help the defensive issues, which include being the worst team in the league defending transition. While Plum’s return will help the offense, I’m still selling the Sparks.

Key Stat: LA’s ORTG goes from 114 with Plum on court to 103 with her off.

12. Seattle (Previous: +2)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

summarized SEA’s recent form pretty well in this tweet:

Seattle now needs to turn its improved play into wins down the stretch. This is an exciting team developing right before our eyes.

Key Stat: SEA played at the 2nd-fastest pace in the W in July, behind only LA.

13. Toronto (Previous: -1)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Toronto was by far the league’s worst team this month, logging a 1-6 record and a -17 net rating. Their reliance on Marina Mabrey and lack of depth was too much, as I wrote about last week, and had this awesome graphic to illustrate the challenges of their Mabrey overreliance.

Kiki Rice’s impending return will come as a relief to Tempo fans.

Key Stat: TOR’s DRTG in July (120.9) is the worst DRTG of any team in any month in at least five years

Prediction 🔮: With Rice back, TOR will no longer have the worst Defense in August.

14. Connecticut (+1)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

As predicted, Connecticut is a totally different team with G Leila Lacan on the court. She makes them (deep breath)… above average?

Don’t be surprised if CON continues to play close games all the way until the end of the season.

Key Stat: Per Synergy, Lacan ranks in the 90th percentile for Defensive Impact, 6th among all guards.

15. Portland (Previous: -2)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

Portland has had a spectacular season so far, full of memorable moments and, frankly, overachieving against their underlying metrics.

Sarah-Ashlee Barker’s ACL injury will make it harder for them to sustain their pre-ASB success. SAB was a key connector and a jack-of-all-trades for the team. She routinely took on the assignment of guarding the opposition’s best player, and also ranked 2nd on the team in offensive efficiency, at 1.18 PPS.

I would estimate that she has been Portland’s third-best player, but perhaps their most difficult player to replace. The players who could replace her minutes either aren’t as effective defensively (Samuelson) or lack her scoring ability (Puoch).

Key Stat: Portland allows teams to run transition offense more than any other team in the W (19.7% of possessions)

Prediction 🔮: Portland’s transition defense will get worse without SAB.

Three Things I Believe About the W at the End of July

1. Atlanta is going to finish with home-court advantage.

2. Phoenix’s season isn’t over just yet.

3. Indiana’s ceiling depends more on Aliyah Boston than any other player.

I’ll provide one key stat, one game plan I would use when facing this team, and one front-office move that would take this team to the next level.

Previous Editions:

⬛ Las Vegas

🟦 Chicago

🟥 Portland

The Identity

Dallas (17-9, +5.2 Net Rating)

The most pleasant surprise of the WNBA this year has to be the Wings, who have solidified their status as a surefire playoff team heading into the All-Star Break. Dallas has been shockingly good on both ends of the court, ranking 4th in ORTG and 5th in DRTG.

Dallas is led by future 1st-team all-WNBA guard Paige Bueckers.

Her ascension has been incredibly fun to watch. She scores efficiently from all parts of the court.

But while Paige runs the show, offseason acquisition Jessica Shepard has emerged as the frontrunner for Most Improved Player. Shepard’s passing ability is eye-opening:

Her ability to create in different ways, including as a hub in the half-court and as a grab-and-go rebounder, has led to three triple-doubles this season (the rest of the league has 0).

The Most Important Stat

Shepard is the hub that keeps different parts of the offense connected. The Wings are second in the WNBA in assists at 22.3 per game (behind only Las Vegas), and when looking at why, Shepard’s impact on the offensive end stands out.

Shepard and Paige have combined for 75 direct assist connections—by far the strongest relationship on the team. Arike and Azzi have combined for only 12 assists to one another, yet each has a substantial two-way relationship with Shepard: 43 combined assists between Shepard and Arike, and 46 between Shepard and Azzi. That makes Shepard especially valuable—not simply as a passer, but as the bridge between Dallas’ different scoring threats.

Shepard is Dallas' connective tissue. While Paige, Arike, and Azzi all generate shot creation, she is the offensive hub that keeps Dallas’ stars connected rather than operating in isolation.

How To Beat Them

Shepard has driven the Wings’ offensive success. But her offensive value comes with a clear defensive tradeoff. Among the league’s highest-minute frontcourt players, no one provides less shot-blocking than Jessica Shepard.

Shepard has played 867 minutes this season.

She has 0 recorded blocks.

For a Center, that is a statistical anomaly, and speaks to the fact that she provides almost no vertical rim deterrence. It is likely part of the reason that DAL allows teams to shoot 65.6% from inside the restricted area, which is 3rd worst in the W.

Exploiting Shepard’s defensive limitations is key to keeping pace with the Wings. And while as a whole, teams have not been very successful at doing this, some teams have, including the Lynx. Watch how Miles manipulates Shepard’s drop coverage in this clip:

Dallas does not help much off opposing shooters. It is the primary reason they allow just 22.4 3PA per game, 2nd best in the WNBA. It also is the reason Miles and fellow pick-and-roll handling demon Courtney Williams, combined with roll-partner Natasha Howard, scored 72 points against Dallas in the Lynx’ 90-86 win.

Minnesota is 3-0 against Dallas this season, winning by an average margin of 12 PPG. In those games, Shepard has averaged just 9 PPG and 3.7 APG, down from her season averages of 14.8 and 5.3.

The lesson is simple: make Jessica Shepard defend.

Specifically, opposing teams should bring her into high pick-and-rolls, force her to retreat against downhill guards, and make her choose between containing the handler and staying attached to the roller.

If I Were the GM

In a lot of ways, the Wings remind me of the early Nikola-Jokic led Nuggets teams. The Bueckers-Shepard 2-man game is extremely effective, but also leads to a defensive roster-building challenge. You may recall the Nuggets did not ultimately break through for a title until they found a defensive complement to Jokic.

Shepard’s defensive deficiencies need to be masked, and the Wings need their version of Aaron Gordon. Right now, the Wings might have that on their roster already.

Awak Kuier is someone I wrote about as a potential fit for Portland, and the advanced data shows that she may have Gordon-level impact defensively. The On-Off data shows that her presence alongside Shepard on the defensive end allows the team the rim protection needed to thrive defensively with Shepard on the court.

While not yet the same offensive player as Gordon, Kuier is still young (just 24 years old) and is shooting a promising 38% from 3 this year, showing signs of developing into a useful offensive player. She is set to be a free agent once her current 1-year, $525,000 contract expires. If I were Dallas GM Curt Miller, I’d prioritize resigning her this offseason. Her athletic finishing inside maximizes Shepard’s passing, while her shot-blocking allows them to survive the lack of shot-blocking at the 5 position.

Dallas is in the enviable position of having built one of the league's most dynamic offenses, and young stars Bueckers and Fudd are only going to get better. The next step is solidifying the defensive infrastructure that lets Jessica Shepard continue to be exactly who she is—an invaluable offensive connector.

This article is part of a five-part series exploring how sports organizations can intentionally invest in player development, communication, and human development.

Underselling Player Leadership

As coaches and leaders, it is our responsibility to see the best version of our players. This is the goal of organizations—to maximize their people—but most sports teams at all levels fail to create structures that allow player voices to rise to the surface.

The main reason for this? Player leadership is often oversimplified or tokenized (leadership is more than designing a team’s sweatsuits, for instance), underestimating what players can contribute to their teams and organizations.

We can think about player leadership in two ways: leadership on the court, and leadership of the organization.

Organizations tend to over-fixate on the left side of this table: player on-court leadership. As a result, they underestimate the ingenuity of players and their potential impact on team culture, strategy, and communication.

Avoiding Silos

Suppose that at the midway mark of the season, a team hits a losing streak. They get blown out and are on the bus back home. Players are frustrated—they want to express a desire to make a tweak to the principles of play, but are unsure of how to bring this up to the coaching staff.

When this happens, teams tend to split into silos. The coaches sit at the front of the bus, and talk about what happened and what to do next. The players sit at the back of the bus, and do the exact same thing.

Especially in high-level sports, these player-led ideas can be brilliant. Players have a front row seat to the action, have a vast array of playing experience, and know their personnel. But their ideas stay on the back of the bus and never reach the staff (you will see this idea reinforced throughout my Human Development Playbook for Sport Series).

Team Leadership Councils

To address the drawbacks of silos, teams (led by a potential Learning Scientist, a role I discussed previously) could establish and oversee a Team Leadership Council. This council would be responsible for monitoring and maintaining team health, communication, and reinforcing a positive culture. Essentially, this structure is to elicit the second type of leadership from players: Leadership of the organization.

Team Leadership Councils have been adopted by many across professional sports, including the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and the recent NFL Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks. More and more college teams are also adopting a similar structure, most recently at perennial National Championship Contender Texas A&M.

Voice ≠ Authority

Detractors of this approach might say that coaches should coach, and players should play. I am not saying that coaches should allow players to be the ones calling all the shots. I believe in clarity of roles, and a player’s job is first and foremost to play the game on the court. However, I would argue that the bigger danger to organizations is not too much player voice, but rather hierarchical leadership styles that squander ideas.

Fears of crossing boundaries by giving players room for input are largely unfounded. Giving a space for player input is actually more likely to result in decreased organizational friction. After all, coaches can always listen to player ideas and say no.¹

Despite most professional teams lacking formal structures to offer player input, players often get praised for giving input to coaches about strategy. A great example of this is basketball players about to get subbed in the court who see the players on the court performing well, and telling their coach not to sub them in:

Implementation

A Leadership Council on a basketball team might include 4-6 players representing different roles, experience levels, and perspectives. The group could meet biweekly for 30 minutes around a recurring agenda: what is helping the team, what is getting in the way, and what ideas deserve consideration? Clear decision-making boundaries would ensure that player input informs leadership without blurring final authority.

