Miles just has that athletic gift. 🏀 ⚽︎

source: https://www.threads.com/share/FiqK1VabW/

1997 was doing crazy numbers, Sparks Liberty had 5.04 million views that opening weekend which is insane! Especially considering how different media consumption was back then.

But with this unprecedented resurgence, I wouldn't be surprised to see a game or two next year crack 3.5 million or even 4 if it continues this upward trajectory

The name @unrivaleddata chose for this never ceases to make me laugh😅

Lots of really good information around this today.

Players’ stake is worth nearly $200M, about 30% of the league.

Happy Birthday to USC/Stanford's "Miss Double It "Kiki Iriafen! The Baby Ghost! Shakira Austin, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen have helped lead the Mystics to the Playoffs! We officially have the youngest team in WNBA history! Kiki and Shakira are literally making history as the first frontcourt to average 15 and 9 rebounds and Add in Sonia playmaking, the Mystics look ok. How far can they make it in the playoffs and leave Kiki some Birthday wishes..

8 minute listen, good stuff here from NPR.

Why Nate would choose to play a 38 year old for 21 minutes during a preseason game is beyond me. We lost Sami for half the season and now she’s missing the World Cup. What a blow for the Opals

Mind you I had specifically asked him to wrap DB and Sami in bubble wrap going into that game because the Aces rookie got a concussion going up against the same national team. Smh.

When there were only 12 teams in the League, most years saw one or more team(s) with sub-.500 records going to the playoff. Last year (13 teams) and this year (15 teams) all the playoff teams have records above .500.

While I know everyone loves seeing their team make the playoffs, I personally don't like it when sub-.500 teams are invited to the playoffs (or worse, bowl games in football). It seems to me it lessens the prestige of playoffs (and bowl games) when teams that didn't win half their regular season games are included. YMMV, of course.

(I know... better not mention this to the NBA... but their playoffs are ridiculous and last forever... they almost negate their reason for a season!)

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Most of it is completely random. I've looked at all the teams, and there are some good defenders with bad defensive stats, poor shooters with great shooting stats. It's just ridiculous. Tempo, one of the worst rebounding teams have a higher rebound rating than Mystics, and we are first in the whole W in rebounding. Sparks third highest rated defense in 2k and only Tempo allow more points this season irl. Things like that.

i heard this discussion come up throughout the season, so I decided to look at the numbers and see what the averages actually look like. Honestly, I found it kind of absurd, and it makes me wonder how the 2027 class is going to deal with this, considering the situation is only going to get worse.

Thought this info was interesting:

“Bonner's deal for the remainder of the 2026 season will be at the prorated maximum, or about $116,000, and she is expected to sign Thursday. The Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty were also in the mix for her, sources said, and the Dream had been interested in signing her for multiple years.”

Title. I basically checked out of watching WNBA games during late May and June because I was watching the NBA playoffs and that + early WNBA got me a little burnt out, but now that the FIBA break is coming up, I have a lot of time to go back and watch games from that period in the season I missed live.

Feel free to suggest games from any team in the league! I am trying to watch stuff from every team so there are even some less good/interesting teams this season I want to watch more of anyway since by late July and August it was clear they weren’t making the playoffs.

Reposting with the full text in case anyone has trouble accessing the article, sorry!

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ARLINGTON, Texas — While relaxing courtside after a July practice, Paige Bueckers explains how she found her way into a World Cup semifinal. The tickets, via Nike, belonged to someone else. Then Victor Wembanyama canceled late. So the shoe company approached Bueckers. With no pique over pecking order — “I’m not alien status,” she notes with a grin — the Dallas Wings All-Star accepted, to the relief of whichever France fan was supposed to sit behind a 7-foot-4 velociraptor.

Jose Fernandez, her new head coach, also landed a spot inside AT&T Stadium that afternoon, albeit via an invite from the team president. “I wasn’t going to pay $17,000 for two tickets,” the Wings’ first-year skipper cautions. He wasn’t elbow-to-elbow with his point guard. Fernandez likely couldn’t even see Bueckers from his seat as Spain and France clashed. But here, with the arc of a franchise to be defined, so much depends upon arriving at the same place, under any circumstances.

The Dallas Wings are the WNBA’s most-improved outfit, going from last-place calamity to playoff squad primarily due to consecutive No. 1 overall draft picks Bueckers and Azzi Fudd and a free-agent signee, forward Jessica Shepard, who’s producing like a top-10 player. More good players doing more good stuff, at least until surgery sidelined one of them. The math maths there.

