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With the early weeks of the 2025 WNBA season playing out in the shadow of the NBA Playoffs, you can be forgiven if you're late tuning into the league.
That said, you've missed a lot. The New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx are seemingly on another Finals collision course, Caitlin Clark's disappointing injury has taken some early shine off the Indiana Fever — then she returned with a vengeance, the Golden State Valkyries are here, and the Atlanta Dream might be a good Finals sleeper pick.
That's not all. As women's professional basketball continues to grow, the storylines are becoming even more captivating. Here's where we stand as we near one month into the season.
The reigning champion Liberty might be even better this year
The Liberty went 32-8 last year for the second season in a row and finished things off with a five-game WNBA Finals win over the Lynx. They lost Courtney Vandersloot to free agency and Kayla Thornton to the Valkyries in the expansion draft, yet somehow they're even better.
Veteran Natasha Cloud will get the lion's share of the credit considering the starting guard is the most prominent newcomer — and she won Eastern Conference Player of the Week her first week with the team. But it's more than just her. Kennedy Burke is having her best season so far, emerging as a true knock-down shooter off the bench, while New York finally has Marine Johannès for a full season.
Many of the returnees have been better as well, finding themselves in better position with the Liberty running a crisper five-out offense. Jonquel Jones is averaging a double-double and shooting 43 percent from three, while Breanna Stewart's per-game scoring is down slightly, but she's shooting a more efficient 53 percent from the field and taking fewer threes.
Lynx' Napheesa Collier is having an MVP season
Napheesa Collier is one of those players you might assume has won an MVP at some point along the way, but she actually hasn't. That might soon change. In a career that was already on a Hall of Fame trajectory, Collier is having her best season yet for the Lynx.
Collier is leading the WNBA in scoring average by more than five points per game at 26.1 with Allisha Gray a distant second. On the other end, she's averaging career bests in steals and blocks. To illustrate just how dominant she's been, she tied A'ja Wilson for the fastest player to ever reach 150 points and 50 rebounds in a season, doing so in just six games. She has also joined Wilson and Aliyah Boston as the only players with multiple 20-point, 10-rebound double-doubles so far this season.
Through it all, it should come as no surprise that the Lynx have the best record in the W.
An injury sidelines Fever star Caitlin Clark
If Caitlin Clark wakes up in the morning, fans want to know about it, so you could imagine their disappointment when a left quad strain put the Indiana Fever star on the sidelines for at least two weeks. Clark last played on May 24 against the Liberty, and after her injury, the Fever turned around and lost to bad Washington Mystics and Connecticut Sun teams back-to-back.
Before her injury, Clark was putting up numbers on par with what she did as a rookie (so, amazing numbers). She opened the season with a triple-double against the Chicago Sky and notched two more points-assists double-doubles in her next three games. Inefficiency and turnovers have still been a problem for Clark, but hey — she's a second-year player. She has room to improve and has shown every reason to believe she will.
Clark finally returned over the weekend against the Liberty and her bonkers performance helped hand the defending champs their first loss of the season. She scored 32 points on seven made threes, highlighted by 25 points and six triples in the first half, with three of them coming in the span of 35 seconds. And just for fun, she added eight rebounds, nine assists and two blocks.
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No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers makes a major impact for the Wings
Paige Bueckers became the latest superstar to join the league when the Dallas Wings took her first overall in the 2025 WNBA Draft. She brought her massive following with her to the W, and in her first few weeks, her fans were not disappointed.
In her first six games, she filled the stat sheet to the tune of 14.7 points, 6.7 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game. Though the Wings struggled, she proved that her elite basketball IQ, court vision and moxie would translate seamlessly to the WNBA.
The Bueckers experience went on temporary pause, however, after that. The rookie missed three games while in the league's concussion protocol, then an additional game with an illness. Like Clark, she made a statement in her return. Facing the Phoenix Mercury, Bueckers scored 35 points on 13-19 shooting and 5-7 shooting from three.
The WNBA welcomes the Golden State Valkyries
For the first time since 2008, the WNBA added a new team this season in the Golden State Valkyries. With a roster primarily made of players taken in the expansion draft (and veteran Tiffany Hayes), the team isn't expected to be great, but at 5-5, they've at least shown the ability to compete.
It doesn't matter too much. In their first season, it's all about the spectacle at Golden State, and the Valkyries are the hottest ticket in town. They've sold out every home game they've played, filling the 18,064-seat Chase Center four times. That gives them the highest average attendance in the WNBA, ahead of the Fever (16,719 per game) and defending champion Liberty (16,113).
The Atlanta Dream are a sneaky Liberty-Lynx alternative
Last year's finalists, the Liberty and Lynx, could certainly meet in the WNBA Finals once again. But if they don't, the Atlanta Dream could be the team to usurp one of them. Gray is having the best year of her career so far, putting up 21.0 points per game on 42 percent three-point shooting. With Rhyne Howard as productive as ever by her side, the Dream have as powerful a 1-2 punch in the backcourt as you could ask for.
The Dream also added newcomers Brittney Griner and Brionna Jones, a pair of perennial All-Stars in the front court. The two are combining to average better than 23 points and 14 rebounds per game for a team that reached the playoffs last year before the Liberty quickly dispatched of them.
To be fair, with the exception of a win over the Fever, the Dream haven't exactly beaten a WNBA gauntlet. But they are undeniably improved and have the star power to compete with the best.