Building a formal Leadership Council or a similar structure is a very difficult system for a Head Coach to manage themselves. It requires selecting the council (whether by coach discretion or by vote), planning the meetings, and rolling out council initiatives. The time needed to build this out is likely one reason not all teams have adopted a similar structure.

Among other responsibilities, a Team Learning Scientist could own this entire process, turning backchannel conversations into organizational learning, where player voices are elevated.

The goal is simple: make sure some of the team’s best ideas do not die at the back of the bus.

¹The RAPID framework is a good way to think about delineating roles while also hearing player voice

The Human Development Playbook for Sport Series Roadmap

✅ Part 1: The Missing Role on Most Basketball Staffs

✅ Part 2: Every Week’s Most Valuable Meeting

✅ Part 3: The Best Ideas Are Usually Stuck in the Locker Room

⬜ Part 4: Beyond Exit Interviews

⬜ Part 5: The Soda Machine Problem: Who Advocates for the Players?

I’ll provide one key stat, one game plan I would use when facing this team, and one front-office move that would take this team to the next level.

Previous Editions:

🟦 Chicago

🟥 Portland

The Identity

Las Vegas (15-5, +5.4 Net Rating)

Put simply, the Aces are the standard of excellence in the WNBA. They are knocking on the door of their fourth championship in five seasons. Much of this revolves around the GOAT, A’ja Wilson, who looks like the runaway favorite for another MVP award.

The Aces’ success on both offense and defense is highly predicated on Wilson’s excellence.

This year, Las Vegas is excelling mostly through their offense. Their 112.3 O-RTG is their highest mark since their own 2023 season, in which they produced a 113.0 mark. Even this 112.3 mark might be underselling their stature as an offensive powerhouse, as this mark goes all the way up to 118.0 with offseason acquisition and 6POY contender Chennedy Carter on the court. As I wrote in my latest WNBA Power Rankings column, she raises the ceiling for this Aces team.

Carter is now gone, in a surprising move—but another high-octane guard, Dana Evans, should return for Las Vegas soon, someone who could have a similar impact on their offense. With Wilson’s excellence and guard play from Gray, Jackie Young, and Evans providing an offensive burst, the Aces are well positioned to cement their dynasty this year.

Surprisingly, the data shows that the blueprint for challenging them has barely changed over the last four seasons.

The Most Important Stat

Vegas’s offense has been consistently great over the past four years of their dynasty. Their defense has generally been good enough to win championships, but it has consistently lagged behind their offense.

Given the age, quickness, and size limitations of some of their backcourt players (Chelsea Gray—33, Jewell Loyd—32) and the plodding nature of some of their frontcourt players (NaLyssa Smith, Cheyenne Parker-Tyus), their limitations at this end of the court make sense. It also brings us to their most important stat, which shows the one defensive weakness that has persisted throughout most of their dynasty.

For three consecutive seasons, opponents have consistently found success attacking Las Vegas in the pick-and-roll. The issue has been exacerbated this year, where they rank worst in the league at limiting scoring both to pick-and-roll handlers and to rollers.

How To Beat Them

Las Vegas’s biggest weakness is their defense—particularly their PnR defense. Behind that middling defense are aging guards and slow-footed bigs that need to be targeted.

The best way to weaponize this is by carefully manipulating these defensive weak links. Josiah Cohen did a great job showing some of the ways the Liberty have successfully done this in his Commissioner’s Cup Preview.

The strategies in these clips were really creative—from using Wilson’s defender as a handler to taking advantage of the Aces’ switching tendencies to move Wilson out of position and onto a shooter. The key theme to many of these successful Liberty offensive possessions was that instead of directly attacking A’Ja, they thoughtfully removed her from impactful defensive position.

When Wilson is occupied, the burden shifts to Gray, Loyd, and Smith to defend in space. That's where Vegas becomes vulnerable—provided that offenses attack them strategically.

The trap a lot of teams fall into, however, is going straight to the post when the Aces switch Gray onto a big. This is a recipe for disaster— last year Gray led all guards in post-ups defended, limiting opponents to .703 points per direct play on those actions.

Instead of opting for a post-up on Gray on a switch, I’d encourage flowing into another pick-and-roll or an isolation, making her guard in space against an open floor, without Wilson protecting the rim.

If I Were the GM

Aces President and GM Nikki Fargas’s primary concern has to be two teams: the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty.

Both of those teams have the ability to implement the strategy I mentioned above: target the Aces’ weak links on defense. They also both employ lineups with zero non-shooters, so there is nowhere for these weak links to hide.

Loyd is a bit miscast in her current role. The 6-time all-star’s superpower is scoring and shooting. But in lineups with Gray, Wilson, Evans, and Young taking up usage, she rarely gets to lean into this strength.

Las Vegas should test the market to see if they could acquire a lower-usage wing that could better fit with their roster. I would specifically target Michaela Onyenwere in a trade with Washington.

Onyenwere would allow Vegas to defend more pick-and-rolls with size, switchability, and athleticism. This type of defensive versatility would pay dividends for Las Vegas, whereas Washington could use a secondary creator to complement rising star Sonia Citron.

This article is part of a five-part series exploring how sports organizations can intentionally invest in player development, communication, and human development.

The Beginning

In August of 2019, I had just begun working as an assistant principal in Denver. It was my first week in the role, and I was told throughout the interview process how special the school was. As you can imagine, I was eager to see why the school had consistently been ranked among the best in Denver, achieving Blue Ribbon status for performing in the top 1% of schools in the country.

I was called into a meeting, led by my principal, Brad White, who remains a close friend and now runs Updraft Education. The meeting was called “Team Pulse”. It was different than any meeting I had seen before in my life.

Instead of an agenda with tasks to accomplish or new protocols to announce, the entire meeting was based on one thing: people.

The Team Pulse protocol was a huge reason our school maintained over 90% teacher retention seven straight years (in a sector that averaged 65%).

The Protocol

Here’s how it worked: We’d have a running Google Doc with every teacher’s name in a separate row and every meeting’s date in a column. Each member of the school leadership team was assigned a small “caseload” of teachers. Their job was to maintain a relationship with those teachers and keep a consistent pulse on how they were doing.

Before the meeting, every member of the leadership team would have coded each teacher on their caseload in the shared document with one of three colors:

🟢 Green (doing well)

🟡 Yellow (needing one key intervention to get back to “Green”), or

🔴 Red (needing multiple interventions from multiple people to get back to “Green”).

The running document would look something like this (names edited out for privacy):

The Problem Solving

The coding would help us systematically identify the teachers who were struggling or on the brink of struggling. This is important because organizations too often stand idly and wait for an urgent problem to arise before finding solutions. If any one person on staff was struggling, we wanted to respond immediately to give them the support they needed. How can the organization move as fast as possible to address its people’s needs? Having an “early warning system” is crucial in avoiding crises in organizations.

For every teacher coded yellow or red, the leadership team member who coded them would speak briefly about the situation.

• What are the challenges that person is facing?

• How are the challenges affecting their work?

• What is the impact of the challenge on their own well-being?

After identifying the root issues being faced and the related impacts, the leadership team moves into problem-solving mode. The key question: What support(s) does this specific person (or, in sports, player) need to get back to green?

Sometimes, it could be something as simple as an intentional check-in with another member of our team. Other times, the action could be related to their ability to perform their role better—for instance, a teacher might need support from their manager with a new curriculum.

To better diagnose the problem and the support needed, we used the Gallup Q12 to inform some of these conversations. The key was providing one or two clear action steps to support that person before next week’s meeting. Then, we’d move on to the next person who was yellow or red.

We would track the completion of these action steps each week. Sometimes, a person might stay yellow or red despite receiving multiple supports. This is normal! Ensuring staff health is hard and requires some trial and error. If one action step was not enough to move them to “green”, we would note that in the next meeting, then try a different action step.

More Than A Tracking System

The important thing about Team Pulse is that it embodies a way of leading that puts the person first. At the school I worked at, this meant more than just discussing our people at pulse meetings each week. It meant that every member of leadership would look at teachers as the path to a solution, rather than the problem.

Most managers and coaches overindex on performance. But behind the output a person produces is a whole human system, including their fluctuating confidence, relationships, sense of belonging, stress level, clarity of role, and trust in the people around them. Team chemistry, which some view as a mysterious x-factor that you either stumble upon or don’t, comes up when leadership shows the people they are in charge of that their long-term development matters more than their short-term performance.

In this way, Team Pulse is meant to operate not only as a protocol, but also as a way of grounding the team in a healthy approach to development that spreads beyond the boundaries of that weekly meeting.

Why This Works

In The Advantage, author Patrick Lencioni argues that most organizations—schools or sports teams, for instance—already have access to similar knowledge in strategy, technology, finance, and marketing.

Therefore, organizational health may be one of the largest AND most underutilized competitive advantages available to leaders looking to separate their team from others.

How often have we heard empty platitudes from teams and leaders?

“We care about our people”, or

“We value belonging”?

If a team claims to care about player wellbeing but has no recurring space to discuss, own, and act on it, then care remains aspirational. Team Pulse turns these vague cultural commitments into a repeatable process with names, shared responsibilities, and actionable follow-ups, turning care into organizational practice.

This is especially important in one key setting: sports organizations.

The Connection to Sports and Teams

Since Team Pulse worked wonders at my former school, I wondered if I could replicate a similar approach as a coach.

When I joined Alex Sarama’s College Prep Academy, I tested this approach out with players, not teachers, as the focus. I spoke about this in my Transforming Basketball Masterclass. Similarly, the protocol was incredibly effective at catching issues—players not understanding certain responsibilities, others not attending their online classes when they were supposed to— before they boiled to the surface.