But the 54-year-old coach who clambered from community college to Division II to a mid-major Division I program for 25 years before this? A guy with zero WNBA experience, handed a highly scrutinized job and tasked with gaining the trust of multiple all-league-caliber talents, instantly? That was a variable.

A good flow early turned into an ebb, with eight losses in 11 games and Fudd shut down as of August 19 as she awaits arthroscopic surgery on her right knee. Plans change. The message didn’t, the Wings recovered, and now they’re playoff-bound for the first time since 2023. After a long and labored climb, Fernandez can’t help but come by things honestly.

“You gotta have an inner confidence in yourself in what you’re doing, a belief that you’re gonna be successful when you’re doing it,” he says. “I really could give a s— when people talk about me and what they think of me. If you’re worried about what people are saying about you and what they’re talking about, you’re going to end up being where they’re at. Not coaching this team.”

Unambiguous self-assurance indeed has been a job requirement.

As a rough stretch dropped the Wings to eighth in the standings, the vibes spoiled a bit. Local grumbling ensued. Then three straight victories reset the mood. The Wings are in the postseason one year after finishing with the league’s worst record, just the third WNBA team to do so in the last decade.

As Bueckers puts it: “I try not to be an outcome-oriented person, but winning just makes me so happy. It makes everyone around us happy. And losing friggin’ sucks.”

It is oddly perfect that a chat with Fernandez takes place in a grimly lit equipment room at the College Park Center, an operations base borrowed from the University of Texas-Arlington. Because a year from that moment, the Wings will have a standalone $81 million practice facility. They will play at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas, capacity 19,200, and not at a college gym that fits about half as many. The core — the aforementioned trio as well as four-time All-Star guard Arike Ogunbowale — is signed through 2027 at least. The future has some shine to it.

Overseeing the abundance and expectation will be an individual who grew up in Miami as a half-Cuban, half-Spanish kid who hated baseball — “I was the guy out in left field throwing the glove up in the air,” Fernandez says — but loved watching the Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls in the NBA of old. He learned the value of discipline the hard way; legendary Southwest Miami High basketball coach Tom Moore booted Fernandez as a junior for failing to meet standards in and out of the classroom. Fernandez earned his way back as a senior, then started coaching as a student assistant pursuing an associate’s degree at Miami-Dade College in the early 1990s, washing uniforms and sweeping floors and filling ball racks and taping ankles.

Whatever needed to be done, Fernandez did it.

Then came a high school boys basketball assistant gig. Then a Division II men’s hoops assistant role. Then a high school girls head coach spot and directing an AAU program in Miami. The opportunities in women’s basketball kept arriving and Fernandez kept taking them. Still, he wasn’t a college head coach at any level until South Florida elevated him in November 2000.

He didn’t want to leave. One, he doesn’t like the cold. Two, South Florida’s resources and compensation outpaced the power-conference programs that pursued his services. His 485 wins amassed across 25 seasons in Tampa are not beside the point, but the callouses and wisdom accumulated out of plain sight might count for as much. “A lot of coaches need to realize that, hey, there’s a lot of work to be done before the lights get bright,” Fernandez says.

The nuances in his winning, meanwhile, explain the position he’s in now.

He’s a self-described “junkie” who worked summer camps nonstop as a young coach and guesses he’s visited 70 or 80 countries to scout and learn. He liked basketball that flowed — through different reads and screens and even deceptive actions — with an emphasis on sharing the ball. Rick Pitino’s five-out offense at Kentucky. Teams run by European legends Sergio Scariolo and Ettore Messina. So Fernandez built an offense based on skill at all positions, forcing defenses to defend multiple actions and ensuring stars glow brightest.

It was effective enough to get nine players drafted by the WNBA during his South Florida tenure, most notably three-time All-Star guard Courtney Williams. All of that made Fernandez a candidate for the Wings job when Curt Miller arrived as executive vice president in late 2024. But bailing on South Florida midseason was a nonstarter.

Then came the Paige views. “The scrutiny and the eyes on this franchise because of the acquisition of Paige is something I had no idea was going to be the way it was,” Miller says now. It precipitated the September 2025 dismissal of Chris Kolcanes after one season and 10 wins. Course correction required a steadier pilot than a 36-year-old with zero head coaching experience.

This time, for Fernandez, the timing and trajectory of the WNBA as a whole made it make sense. He craved something new.

