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Welcome back to No Offseason! This season’s getting spicy. Today we unpack:
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📍 Off days in L.A. and N.Y.
🏀 Ionescu’s debut, among others
📊 How are the Dream and Mercury trending?
🎧 WNBA mailbag
Let’s go.
Tensions rise in L.A.
The 30 or so minutes of practice the media gets to view aren’t always the most revelatory. You see a lot of warm-ups, shooting drills — sometimes half-court shots — and other ways of running out the clock before teams close the doors and get to the good stuff.
But there was some actual tension at practice in Los Angeles last week after the Sparks, who came into the season with hopes of contention, started the season 1-3. (They’re now 3-3.)
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After the scout team scored on yet another offensive rebound, Nneka Ogwumike had about enough. After doling out little bits of wisdom throughout practice, like “Let’s not go for so many ball fakes,” this particular error demanded a stop in the action.
The 15-year veteran, who joined the Sparks in free agency, chastised her teammates for relaxing after every mistake instead of continuing to play. She questioned why players were competing on offense but not on defense.
In her words, “What the hell?”
Instances like this show why the Sparks believed they needed Ogwumike to restore their franchise’s legitimacy. The seven-time All-Defensive honoree can — and clearly will — hold the rest of the team accountable on that end of the floor.
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Los Angeles won’t be a lockdown squad, but even a middling defense — the Sparks ranked 10th out of 15 teams in defensive rating over the last week — will be enough to get wins when their offense finds its rhythm.
Ionescu debuts for New York
In Brooklyn, the New York Liberty (3-4) had nearly an entire week of practice between the end of their three-game road trip and their home game against the Golden State Valkyries. There was no visible tension on the Liberty practice court. Instead, it was gratitude, as their full roster slowly began to take shape:
Sabrina Ionescu returned to practice after missing the first week of games with a left foot injury.
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Leonie Fiebich and Raquel Carrera finally made it to New York after helping Valencia Basket win the Liga Femenina Endesa championship in Spain.
Ionescu made her season debut against the Dallas Wings on Sunday, finishing with 11 points, seven assists and five rebounds in the Liberty’s 91-76 loss. Carrera made her WNBA debut Sunday, but logged only one minute for the Liberty.
Fiebich’s status was set to active yesterday, making her available for games. However, she missed yesterday’s 81-74 loss to the Portland Fire due to rest. The Liberty have yet to play like a championship-contending team as they navigate absences and continue searching for consistency within the new systems under first-year coach Chris DeMarco.
More news from the W:
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🏀 Back to Ogwumike, who passed Indiana Fever legend Tamika Catchings for fifth all-time in points, with 7,383.
🥎 UCLA national champion Megan Grant went from fall basketball practice to setting the NCAA softball home run record.
🏁 Do we have a Rookie of the Year race? Azzi Fudd has entered the chat.
✖️ Caitlin Clark missed a game. And then things got weird.
🎙️ On the latest “No Offseason” podcast, we broke down the developmental player system, the challenges of dual ownership structures and what truly defines effective coaching — from team execution to player buy-in and locker room dynamics. Listen to all that and more here.
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Ionescu’s season debut had the makings of a moment. She started strong, scoring five points in the first quarter before making both of her 3-point attempts in the second. One of her deep balls came from just inside the half-court line. After it sank through the net, she stared into the crowd with one of her trademark grins, sending fans into a raucous celebration.
Her game fell flat in the second half, when she was held scoreless, shooting 0-for-6 from the field.
More debuts:
The Seattle Storm welcomed 19-year-old Awa Fam to the WNBA on Sunday after the No. 3 pick was with her Spanish club Valencia a week ago. Fam hasn’t even had a chance to practice with Seattle, but she still dropped 10 points in the Storm’s 97-85 win over the Washington Mystics.The most promising moment of the game came when Fam connected with fellow rookie Flau’jae Johnson on the pick-and-roll. Get used to a lot of this:
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And congrats to Fam’s Seattle teammate Katie Lou Samuelson, who made her 2026 debut after tearing her ACL during last season’s training camp. (Best wishes to the Chicago Sky’s Rickea Jackson and Minnesota Lynx’s Emma Cechova for similarly smooth recoveries.)