The arena of sport performance is pressurized and intense. When there are issues—a star player unhappy with their contract, lingering player-to-player conflict, or a family issue—these issues directly impact the performance of not just the player directly affected, but those around them, as well. There are very few boundaries in the team sport sector of high-performance environments, where one’s achievement simultaneously pulls those around them up or down.

Additionally, the culture of sport is one in which athletes are encouraged or even expected to suppress or conceal their emotions in service of performance and the team. But this type of coping runs contrary to what Lenconi and others believe are true about organizational health—that openness and support are key tenets of achieving elite performance. Ironically, the best coaches in the world are often those who do not allow their players to stay “armored up”.

As an example: If one assistant coach knows a player is struggling, the performance coach sees a drop in energy, and the head coach only notices frustration in practice, the organization is operating with fragmented information—or what Lenconi calls “confusion”. Shared knowledge here would allow the coach to more easily examine the root cause versus the presenting issue.

In an era of NIL, where many college teams are working with players brand new to their program year in and year out, a human development-based approach centered on Team Pulse becomes all the more important.

Team Pulse creates a shared space where concerns can be jointly surfaced and translated into action. In a cutthroat sports culture that often rewards people for hiding their struggles, this can have a powerful competitive advantage to organizations looking to set themselves apart.

The Human Development Playbook for Sport Series Roadmap

✅ Part 1: The Missing Role on Most Basketball Staffs

✅ Part 2: Every Week’s Most Valuable Meeting

⬜ Part 3: The Best Ideas Are Usually Stuck in the Locker Room

⬜ Part 4: Beyond Exit Interviews

⬜ Part 5: Who Advocates for the Players?

As always, these rankings are future-facing, account for expected returns from injury (like Napheesa Collier), and reflect my own projections rather than current standings.

Prediction Tracker

Before diving into this month's rankings, let's see how my predictions from the End of May Edition are holding up!

May Scorecard: 🟢 7 On Track | 🔴 4 Off Track | ⚪ 4 Too Early

Ok, now let’s move to this month’s rankings!

Reminder that I will rank the teams, and then provide a “Buy, Hold, or Sell” recommendation based on where I think these teams will perform in the next month relative to current perception. BUY means I’m higher than consensus, SELL means I’m lower than consensus, and HOLD means the market feels about right. I’ll also provide a key stat for each team, and a prediction for some.

Biggest Movers

📈 New York (+2), Minnesota (+2), Washington (+2)

📉 Atlanta (-3), Portland (-2), Los Angeles (-2)

🏆 Title Favorites

1. Minnesota (+2)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

It is insane to look at MIN’s underlying numbers, as they rank so far ahead of the rest of the league. They put up an astonishing +15.7 Net Rating in the month of June. The second-place team, for reference, was New York at +6.8. The rating gap in June (8.9) between the Lynx and the Liberty is roughly the same as the gap between the Liberty and the Connecticut Sun!

This team is an absolute juggernaut. But there is reason to believe that the Lynx train may slow down soon.

In last edition’s power rankings, I highlighted that Dallas was benefiting from unsustainable 3-point variance, and correctly predicted that their offensive rating might tumble back down to earth when their scorching hot shooting cooled off. The same might be true for Minnesota, but on the other end of the court.

MIN allowed opponents to shoot 33.1% from 3 last year, and 42.3% from the field overall. This year? 30.6% from 3, and 39.4% from the field overall. And that is without Napheesa Collier, one of the best defenders in the league.

Something doesn’t add up.

While I cannot deny the Lynx the #1 spot, I am selling the idea that Minnesota is THIS good. I expect their defense to regress.

Key Stat: MIN’s DRTG is currently 97.4.

Prediction 🔮: MIN’s DRTG will rise above 100 in July.

2. Las Vegas (-1)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Las Vegas’s strong start to the season has been tempered by the extended absence of Chennedy Carter. In May, Carter emerged as a runaway favorite for 6th Player of the Year due to her downhill scoring and the way she bolstered the Aces offense. But in the entire month of June, Carter played only 3 games and 30 minutes. The organization has been tight-lipped about her absence, leaving outside observers to speculate.

Carter is the piece that makes the Aces feel less like a title contender and more like a title favorite. With her on the court, the Aces are elite. Without her, they are simply “very good”.

It was a relief for Aces fans to see her back on the court Sunday against the Sky. Let’s hope it’s nothing serious, because watching her burst is an absolute joy.

Key Stat: In the 5 recent games Carter missed, LVA ranked 10th in ORTG.

🟢 Contenders

3. Golden State (Previous: +1)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

A hallmark of great organizations is their ability to make the most out of their players—including some that other teams may have given up on.

Kiah Stokes has been an absolute monster on defense this season. Her block rate has been through the roof, and she has at least 4 “stocks” (steals and blocks) in her last three games, against Atlanta and New York—teams with good rim pressure.

She’s a big reason why the Valks just don’t get scored on in the paint.

This team and its players continue to get underestimated. I’ll keep buying the stock.

Key Stat: Every Valkyries player that plays more than 15 MPG has a D-RAPM above the 63rd percentile.

Prediction 🔮: GSV will have the best DRTG in the league in July.

4. New York (Previous: +2)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

The best player in the league according to some advanced metrics is not A’ja Wilson, but Breanna Stewart.

Stewie has been insane this year, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Look at this outrageous contest on Sydney Taylor, who we will talk about later, to save the game in their W against Chicago:

Without Stewie, NY just lost by 11 against #14th ranked Seattle. She’s not THAT far away from A’ja in terms of impact this year.

Key Stat: Stewart’s wRAPM is +6.6, 1st in the WNBA.

Prediction 🔮: Stewart emerges as a top-2 contender for DPOY by the end of the month.

5. Atlanta (-3)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

The Dream continue to tread water without Brionna Jones, who looks like she’s getting closer to returning.

They are just 1-5 against the four teams ranked above them, with their only win being a 1-point win against MIN on opening night. The teams that give them trouble are teams that take care of the ball, and that have great isolation and pick-and-roll play.

This makes sense against an insanely aggressive defense that has four of the top five “ballhawks” in the league, per ESPN Analytics:

Perhaps when Jones gets back, they can begin to do more than just feast on teams worse than them. That’s what will be needed to stay in the “Contenders” tier.

Key Stat: ATL ranks 1st in defending spot-up shooters, but 13th in defending isolation and pick-and-roll handlers.

Prediction 🔮: ATL will improve their current win percentage in July, where they only play one team in my Top-4.

🟡 Playoff Locks

6. Indiana (Previous: -1)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Indiana walloped LA without Caitlin Clark, who continues to deal with a bad back. The Fever remain below the contender tier for now, as they try to find their identity with Clark in and out of the lineup.

Key Stat: IND is the only Top-7 team to allow more than 17 Points off Turnovers per game, ranking 13th in the W

7. Dallas (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

In the last edition of these power rankings, I correctly predicted that Dallas’s offensive rating would fall out of the Top 3. However, what has surprised me is the staying power of their defense.

DAL has maintained a 6th-place ranking in defense, which has allowed them to hold on strong to a playoff spot. They are doing this by shutting down the three-point line, forcing teams to score inside. Rookie Azzi Fudd has been a pleasant surprise on that end of the court, where she has a 70th percentile D-RAPM and often guards the opposing team’s best player. ESPN Analytics also has her as the best defender on the team:

DAL should continue to have a solid grip on their first playoff berth since 2023.

Key Stat: DAL allows just 21.7 3PA per game, 2nd best in the WNBA.

🟠 Bubble Teams

8. Washington (Previous: +2)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Usually, when you think of a young team, you think of a group that maybe gets outmuscled in the paint.

Washington is the exact opposite. This young team is a group of bullies!

Their FT Rate is the best in the league, and the best in over 10 years. Kiki Iriafen and Shakira Austin are both strong in this area, but Sonia Citron actually is second in the league with 6.3 FTM per game, behind only A’Ja Wilson’s 6.5.

This physicality wears teams down and gets them into foul trouble, as they did in their wild 4-OT win against Portland on Sunday.

Key Stat: WAS’s 2026 FTA rate of 0.425 is surpassing their own FTA rate from last year of 0.325, which was also a league high.

9. Phoenix (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

I was so close to getting my Phoenix prediction of an above .500 June record correct. Against a daunting schedule, they finished 5-6. Some of this was due to positive regression, including Kahleah Copper’s, who went from 33% shooting in May to a much more normal 46% in June. Phoenix would love for her to continue to look like, well, Kahleah Copper normally does. More good fortune might be around the corner for this team.

Key Stat: PHX is still allowing teams to shoot above 37% from 3 this year (worst in the league, up from 32.1% last year).

Prediction 🔮: PHX continues to crawl closer to the 8-seed.

10. Los Angeles (Previous: -2)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

It’s hard to see the silver lining of this Kelsey Plum injury for the Sparks. Without Plum this season, the Sparks are playing like the worst team in the league.

Cameron Brink’s injury hurts, too, as the Sparks lack any rim protection without her. The Sparks have a big stretch coming up, and their veteran supporting cast has been struggling, exacerbating the team’s offensive struggles sans Plum. Let’s see if they can help the Sparks turn it around.

Key Stat: Guards Ariel Atkins (27% this year, 36% career) and Erica Wheeler (23% this year, 33% career) are having the worst 3-point shooting seasons of their careers.

🔴 Out of the Mix, for Now

11. Chicago (Previous: +1)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

What a revelation Sydney Taylor has been.

After going undrafted, the 2024 Louisville grad spent all of last season overseas in Poland and Lithuania.

Chicago has started playing her more recently… her usage is absurd: 28.8%. The only players higher in the W are Malonga, Wilson, Clark, Copper, and Mabrey.

She ranks 5th in ESPN’s Net Points Per 80 Possessions metric.