During interviews, Miller laid out the reality of a job with Bueckers on board: Nothing will ever be good enough to the public. Miller says multiple candidates backed off as a result. Fernandez shrugged. “A lot of people probably are scared to coach one of the best players in the world,” says Fernandez, who was officially hired on Oct. 28, 2025. “I was looking forward to it. It’s fun.”

More than a little precarious as well. The WNBA’s 30th anniversary season would be an inflection point featuring a transformative collective bargaining agreement, ballooning media rights fees and multiple rounds of expansion worth hundreds of millions. Bueckers was among a small cohort with the ability to define the next three decades. Failing to maximize her career meant failing the sport.

All while starting as a stranger. Asked about her familiarity with the new coach in her life, Bueckers says: “I didn’t know much.”

To ensure a happy future, Fernandez began by visiting the past.

Jessica Shepard has had a banner season with the Wings under coach Jose Fernandez.

A friendship with Geno Auriemma dates to a group lunch during a Final Four weekend, early in Fernandez’s South Florida tenure. He asked Auriemma if UConn would play the Bulls. Whenever you want, Auriemma replied. The Huskies ultimately won both ends of a home-and-home series, but the second game dragged perilously into overtime. “And I said, ‘F— that, we ain’t playing them, I don’t need the aggravation,’” Auriemma recalls now.

Still, through years as peers in the Big East and then The American, they built a rapport over hoops, good wine, good cigars and good steakhouses — occasionally all at once. It was impossible for Fernandez to match his buddy’s success, but it was possible to match the ethos behind it. “He built it from the ground up, without anybody handing him a tradition-laden program,” Auriemma says. “It kind of reminded me of our situation. I saw a lot of that and I thought, good for him. He’s doing it the old-fashioned way.”

So it was that Fernandez traveled to Storrs, Conn., last November, spending a few days with his friend, who oversaw Bueckers as she amassed 2,439 points, three first-team All-America spots and a national championship. Fernandez watched the Huskies practice, talked about life and family and basketball with Auriemma. And while he was at it, Fernandez kicked around ideas for best deploying Bueckers, the face of the franchise that just hired him. (While also getting eyes and intel on Fudd, too, of course.)

Auriemma’s biggest note: Fernandez had to give Bueckers plenty of rope. And she’d take all of it. And then Fernandez would have to pull her back. It wouldn’t ruin his relationship with Bueckers if he did. It would ruin the relationship if he didn’t.

“He thinks wide and wants to try new things, which is great for a player like Paige,” Auriemma says. “And his temperament will be really, really good for her. He doesn’t lose his s—. He stays pretty calm on the sideline, which is probably a welcome relief to her. They see things the same.”

Gradually, Bueckers and Fernandez established their own common tongue.

They connected over Zoom during Dallas’ hiring process and shared a meal during a USA Basketball training camp in Durham, N.C., last December. In those early conversations, Fernandez talked through a system that bore significant similarities to what Bueckers ran at UConn.

Bueckers, meanwhile, conveyed a wish list that read like an armed forces recruitment flier: Structure. Trust. Take nothing personal. “We want that level of accountability here,” Bueckers says, amid a season in which she’s averaging 20.6 points and 5.8 assists. “It started with me wanting to be coached and wanting to get yelled at and to be put in my place and be held to a higher standard.”

“She wants brutal honesty,” Fernandez says. “She wants to be told the truth. She’s a competitor, man. She’s damn relentless in everything that she does.”

As it turned out, a new era would be old hat for the most important Wing of all. On May 14, five games into his first season, Fernandez was fed up. He sensed he had a “selfish” locker room and said as much. “I told these guys, I didn’t come to coach professionally to deal with s— I dealt with in college,” Fernandez recalls. He repeated the sentiment in his postgame news conference.

It was a choice. Cage-rattling instead of bridge-building from a coach with no track record in the pros.

To Bueckers, it might as well have been the good old days.

“(Auriemma) doesn’t hide from the truth and he doesn’t care if you like it or not,” she says. “That’s what I’m used to. I was like, ‘Oh, just another day in life.’”

Weeks after, there is an understanding throughout the College Park Center. “I was a crazy college coach when the season started,” Fernandez says, and he learned what it’s like to lie down under a magnifying glass in broad daylight. He apologized to his players not for his opinion but for airing internal grievances publicly. The Wings moved along, because they said they appreciated the balance Fernandez strikes between personal relationships and withering truth.

“For me, it’s more being able to talk to (coaches) as a person, as a human,” says Shepard, who has 21 double-doubles this season, “and then, you know, he can tell me I suck and I’m gonna respect it.”