On the other end of the age spectrum, Portland beat the Toronto Tempo on Saturday in part due to nine assists from 35-year-old Slovenian guard Teja Oblak. Per Across the Timeline, Oblak is the seventh player to be at least 35 years old in her WNBA debut, and the first since 2003. Seven other players aged 30 and older have made their WNBA debuts in the last three seasons, as more roster spots allow for older players to realize their professional dreams.This is the first season in league history with multiple players younger than 20 and older than 30 playing their first WNBA games.
Michaela Onyenwere played her first game of the season for Washington, tallying six points and four fouls. Although the 26-year-old Onyenwere is closer in age to Fam than Oblak, she is the most experienced Mystics player, and her Washington teammates call her “coach.”To be fair, she literally coached two of them as a UCLA assistant this past season, when the Bruins (with current Mystics players Lauren Betts and Angela Dugalic) won a national title.
Let’s check in on the way some teams are trending.
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📈 Up: Atlanta Dream
The Dream are owners of the best record in the league (4-1) and are undefeated when Rhyne Howard takes the floor. Entering yesterday’s games, there were 26 instances of a team falling behind by 15-plus points this season; only Atlanta has recovered to win after trailing by that many, and the Dream have now done so twice (against Minnesota and the Phoenix Mercury).
There have been offensive hiccups because of veteran stalwart Brionna Jones’ injury and Angel Reese learning a new system, but this is the WNBA’s best defensive team, poised to win its first playoff series since 2016.
📉 Down: Phoenix Mercury
Ever since the season opener, when the Mercury limited the Las Vegas Aces to 66 points, defense in Phoenix has been nonexistent, particularly on the perimeter. The Mercury are missing Monique Akoa Makani, who has been unavailable due to overseas commitments, but one player alone isn’t responsible for giving up 90.5 points and 11.2 3s per game — a 1-5 stretch — since the matchup against Las Vegas.
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Even after a strong defensive start against Atlanta on Sunday, that had Phoenix up 70-58 with five minutes to play, the Mercury collapsed and conceded 24 points the rest of the way. They were beaten from beyond the arc (the Dream made four 3s), in transition and on second-chance points.
The defense has been, in a word, gross.
“Teams are coming in and getting anything and everything that they want against us,” Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas said after losing to Los Angeles.
A Thomas-led team hasn’t even been below average in defensive rating since 2016. The Mercury have a lot of new players to integrate with only four members of their 2025 playoff rotation currently active, but they’re digging themselves a big hole to start the season.
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Here are the top games we’re monitoring this week (all times ET):
📺 Dream-Lynx
Wednesday at 9 p.m., USA Network
Atlanta comes to Minnesota with the league’s best record as the 4-2 Lynx seek revenge for a one-point loss in the season opener.
📺 Fever-Valkyries
Thursday at 10 p.m., Prime Video
Things got spicy between the 4-2 Indiana Fever and 4-2 Valkyries last week, and now Golden State has Ballhalla on its side.
📺 Sparks-Mystics
Friday at 7:30 p.m., Ion/League Pass
Have the Sparks actually righted the ship after a 1-3 start? A real-deal playoff team would win in Washington.
📺 Storm-Tempo
Saturday at 1 p.m., League Pass
Vancouver’s team versus Toronto’s team? Kidding, but tune in for the WNBA’s first international team against the international frontcourt of the future.
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📺 Aces-Valkyries
Sunday at 3:30 p.m., Peacock/NBC
The WNBA’s Sunday prime-time matchups have delivered so far, and you can bet the 4-2 Aces are tired of losing on nationally televised showcases this season.
📺 Lynx-Mercury
Monday at 10 p.m., Peacock/NBC
It’s a shame that 4-2 Minnesota will make both its visits to 2-5 Phoenix, where its 2025 season ended in the WNBA semifinals, before Napheesa Collier returns from injury. Still, every matchup between these teams tends to go down to the wire.
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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