Since her 30-point breakout game at Indiana on June 11, Chicago is 6-1 against the spread, outpacing expectations. Taylor is a big reason why, as her firepower from outside helps address their shooting woes (see key stat below).

Key Stat: As of June 23, CHI was only the 2nd WNBA team since 2021 to score more from the FT line than from beyond the arc (from The Scout: Beating Chicago).

Prediction 🔮: Taylor will be First Team All-Rookie.

12. Toronto (Previous: +1)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

Marina Mabrey’s 53-point explosion was insane, but Toronto’s issue is that they are reliant on such performances. When Mabrey plays well, they have a chance. When she doesn’t, they are likely going to lose big. As teams lock in on her even more, I expect the absences of Kiki Rice and Brittney Sykes to start to hurt them more.

Key Stat: In TOR’s wins, Marina Mabrey has averaged 26 PPG on 51% shooting and 47% from 3. In TOR’s losses, Mabrey is at 16 PPG on 40% shooting and 31% from 3.

13. Portland (Previous: -2)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

After a promising start to the season, the Fire have cooled off. The Sky just dropped 124 points on them and did so off a WNBA record 38 assists. Their 120.8 DRTG in June would rank as the worst all-time by a wide margin.

As I pointed out in my edition of The Scout: Beating Portland, their defensive struggles have coincided with the increased amount of minutes they are giving to C Megan Gustafson. Though a productive scorer, Gustafson’s defensive woes give that all back and more.

The data shows that the team was much more successful during Luisa Geiselsoder’s minutes:

They have also been more successful in rookie Serah Williams’s minutes:

Gustafson can still be a valuable part of the team—maybe even as a starter. But for Portland to regain their May form, it has to be in smaller bursts.

Key Stat: Since inserting Gustafson into the starting lineup, PDX has a -16.3 Net Rating. Before that, they were a much stronger -3.9.

Prediction 🔮: Portland’s defense will continue to perform at record lows until Williams or Geiselsoder get more minutes at the 5.

14. Seattle (Unchanged)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

The trio of Dominique Malonga (20), Awa Fam (20), and Flau’jae Johnson (22) are incredibly fun to watch.

And as a unit, they are quite good!

The issues for this team remain, though. The bench lacks real quality, and the team is still losing the possession battle, turning the ball over too much and not rebounding as well as you’d think a Malonga-led team would.

Key Stat: Four of SEA’s key bench players (Samuelson, Cooke, Dolson, and Melbourne) have bottom-10 percentile RAPMs.

15. Connecticut (Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

That’s more like it! CON has been competitive this month. However, they are still going to struggle to turn their improved performance into wins, as a team that just cannot shoot.

Key Stat: CON was only -2.4 in Net Rating in June, 8th-best

Three Things I Believe About the W at the End of June

1. Golden State is going to be the best defensive team in the W.

2. Minnesota is going to fade (just a little bit).

3. Expansion teams are about to feel the effects of limited depth.

I’ll provide one key stat, one game plan I would use when facing this team, and one front-office move that would take this team to the next level.

Previous Editions:

🟥 Portland

The Identity

Chicago Sky (4-12, -7.6 Net Rating)

While many pundits had high hopes for the Sky this year, I wasn’t buying the hype. From that piece:

I had them ranked as the 12th-best team before the season began. And though Chicago came out strong out of the gates, Rickea Jackson’s injury has proven to be a massive loss for them. The Sky were 3-1 when she was injured, and are 1-11 since.

Chicago’s season turned when Jackson went down, not just because they lost scoring, but because they lost variety.

The Most Important Stat

Without Jackson, the Sky have become a much narrower team: offensively dependent on guard-driven pick-and-rolls and free throws, and defensively reliant on staying home on shooters while asking shaky point-of-attack defenders to survive in space.

The result of this leads us to CHI’s most important stat: they are only the 2nd WNBA team since 2021 (with the exception being Washington this year) to score more from the FT line than from beyond the arc.

How To Beat Them

1) Shrink the Floor Without Fouling

Roster construction in basketball is all about balance. And in her first four games, Jackson was a Swiss Army Knife. She created opportunities to score in a multitude of ways—in isolation and off the ball. Jackson also provided length and rebounding from the wing position, something that has been lacking since her injury.

The variety in Jackson’s shot profile stood in stark comparison to that of other players on the team. Chicago's offense is built around usage-heavy guards. Between pick-and-roll ball-handler scoring and trips to the foul line, 42–47% of the scoring profile for Chicago’s primary guards comes from actions that pressure the point of attack. We knew this about Diggins and fellow handler Natasha Cloud, but this even applies to rookie Sydney Taylor, who has burst onto the scene in recent weeks with an insane 28% usage rate (only Malonga, Wilson, Clark, Copper, and Mabrey are higher).

It is no surprise that CHI ranks 2nd in the league in FTs made and attempted, and is also at the top of the league in PnR handler points as a team. One step in the wrong direction, and Diggins, Cloud, and Cardoso are getting to the line.

The good news for opponents is that CHI has not found a good counter to teams that load the paint against them. Their 6.4 made threes per game ranks 13th in the W.

Containing the point of attack by loading the paint and limiting free-throw opportunities are key to beating Chicago.

2) Attack the Space

Chicago’s defensive scheme is unique. They are the best team in the league at limiting scoring from Spot-Ups and Off-Ball Screens, and among the worst at preventing scoring in isolation, at the rim, and to PnR handlers. That profile suggests a defense that is extremely committed to staying attached off the ball — but vulnerable when the ball gets into the paint.

Put simply, they do not help off shooters, instead relying on their perimeter defenders to stifle the point of attack.

The problem: they don’t have very good POA defenders. Staying home has a cost, especially when the defenders at the point of attack cannot consistently contain the first action.

If Chicago refuses to tag from the corners or help from the nail, the offense has to make the game about cuts, slips, and two-player actions in the middle of the floor.

The Indiana Fever exploited their defense on June 11th to the tune of 98 points in regulation (114 total), despite making less than 25% of their threes.

Check out this screenshot, which occurs right before Clark hits Boston for a backdoor layup:

1. Notice Stevens way off the nail, walking towards Hines-Allen as she drifts towards the left corner. Hines-Allen has made four threes all season

2. Similarly, Cloud is in the right corner, glued to Raven Johnson, another “cold” shooter.

3. And finally, Jaquez is glued to the low-usage Lexi Hull on the left wing.

Indiana did a great job exploiting this with the two-player game of Clark and Boston, who both had 30-point double-doubles.

Creating space for cutters and attacking that space will exploit CHI’s defensive limitations.

If I Were the GM

GM Jeff Pagliocca has defied logic and declared repeatedly that the Sky are in “Win-Now Mode”

But their timeline does not match their asset base. A 4–12 team with limited shooting, veteran guards, and a bottom-tier net rating should not be behaving like it is one move away. After trading the #2 pick in the draft last year, which became MVP candidate Olivia Miles, they went ahead and did the same thing this year.

The Sky need to reverse course. Trade Diggins, Cloud, and even possibly Cardoso (if the price is right) for young assets and come to terms with the reality of their situation.

The on-court scouting report and the front-office diagnosis point to the same problem: Chicago is too narrow. Without Jackson, they do not have enough offensive versatility, shooting, or point-of-attack defense to justify a win-now approach. The smartest move is to stop trying to patch the present and start building a roster with a coherent timeline.

This article is part of a five-part series exploring how sports organizations can intentionally invest in player development, communication, and human development.

Earlier this month, WNBA All-Star Skylar Diggins had an eye-opening answer to a reporter’s question about the team’s most recent loss.

Her answer: “Ask Tyler.” Tyler, of course, is referring to Tyler Marsh—her head coach.

As someone who studies learning environments, the bluntness of this comment from the team’s leader took me by surprise.

Every sports organization eventually has to confront the fact that team performance is never just tactical. It is layered, relational, and complex. The environment is everything.

Diggins’s comment, in my opinion, signaled a possibility that something within this particular team environment may be fractured.

Inter- and intrapersonal conflict in professional sports is more common than people may realize. Take a look at the following headlines, all of which speak to some of the chaos that can happen within a team’s season:

Players publicly voicing displeasure with their coach. Rifts between players and management. And players coping with challenging mental health situations. These headlines are prime cases of organizations struggling to optimize the experience of their players and coaches in high-stakes environments. All have the potential to derail a team’s season—unless they are handled with deep intentionality and care.

Organizations spend millions on skill development, sports science, and marketing. At the same time, they spend almost nothing on the systems that support human development.

For too long, teams have just relied on intuition and role models to figure this part out. Hall-of-fame coaches like Becky Hammon and Cheryl Reeve navigate challenging player and team dynamics by relying on their personal expertise. But that’s not enough—not all teams have a Hammon or a Reeve.

Fortunately, there is a large body of underutilized research on these relational dynamics. It exists in the relatively niche field called “LSHD”, which stands for “Learning Sciences and Human Development”.

What is the “Science of Learning?”

My academic work sits within the Learning Sciences, an interdisciplinary field that studies how people learn, adapt, and perform in complex environments. How do young people heal from traumatic events? What makes some young women persist in male-dominated careers? These are some of the questions that learning scientists are interested in answering.

Across years of research in a variety of settings, learning scientists have argued that three central concepts are key to growth: belonging, well-being, and trust.

In other words, a person’s trajectory is shaped by their context and their webs of interwoven relationships. Performance is deeply shaped by these connectivity networks, feedback systems, and organizational culture—a lesson that basketball organizations often underestimate.

This insight has profound implications for sport, and leads me to believe that most organizations in the sport world are missing a key role that could have ripple effects throughout an entire organization: a Team Learning Scientist.

Aims of the Team Learning Scientist

A Team Learning Scientist (TLS) would exist to strengthen the human infrastructure within a team.

They would support the coaching staff by building effective feedback loops with players, providing the conditions needed for rapid improvement and trust. By drawing on evidence-based practices in organizational health and team development, they would help align the organization around player growth, communication, and well-being.

Put simply, the TLS would help organizations stop treating culture as something that happens randomly and start treating it intentionally.

Practically, the TLS could accomplish this work by performing four major functions.

1) Team Pulse

Team Pulse is a simple protocol designed to help organizations identify concerns before they become crises. Through structured, recurring check-ins, staff develop a shared understanding of player concerns and coordinate tangible support when challenges emerge.

Rather than waiting for problems to surface publicly or bubble underneath the surface, Team Pulse creates intentional feedback loops that allow organizations to respond early and build trust. I’ll explore this protocol in detail in Part 2 of this series.

2) Leadership Council

Teams often have great ideas trapped inside the locker room. Players see things coaches don’t, but most organizations lack a structured way to elevate player voice and involve athletes in shaping team culture.

A Team Learning Scientist could oversee a Leadership Council that serves as a bridge between players and staff, creating regular opportunities for collaborative problem-solving. In Part 3, I’ll explore how leadership councils can strengthen trust, buy-in, and organizational health.

3) Player Engagement

Most professional sports organizations conduct exit interviews after the season. Far fewer create intentional developmental conversations during the season, when they can actually make a difference. As a result, role confusion, misaligned expectations, and player frustration often go unaddressed.

A Team Learning Scientist could help structure recurring player development meetings throughout the year, ensuring that feedback, role clarity, and individual growth remain ongoing priorities. Part 4 will examine how these conversations can support both performance and well-being.

4) Player Experience Advocate

Player engagement meetings are about development. Player experience advocacy is about organizational listening. In many organizations, players have few formal avenues to raise concerns about support needs, frustrations, family stress, or travel challenges. As a result, important issues can remain hidden until they become significant problems.

A Team Learning Scientist could create systems that make player voice visible to the organization while also strengthening psychological safety and trust. In Part 5, I’ll explore how organizations can become more responsive to the lived experiences of their athletes.

Precedent & Differentiation

Though WNBA, NBA, and NCAA basketball programs sometimes employ team psychologists and player engagement staff, few franchises have formalized a TLS-esque role. By investing early in such a position, a team could help set the standard for athlete care and development.

ESPN recently ran an article detailing the Premier League’s investment in player care.

I believe that the Premier League trend will soon spread to basketball. There are just so many potential perks in this type of investment. Holistic investment in player well-being and growth builds loyalty, reduces burnout, and increases trust. And as far as a team’s identity is concerned, an investment in a TLS would position the organization as a forward-thinking, player-first franchise and demonstrate a commitment to a sustainable culture of high performance.

I am excited to see which high-level basketball program will be the first to adopt a TLS position. As first movers, they would be tapping into a huge competitive advantage that would be difficult for other organizations to ignore.

The Human Development Playbook for Sport Series Roadmap

✅ Part 1: The Missing Role on Most Basketball Staffs

⬜ Part 2: Every Week’s Most Valuable Meeting

⬜ Part 3: The Best Ideas Are Usually Stuck in the Locker Room

⬜ Part 4: Beyond Exit Interviews

⬜ Part 5: Who Advocates for the Players?

I’ll provide one key stat, one game plan I would use when facing this team, and one front-office move that would take this team to the next level.

The Identity

Portland Fire (6-7, -5.2 Net Rating)

As with most expansion teams, we didn’t know how things would play out with Portland. A quarter of the way through the season, we know one thing: This team scraps!

I first noticed this when watching their first-ever win against New York. Coach Alex Sarama was sending strategic traps at New York’s backcourt—and it was working incredibly well. It helped that the Fire Pit was roaring every time they forced a deflection or secured a loose ball by diving on the floor.

The Most Important Stat

Since then, I’ve had a feeling that Portland’s success was extremely predicated upon their ability to inflict chaos on their opponent’s guards. I ran a regression analysis to see if there was any truth to this. When I looked at the data, I was shocked by how strongly Portland’s forced-turnover totals tracked with their success.

Every Portland win has come when the Fire forced at least 17 turnovers; every loss has come when they forced 15 or fewer. Their turnovers forced explain roughly 60% of the variance in Portland's margin of victory (r = .78, R² = .60).

If you aren’t a math nerd, just know: that is an insanely high number! It basically means that if you can figure out POR’s projected forced turnovers, you will have a pretty good idea whether they will win or lose, just by looking at that one stat.

I was intrigued—but this wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking. Of course, bad teams turn the ball over a lot. You would expect Portland to be able to beat bad teams. This isn’t rocket science!

So I took it one step further. Raw margin can be misleading, since opponent quality matters. For instance, POR beating CON by 4? Not super impressive. But POR beating Las Vegas by 4? That would be impressive.

To this end, I looked at Portland’s margin against the spread (ATS), which should theoretically account for opponent strength, matchup context, and baseline team quality. If turnovers were only a proxy for “Portland beats bad teams,” the relationship would have weakened.

It didn’t!

The correlation between POR’s turnovers forced and its ATS performance (r = .82, R² = .67) was actually larger than the raw margin-of-victory correlation. Portland is 5-1 ATS when forcing at least 17 turnovers (with their one spread loss being a 1-point win versus CON when favored by 3) and 0-7 ATS when forcing 15 or fewer.

How To Beat Them

The data suggests that POR has a very hard time winning when they do not speed teams up. This may be related to the fact that outside of Carla Leite, players on this roster struggle to break down a half-court defense and start what Sarama calls “dominoes”, forcing a rotation that leads to an open shot. It also could be related to their lack of rim protection in the half-court (more on that later).

For this reason, I would prioritize playing smaller lineups of at least two handlers and a maximum of one big against Portland, especially favoring players with low turnover rates. Multiple handlers can be a great antidote to the pressure they are bound to face, creating a release point for the primary handler. This prevents Portland’s pressure from creating live-ball turnovers that become transition offense, and forces the Fire into their half-court offense—where they are beatable.

Golden State, for instance, played the entire game with two handlers on the floor (Burton, Williams, Chen, Hayes). They had just 7 turnovers, and won by 18.

If I Were the GM

GM Vanja Černivec has built exactly what an exciting expansion team should be: competitive, connected, modern, and annoying as hell to play against. The defensive tactics are working, and the players are in a constraints-led environment conducive to growth offensively.

Megan Gustafson is putting up some good numbers offensively, but Portland simply does not defend the rim well enough or force turnovers at a high enough clip with her on the floor. It is probably the reason she ranks in the 3rd percentile in D-RAPM. She can be an important piece, but Portland is overreliant on her at the moment. Luisa Geiselsoder is better on the defensive end, but her offense has been challenging, as her 13th percentile O-RAPM indicates.

Prioritizing a shot-blocking big in free agency or the draft is essential.

Two young players stand out to me who are slated to be free agents in 2027: Dallas’s Awak Kuier (24) and Minnesota’s Emma Cechova (21).

Kuier is a long, rangy big who has grown more comfortable shooting the three-ball. Her block rate has been above the 90th percentile in each of her four WNBA seasons (with impressive seasons overseas from 2024-25).

Cechova is a big from the Czech Republic who turned some heads this season before tearing her ACL. The world-class facilities in Portland would be a perfect place for her to continue her upward trajectory, and I’m sure Nika Muhl could use a partner in recovery.

Former #2 overall pick Cameron Brink might be a name to monitor in Los Angeles, where she is only playing 17 minutes per game. If LA ever made her available, Portland should be one of the first teams calling to make an offer.

In the upcoming draft, University of Kentucky Big Clara Strack and South Carolina Big Ashlyn Watkins fit the profile of a young defensive difference maker, depending on their development and where Portland ends up picking in the draft. Both are young—Watkins is 19, and Stack is 20.

Portland already has its Plan A: Chaos. The next step is finding their Plan B: the back-line goalie who can turn that chaos into a sustainable defensive identity for the years to come.

The biggest story of the first month of the W season is Minnesota. The Lynx have forced me to completely reevaluate my preseason expectations, jumping four spots into the title conversation. On the coasts, New York and Los Angeles both slide after disappointing starts, while Portland’s strong early record has me wrestling with a familiar question: how much of this is real?

As always, these rankings are future-facing, account for expected returns from injury (like Napheesa Collier), and reflect my own projections rather than current standings.

Biggest Movers

📈 Minnesota (+4)

📈 Portland (+4)

📉 New York (-3)

📉 Los Angeles (-3)

🏆 Title Favorites

1. Las Vegas (Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

The Aces have stumbled out of the gates a bit, largely due to their poor defense. They are ranked here because I still think they should be favored to win the title. Chennedy Carter has been better than advertised, and we know this team can up their defensive level in the playoffs.

Key Stat: LVA currently has a 106.9 DRTG (10th in the W)

Prediction: Will win the title despite not getting a top-2 seed.

2. Atlanta (Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Atlanta’s offensive struggles can be attributed in large part to poor shooting, which should regress. However, they are also getting lucky on defense, where opponents are shooting horribly against them, even on open shots. Brionna Jones will help this team a lot when she is back, and I might have underestimated her impact. That being said, Madina Okot (4.3 PPG, 4.7 RPG in 9.7 MPG) has been a pleasant surprise off the bench. She could be a nice bench piece for them this season, even when Jones returns.

Key Stat: ATL is currently shooting 31.2% from 3 (12th in the W)

Prediction: Will be a top-3 seed.

3. Minnesota (+4)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

The team that I was the most wrong about in my 2025 preview is the Lynx. They have been awesome. Cheryl Reave has done an absolutely amazing job reshaping this team. She is making Nia Coffey look like an All-Star. Olivia Miles, health-permitting, is winning Rookie of the Year, and Cheryl has truly given her the keys, letting her run the most PnR in the league. When they get Napheesa Collier back, they could once again be one of the best teams in the whole W.

Key Stat: MIN leads the W with a 10.3 Net Rating

Prediction: Cheryl Reave will win Coach of the Year.

🟢 Contenders

4. Golden State (Previous: +2)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

Last year was not an aberration for the Valks. They are 2nd in the W with a 10.2 Net Rating. Why? Well, they just don’t turn the ball over. Veronica Burton just keeps getting better, and the Burton-Gabby Williams backcourt has been fun to watch. This team is clicking on all cylinders right now.

Key Stat: Their 13.5% turnover rate ranks 1st in the W, and they allow only 9.4 points off turnovers—the 2nd-best team is at 12.4.

Prediction: Will make the Commissioner’s Cup Final.

5. Indiana (Previous: -1)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Speaking of a team that has been dominant in one particular area, the Fever are pretty much impossible to rebound against. The Fever aren't just the best defensive rebounding team in the W—they're lapping the field. The gap between Indiana and second place is actually larger than the gap between second place and last place.

Key Stat: Offensive Rebound Rate Allowed:

#1 Indiana: 22.6%

#2 Golden State: 28.7%

#15 Portland: 33.8%

Indiana → #2: 6.1%

#2 → #15: 5.1%

Prediction: Aliyah Boston will be a top-3 DPOY candidate

6. New York (Previous: -3)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

What’s wrong with the Liberty? Well, they have played most of the season without 3 of their starters—Ionescu, Sabally, and Fiebich. Ionescu, in particular, should help this team limit their turnover rate, which has been higher than normal to start the season. Things should settle for them. But I still feel like other analysts view them as a surefire top-2 team. For now, I’m selling that idea.

Key Stat: Turnover Rate.

2026 NYL: 19.4%

2025 NYL: 17.3%

Prediction: Will not get Home Court Advantage in the 1st Round of the Playoffs

🟡 Playoff Hopefuls

7. Dallas (Previous: +2)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Dallas is currently 4th in Net Rating, at +5.4. This is mostly driven by a ridiculous 112.7 ORTG. Here’s why I’m not sure if it’s real:

DAL is good offensively, but they are not THIS good.

Key Stat: 23.4 APG, 1st in the W.

Prediction: Offensive rating will fall out of the Top 3.

8. Los Angeles (Previous: -3)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

The worst defensive team in the league so far, by far? LA.

They just cannot get any stops, and a big reason for that is an utter lack of rim protection. Cameron Brink is averaging 1.7 blocks per game. The rest of the team? 0.5.

They have dug themselves out of an early hole and sit at 4-3 right now, but I have to downgrade them given the defensive challenges that feel very real.

Key Stat: LA is allowing 42.5 Points in the Paint this season. Last year, the league’s worst team in that area (CON) allowed just 38.5.

Prediction: LA’s defensive rating will remain Bottom-5.

9. Phoenix (Previous: -1)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

After starting their season by walloping Las Vegas, Phoenix has dropped 6 of 7. But things are not as bad as they seem. The high 3pt shooting percentage they are conceding should regress, especially with POA defender Monique Akoa Makani back, and Kahleah Copper should break out of her shooting slump.

Key Stat: PHX is allowing teams to shoot above 38% from 3 this year (up from 32.1% last year).

Prediction: PHX defense will propel this team to an above .500 June.

🟠 Bubble Teams

10. Washington (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Shout out to Shakira Austin, who is at the top of my list for Most Improved Player. Averaging 17 Points, 9 Rebounds, and 3 Assists, as well as 1.5 Blocks, Austin has taken her game to another level. My concerns with Washington, however, remain the same. The lack of shooting is stark. This has led to an offense that ranks 12th despite Austin’s dominance.

Key Stat: The Mystics are only averaging 5.3 3PT makes per game this year, 2nd worst in the W (CON, 5.2)

Prediction: Shakira Austin will be a top-3 MIP candidate

11. Portland (Previous: +4)

Recommendation: 🤝 HOLD

Portland is tied with Minnesota for the biggest riser in this week’s power rankings, but I think it is important to remain realistic about this team’s outlook. The team’s wins have come against the following teams:

-New York 2x, both times without Ionescu, Sabally, and Fiebich

-Connecticut 2x, both times without Lacan and in extremely close fashion

-Toronto

Coach Alex Sarama has them playing incredibly well, especially defensively. I would just caution fans not to overreact to what has been a good, but fortunate, beginning of the season. Remember that if Connecticut had gone 3-21 from 3 instead of 1-21, they likely would have won at Moda Center.

Key Stat: POR ranks first in forced turnovers at 16.6 per game.

Prediction: POR will finish the year as the best expansion team.

12. Chicago (Previous: Unchanged)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

My least favorite part of the season so far was seeing Rickea Jackson’s injury. Jackson was absolutely showing out as the focal point for the Sky. I was ready to say I was wrong about them. But for now, it looks like Chicago is going to be as bad as I thought they were. They are second-worst in offense, and outside of the Diggins-Cardoso pick-and-roll, they don’t have many ways to produce high-quality shots. They look like they are going to miss the playoffs—and will likely regret once again trading their first-round pick.

Key Stat: CHI’s eFG% is just 45.1%, 2nd-worst in the league, only to CON.

Prediction: CHI will finish with a bottom-three offense and miss the playoffs.

13. Toronto (Previous: -2)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

Toronto can’t defend anyone. The only team worse defensively is LA—and the loss of Temi Fagbenle to injury is really hurting them here. The 4-4 record, though, is likely misleading. Until this team addresses its defense, it will have a hard time contending for the playoffs.

Key Stat: TOR is conceding a 55.5% eFG%. Last year’s worst team in this metric, DAL, allowed 53.1% to their opponents.

Prediction: Toronto's defense will keep them out of the playoff race despite having enough offensive talent to stay competitive.

🔴 Bottom Feeders

14. Seattle (Unchanged)

Recommendation: 📉 SELL

When evaluating teams, it is important to separate the noise from what is real. Hopefully, you have noticed that this is a theme of these power rankings.

Well, Seattle's defense currently looks like a luxury car running on duct tape and good fortune.

Seattle actually ranks 11th in Net Rating right now, and is 5th in defense. Let me tell you right now—that is NOT real. Last year’s Storm team had Williams, Sykes, Magbegor, and other strong defenders. I expect Seattle’s defense to get much worse as teams start making their shots against them, and I expect it to be between them and this next team for the #1 overall pick.

Key Stat: 31.0% Opponent 3PT% (34.0 % last season)

Prediction: SEA’s defense will drop from 5th to 10th or worse by the end of June.

15. Connecticut (-2)

Recommendation: BUY 📈

I get that they want Juju in Houston, but you don’t have to try this hard. Can we talk about why Coach Meziane just benched Aneesah Morrow precisely 24 hours after I wrote a column about how good she has been? Yeah. Hey Leila Lacan, you are going to have to save this squad from being one of the worst of all time. I think she might give them a real boost.

Key Stat: The Sun’s current Net Rating of -17.6 is historically bad.

Prediction: Lacan leads CON’s Net Rating to the single digits in the month of June.

Three Things I Believe About the W at the End of May

1. Minnesota is a legitimate championship contender.

2. Seattle’s defense is 100% a mirage.

3. New York is not one of the best teams in the W right now.

1. Aneesah Morrow, Beasting

It has been a horrible season so far for the Connecticut Sun, who remain the only winless team in the W. One bright spot, though, has been second-year forward Aneesah Morrow.

Morrow was an elite rebounder last year, at 13.3 Reb/36 min, and has increased that this year to an elite 14.1 Reb/36. For context, MVP and potentially the best big of all time, A’Ja Wilson, has a career-high rebounding mark of 12.4!”

She has an uncanny sense of running to the exact part of the floor where the rebound is most likely to land. Watch as she totally takes up Chelsea Gray’s space on this transition board.

Tonight, she faces a Seattle team that is a horrible rebounding team without 2nd-Year Phenom Dom Malonga. I expect her to continue to rebound at an elite pace.

2. Sarah Ashlee-Barker, Elite Wing?

I wrote in my Tier 5 WNBA Preview that one reason I am excited about Portland is SA.

She has 100% lived up to the (my?) hype so far this season. It wasn’t quite as good as her game-winner against New York, but this scoop-and-score was the biggest play of the game in their second win against the Sun:

Here’s another view:

Barker’s defensive numbers are strong. She has a 2.2% steal percentage, ranking in the mid-70th percentile, and Portland has been way better defensively with her on the court. But what has me even more excited is her playmaking and her ability to put the ball on the floor:

She is literally everywhere on the court:

She also had an awesome assist to Holly Winterburn towards the end of the first quarter, showing an ability to drive and dish.

There’s still room for improvement, too. Barker has only attempted 10 threes across her first 4 games. Based on what I’ve seen, she should be able to get more shots up. As a high percentage shooter, increasing her volume would make her even more impactful.

In an expansion draft, you are just trying to take some shots on players who could be long-term assets. Portland sure has found something with Barker.

3. DAL’s Defense, and Player-Blaming

In my Tier 3 Preview, I wrote that I was concerned about Dallas’s ability to get stops on defense due to their lack of perimeter/POA defenders.

Coach Jose Fernandez pulled Maddy Siegrist after this defensive lapse, but one of the things that makes teams great defensively is their ability to scramble and rotate when someone is beaten. Dallas does neither consistently. Even if Siegrist messed up, Arike or Paige still needed to slide over and take away the rim. As neutral or negative defenders tend to do, they just stayed stagnant, and Minnesota got an easy layup. This is a team issue, not an individual player issue.

It’s early in the season, so I also was not a big fan of Coach Fernandez putting his team on blast for their “selfishness” after a tough start. His media sessions are interesting, to say the least:

It’s a long season. From a coaching perspective, taking this type of approach should only be done once or twice a year. The short-term results of Fernandez’s approach were good. Dallas responded in their next game, beating Washington handily to get to 2-2. The defense looked more energized.

But this is about the long term. If his team underperforms again in the early stages of the season (likely) and Fernandez blows up in the media once more, his voice might wear out with a young team.

4. Caitlin Clark Discourse

Clark has had a good season so far, and it’s been great to see her back on the court. But so much of the discourse around her is just so tired.

IND D-Coordinator Briann January was caught on the bench having a “heated” discussion with Clark, presumably about defensive coverages. This is a totally normal thing at all levels of basketball, but with Clark, it became the topic of so much attention.

I hope, with the way the league is growing, we can get over this hump and talk about her impact on the court, and let go of the rest. For what it’s worth, I currently rate her as the 6th best offensive player in the W (behind Wilson, Gray, Plum, Ionescu, and Bueckers), and the 19th best overall player.

If only we talked about her the 6th most!

14. Seattle

Projected Starters: Hiedeman, Johnson, Horston, Malonga, Dolson

Key Bench Pieces: Brown, Cooke, Fam

Analysis: From a teambuilding perspective, it is important to avoid “purgatory”—not being good enough to win a championship, but also not being bad enough to get a top draft pick.

Seattle has been shrewd in its approach. Since the trade deadline, they have moved off of four all-stars: Gabby Williams, Nneka, SDS, and Brittney Sykes. And they have handed the keys to some incredibly promising young talent.

Dom Malonga is at the top of the list. No one in the W possesses the action capacity that the 6’6” French 20-year-old has.

They look like winners of the draft, as well. #3 pick Awa Fam from Spain was seen by many as the prospect with the highest ceiling. And #8 pick Flau’jae Johnson is a long wing who can flat-out score.

Give them reps, let them develop. But this year, there could be a lot of growing pains for players still trying to figure out how to read the game and respond to different situations on the fly. The turnovers will be high, and the team will struggle to string together wins this season. And that might be a good thing down the road.

Projected Offensive Rating: -5.8

Projected Defensive Rating: -2.3

15. Portland

Projected Starters: Leite, Carleton, Ashlee-Barker, Engstler, Geiselsoder

Key Bench Pieces: Gustafson, Buhner, Puoch, Jones

Analysis: Shout out to Portland, who has done an incredible job building excitement for their fanbase for the team’s return to the W.

From an on-court perspective, this team has a number of promising young players who should develop extremely well in Coach Alex Sarama’s CLA-based program. I got to see Sarama’s approach up close and personal when I spent time coaching in his Italian academy. The organization’s commitment to this approach is commendable and should bear fruit in future years.

I am particularly excited to track the development of Sarah Ashlee-Barker. Ashlee-Barker (SA) is the exact type of player a team like Portland should be targeting in their expansion year. She is young (24), has positional size (6’0”), was highly regarded in the draft (#9 overall), had great college numbers on both ends (37% from 3, 2.0 steals per game), and just didn’t get the opportunity in her rookie season behind veteran players in LA. She showed out in Game 1, though:

Portland also has other players who could develop into very high-quality contributors. Carla Leite puts a great deal of pressure on the rim. Luisa Geiselsöder is a young, stretch big who moves well defensively.

But this team will be limited. Their most accomplished WNBA player, Bridget Carleton, was the fifth option on Minnesota last year. Though Leite has excelled at penetrating to the rim, teams are going to force her to shoot from the outside (81/300 in her last three professional seasons, 27%), which might not go well from an offensive efficiency perspective, especially given the next issue: rebounding.

It is likely that from an analytical perspective, Sarama will try to get this team to shoot a lot of threes and crash the glass. But that strategy is only as good as your team’s rebounding ability, and this team doesn’t really have that. Their top two rebounders are Emily Engstler and Geiselsöder, who ranked 40th and 80th, respectively, in the W in offensive rebounding on a per-minute basis last year. Last year’s expansion darlings, the Golden State Valkyries, had six different players who ranked above that.

Sarama’s CLA is not a magic bullet, but rather is a long-term strategy that will take time to pay off. This year might be rough for Portland—but the good news is that the result of these growing pains should be a top pick in a loaded 2027 WNBA draft (hello, JuJu Watkins).

Projected Offensive Rating: -6.4

Projected Defensive Rating: -2.9

10. Washington

Projected Starters: Amoore, Citron, McMahon, Iriafen, Austin

Key Bench Pieces: Betts, Oyenwere

Analysis: When it comes to top-end young talent, Washington has it. Kiki Iriafen and Shakira Austin are top-tier rebounders and efficient offensive players, and Sonia Citron made the All-Star Game as a rookie. So, what’s not to like?

Well, this team can’t shoot or score. The -5.4 ORTG posted last year was third-worst in the league. While Georgia Amoore should provide some shooting and handling, there’s not a lot else.

Developmentally, it seems as though adding some shooting and connectivity to this lineup would be key to developing the young bigs—but they ostensibly did nothing in the draft or free agency to address this. After Washington traded Brittney Sykes on August 5th, the team went 3-12 the rest of the way. And Sykes isn’t even a shooter!

I applaud this team for choosing Betts in the draft despite the logjam of bigs. She has a chance to be a generational defensive player and is quite adept for her age offensively, as well. But I think this team has a clear limit offensively until they get better complementary pieces.

Projected Offensive Rating: -5.4

Projected Defensive Rating: +0.9

11. Toronto

Projected Starters: Allemand, Sykes, Mabrey, Sabally, Fagbenle

Key Bench Pieces: Conde, Rice

Analysis: There’s a common theme amongst teams in this tier: they're just not optimized to best suit their players’ skills.

I’ll give Toronto some credit—they have limited options as an expansion team. But, when you build your team around perimeter playmakers like Mabrey, Allemand, and Sykes, why start two players who are “mucks” (non-shooters)?

I’m not denying the defensive impact of a good rim protector. Fagbenle is elite there. But I do wonder how limited the driving lanes are for this group of primary guards who love to drive.

Projected Offensive Rating: -3.8

Projected Defensive Rating: -1.9

12. Chicago

Projected Starters: Diggins, Cloud, Jackson, Stevens, Cardoso

Key Bench Pieces: Jaquez, Sheldon, Williams

Analysis: One of the biggest discrepancies between my own numbers and the public’s perception of a team is here. Many around the league seem to peg Chicago as a sure-fire playoff team with the additions of Diggins, Stevens, and Jackson. Those names have cache.

But when you add it all up, what you are getting is a lot of high volume from the least efficient area of the court, the midrange. Diggins and Jackson love to operate there. Cardoso and Williams do too. I do not think it is a coincidence that the three worst offenses in the W last year (CHI, CON, & WAS) were also the bottom three teams in the league in 3-pointers attempted.

Defensively, Jackson and Stevens were a part of the Sparks’ worst defensive units last year, and Diggins might lose a step as most guards do late in their careers.

I am taking a stance against Chicago this year.

Projected Offensive Rating: -2.4

Projected Defensive Rating: -3.3

13. Connecticut

Projected Starters: Lacan, Rivers, Miller, Burke, Griner

Key Bench Pieces: Morrow, Nelson-Ododa, Angloma

Analysis: No one would have faulted you for not paying attention, but on July 6, 2025, a young guard from France named Leila Lacan made her debut for the bottom-feeders of the WNBA, the Connecticut Sun.

From that point on, well, the Sun were still bad—but not THAT bad! Through the home stretch of the season, they had some results that made you refresh your box score app to make sure it wasn’t glitching.

July 9: 93-83 vs SEA

July 27: 95-64 vs GS

Aug 1: 78-62 vs NYL

Lacan was a major reason why. She flies around on defense and creates great paint pressure on offense. You’d be surprised where she ranked in advanced metrics last year, as a rookie, when compared to some WNBA stars:

And she’s only getting better. 3 weeks ago, she was named MVP of the French League. She has a legit path to be a top 10 player, and one of the biggest reasons I think Connecticut is above the last two teams in the league.

The rest of the team leaves a lot to be desired, but Saniya Rivers could develop into a legit backcourt partner to Lacan in the long run.

Projected Offensive Rating: -3.4

Projected Defensive Rating: -3.0

Next Article: Tier 5—Long-Term Hope

6. Golden State

Projected Starters: Burton, Williams, Salaun, Thornton, Stokes

Key Bench Pieces: Hayes, Zandalasini, Charles, Amihere

Analysis: The surprise of the year last year, Golden State won’t sneak up on anyone this year. Depending on who you ask, they were either lucky (ShotQuality had them 20-26 last year) or unlucky (BasketballReference had them 25-19).

Either way, Coach Natalie Nakase likely isn’t going to change much. Their strong help defensive schemes, OReb crashing, high 3pt rate, and high-quality shot selection will all be hallmarks of this team once again.

The faces, however, will be slightly different. Promising young center Iliana Rupert will miss the season due to pregnancy. I am concerned that Rupert’s floor-stretching ability will be missed with Kiah Stokes serving as the new starting center—I have Stokes rated as the worst offensive starter in the entire league.

That being said, the Valkyries made a splash in free agency by picking up former Storm guard/wing Gabby Williams. Williams’s potential offensively can be debated. I am encouraged by her leading France to a silver medal in the Olympics, where she averaged 16/5/5 on 50% shooting. But regardless of where Gabby rates offensively, her defensive prowess is second to none. I tend to think the Williams addition outweighs the Rupert loss. This should be one of the best defensive teams in the league.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: -1.8

Projected Team Defensive Rating: +4.4

7. Minnesota

Projected Starters: Miles, Williams, McBride, Howard, Juhasz

Key Bench Pieces: Coffey, Caldwell

Analysis: How much does one player matter?

Napheesa Collier is slated to be out for a while. She will reportedly begin on-court activities in early June, and that probably means she won’t return until late June or early July, which means she is at risk of missing half the season.

Collier spent most of last season as an MVP frontrunner, leading MIN to an ELITE +12.3 net rating. Now, they start the season without her, as well as Co-DPOY Alanna Smith and 6POY candidates Jessica Sheppard and Natisha Hiedeman.

Cheryl Reeve will be excited to work with Miles, the #2 overall pick, who has already shown to be an elite offensive player.

But Miles has some defensive limitations, and her offensive role as a primary handler seems to conflict with Williams’s. It is hard to see a bull case here with the Day 1 roster. However, Collier is waiting in the wings, making it possible that this team can coast by without her and return to elite status when she gets back.

This was an extremely tough projection, given how much Collier means on both ends of the court. I tried to average their O/DRtgs with her and without her, assuming she plays in 50% of games.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: 2.4 (3.4 with Collier, 1.4 without

Projected Team Defensive Rating: -0.5 (1.2 with Collier, -2.2 without)

8. Phoenix

Projected Starters: Whitcomb, Copper, Bonner, Thomas, Mack

Key Bench Pieces: Akoa Makani, Williams

Sometimes, advanced stats and the “eye test” tell different stories about a player

Kahleah Copper is seen by RAPM and LEBRON as a neutral or negative player. Across the league, she is viewed as an All-Star and a top-20 player.

Which is true?

This season will go a long way to figuring that out. With Satou now in New York, Copper is elevated to a clear role as the #1 scorer on the team. Coach Nate Thibbets has mentioned that he wants her to shoot more threes, and this should help her efficiency. But Copper’s ability to increase her team’s efficiency while on court will be huge for a team coming off a finals appearance, and that is running out of time to win with Alyssa Thomas in her prime.

Nate Thibbets is clearly sharp. Check out his thinking on how to improve Phoenix’s rebounding:

His ability to optimize Kahleah will be key. Moreover, Natasha Mack is an elite defender, and Whitcomb and Akoa Makani are efficient scoring options. The Sabally loss will hurt, but if Copper can scale up—I think she can—they might be better than people think.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: -0.5

Projected Team Defensive Rating: 2.1

9. Dallas

Projected Starters: Bueckers, Arike, Fudd, Siegrist, Smith

Key Bench Pieces: Sheppard, Clark, Sims

Analysis: As a coaching researcher, I am very interested in how much influence coaches actually have in winning basketball games. There is no better case study for that than this year’s Dallas Wings.

Chris Koclanes is replaced by Jose Fernandez, and there is reason to believe he can make a difference. But first of all, it is worth noting that Dallas was not as bad as their record last year. ShotQuality projected them at 19 wins, 9 better than their actual record. Bueckers should be even better, and Fudd gives them a bona fide shooter.

Questions remain about their defense. Only Odyssey Sims posted a positive D-LEBRON last year, and it is unclear who from the Fudd-Arike-Bueckers backcourt is capable of handling elite playmakers like Plum, Young, or Clark. Part of me wonders if this team will regret not drafting an elite rim protector in the draft, as good as Azzi might be offensively.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: 1.4

Projected Team Defensive Rating: -3.4

Next Article: Tier 4—Something’s Missing

4. Indiana Fever

Projected Starters: Clark, Mitchell, Hull, Billings, Boston

Key Bench Pieces: Cunningham, Hines-Allen, Johnson

Analysis: Stephanie White has been known as a defensive coach, and her reputation was proven to be well deserved last year. Taking over a team with a -6.0 DRTG in 2024, White led that unit to a massive turnaround, achieving a +1.3 DRTG in 2025. This was the key lever in the Fever coming within one game of the WNBA finals, losing by 9 in a decisive Game 5 of the semifinals to the eventual champions, the Aces.

All of this was done with the loss of Caitlin Clark, who played fewer than 20 games due to injury. Clark is back, and the big question for this team is whether they can sustain the level of defensive growth in White’s second season at the helm.

The Fever seem intent on playing multiple bigs, starting Billings alongside Hines-Allen in both preseason games. I assume this strategy is designed to provide the rim protection required with White’s defensive scheme, which aggressively limits opponent 3PT attempts (27.7 3PA allowed last year, 3rd-best). I’m interested to see how this plays out.

Speaking of their defense, I cannot wait to see Raven Johnson play on that end of the court. Her on-ball disruption and off-ball instincts give her a clear path to minutes and a path for Indiana to continue the defensive improvement that is a prerequisite to title contention.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: +5.1

Projected Team Defensive Rating: +1.0

5. Los Angeles Sparks

Projected Starters: Plum, Atkins, Burrell, Nneka, Hamby

Key Bench Pieces: Brink, Wheeler

Analysis: This might seem high for the Sparks, who missed the playoffs last year, and who, according to Basketball Reference, had a true record of 18-26 last year. But this is a totally different Sparks team that should be well-positioned to improve on both ends of the ball.

What is different about LA this year? First, they should get a full season of Cameron Brink, who is a massive difference-maker defensively. Brink’s advanced defensive metrics last year, albeit in a small sample size, were elite.

Someone whose advanced metrics were NOT elite was Azura Stevens, who is now out of the rotation. LA consistently performed better with Stevens off the court last year, and replacing her with Nneka Ogumwike should yield a big improvement on both ends of the court.

Ariel Atkins also comes in, and though she is coming off a down season with the Sky, she has consistently been a positive contributor throughout her entire career.

Rae Burrell can have a similar positive impact, now that she is healthy coming into the season (28 GP last year). Replacing Rickea Jackson’s inefficient mid-range heavy shot diet should not be a major issue on a team that can produce high-quality offense elsewhere. This team could surprise people—if they figure out how to leverage Brink successfully, which they failed to do in their first game of the season.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: +3.8

Projected Team Defensive Rating: -0.5

Next Article: Tier 3— The Middle Class

1. Las Vegas Aces

Projected Starters: Gray, Young, Talbot, Smith, Wilson

Key Bench Pieces: Loyd, Carter

Analysis: It is easy to forget that the Aces stumbled into the All-Star Break last year, sitting at 11-11, with a net rating of 9th. Coach Becky Hammon reiterated the challenges of the early season on ESPN, saying, “There were a lot of things people probably didn’t know about.”

Of course, from that point on, the Aces went 19-3 in the regular season and 9-3 in the playoffs to win the ‘ship. They also ranked 2nd in the WNBA Shot Quality Rankings despite the pre-ASB woes.

Due to the early-season struggles last year that dragged down the team’s overall statistical profile, Las Vegas might actually be underrated heading into this season. The addition of Chennedy Carter is massive, as she is entering her age-27 season, and claims to have learned a great deal from her year away from the W. I don’t think people appreciate how good Carter is.

From an analytical standpoint, her 2024 season saw her boast a +15.1 net rating (95th percentile, which was good for 5th in the entire league). Adding Carter feels unfair to the rest of the W if she is able to successfully integrate.

I do worry about this team’s defense. Outside of Wilson and Young, there are no projected rotation players who have consistently been above average defensively.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: +6.1

Projected Team Defensive Rating: +2.4

2. New York Liberty

Projected Starters: Ionescu, Fiebich, Sabally, Stewart, Jones

Key Bench Pieces: Johannes, Laney-Hamilton, Allen

Analysis: New York was supposed to be a juggernaut last year, but they never quite got there. Natasha Cloud and Emma Meeseman had down seasons, Sabrina Ionescu shot below 30% from the 3-point line, and this team was upset in the first round by Phoenix. This led to a coaching change, with Sandy Brondello giving way to Chris DeMarco, a former assistant of the Golden State Warriors.

The big change here, and reason for optimism, revolved around the acquisition of Satou Sabally. Sabally is a dynamic player who is highly impactful to winning according to advanced metrics—ESPN had her 14th last year in Net Point Contribution, and my own rankings based on LEBRON have her as a top-10 player.

Their starting lineup is massive and should provide a variety of matchup issues for the opposition. It will be important that Laney-Hamilton returns to form, as she provides the necessary perimeter defense for this group that may struggle to stop opposing guards. But it will be very difficult to score on this team at the rim.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: +3.9

Projected Team Defensive Rating: +4.3

3. Atlanta Dream

Projected Starters: Canada, Gray, Howard, Reese, Hillmon (Jones)

Key Bench Pieces: PaoPao, Okot, Borlase

Analysis: Due to their first-round exit at the hands of the Fever, Atlanta might be getting slept on this year. That small sample size of 3 games should not mitigate their accomplishments in Coach Karl Smesko’s first year. Atlanta was 2nd in the W in net rating at +10, which would project to a 35-9 record in a luck-neutral season (they finished 30-14).

And this feels repeatable. All of their players, outside of Brionna Jones (who starts the season injured) are young and still have room for improvement. And they added Angel Reese, rescued from the Chicago Sky. Rhyne Howard dealt with a knee injury that hampered the second half of her season, and despite that, she was still 6th in the W in Net Points. Allisha Gray was 4th in that same metric. It seems that Smesko’s offensive approach has unlocked potential in those two, and that should provide optimism that it could do the same for Reese.

The downside? The bench is quite shallow. The team has high hopes for Isobel Borlase, the recent MVP of the NBL. And TeHina PaoPao had a strong rookie season and should improve. But beyond those two, there is little to no WNBA experience. My numbers have them higher than my projected ratings when they are full, but I am bumping them down due to the relative lack of depth and the fact that it may take a while to integrate Reese into Smesko-ball.

Projected Team Offensive Rating: +4.1

Projected Team Defensive Rating: +3.9

Next Article: Tier 2 Teams (Ranked #4 and #5)