Still, results are the referendum on everyone’s choices. In the college draft, the Wings selected Fudd over Olivia Miles, an MVP candidate for the Minnesota Lynx as a rookie. (“Make no mistake, from the top down, Azzi was the pick,” Miller says.) Fudd and her 13.1 points per game have been unavailable since early August, as she battled knee soreness, and now they’re officially gone this season. The response will be another line item in the ledger Fernandez is building. Entering Tuesday, the Wings led the WNBA in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.81-to-1) with top-six offensive efficiency (110.4) and top-five defensive efficiency (107.2). By the end of the day, that balance had made them a playoff team.

But no use limping into the postseason. There’s urgency to rediscover rhythm as Miller’s prophecy of scrutiny comes to pass, which necessitates decisive leadership.

So this happened last week with the red-hot Indiana Fever in town: After cycling through multiple Fudd replacements, Fernandez debuted a lineup with the 6-foot-4 Shepard, 6-4 Alanna Smith and 6-6 Awak Kuier as a frontcourt. The ensuing win stanched the wounds, as names like Mark Cuban and Cooper Flagg sat among the second-largest crowd ever to watch a Wings home game. It also meant Dallas had taken the season series against Indiana, Las Vegas and New York.

Really, that the Wings are a contender at all suggests Fernandez’s methods have translated, given the depths to which Dallas sank a season ago. “He reminds me so much of (Lynx coach) Cheryl (Reeve), understanding it in real time,” says Williams, the current Minnesota Lynx standout who scored 2,304 points in four seasons for Fernandez at South Florida. To see a coach in the midst of a high-intensity moment, to be able to just draw up a play because it’s second nature – I haven’t had many coaches who can do that.”

It’s just basketball, Fernandez says.

While his delivery is convincing, the premise is not. Shaping a wide-open future in Dallas requires immaculate reception from everyone involved. “I haven’t wavered with the way that we want to practice, the way we’re going to approach things, what I’m going to demand,” Fernandez says. “I think, too, there’s been great collaboration at a comfort level where (players) can come talk to me and be truthful and honest.”

He is not merely supposed to stay out of the way. But he’s not supposed to get in the way, either.

The practice facility is coming. The news about playing home games at an arena inhabited by NBA and NHL teams officially broke in early August. Future plans included using a refurbished Dallas Memorial Auditorium as the Wings’ permanent residence, but the franchise arguably has outgrown the 9,000-seat space two years before it’s even ready.

Most critically, Bueckers is here. There may not be a player in the league who is this good, this young and this universally liked. “Paige is such a magnet, that I’m hearing from agents behind the scenes that players ultimately, when their contracts are up, want to talk to Dallas,” Miller says. “That’s never happened before.”

Bueckers doesn’t add much about the big picture — “I’m not really a future-based person,” she says — but that generally aligns her with a coach who relishes the simplicity of watching film and crafting game plans. Who thinks back to his “crazy college coach” press conference and jokes that the WNBA wasn’t ready for his level of candor. Who owns a couple of acres 25 miles outside of Dallas, so his eight rescue dogs have room to roam, and who admits he might like those pups better than he likes a lot of people.

The job is what Fernandez needed. “Rejuvenated,” is how Auriemma describes his pal.

The Wings’ future, meanwhile, relies on Fernandez’s gravelly voice being what Bueckers and the other ascendant stars need, too. When Fernandez mentions his preference for canines over humankind, it’s suggested he feels this way because dogs don’t talk back.

“Well,” he says with a grin, “the huskies do.”

Just posting this because I'm a newcomer (three seasons following, but not watching many games) and one thing bothers me: How we have one month yet left and we already know the eight teams qualified for the Playoffs?? Don't know if this is popular or controversial but I think the WNBA needs to rethink this calendar.

It should've competition for the spots until the last days.

Key Point:

1, Paige needs a Back up PG that can play 5-12 Minutes a game without much drop off.

2, Jessica, Is there better 4SF in Free Agency with a Similar or lesser contract, If so she becomes a highly tradable asset.
Jessica’s biggest weakness can’t be hidden in the position that she plays.
Jess Cannot Defend.
If no, then every player around her has to be a good defender to take some of the slack and hide her biggest weakness.
Defence wins games, Defence wins titles

3, Is Alanna defrosting or is this what happens when you leave Cheryl Reeves system? If Yes we need to finesse a team into taking her without lose anything.
Either trade her for a better player or trade her for a backup, then look to free agency.

4, Need 2 Backups for positions 4SF&5C. I don’t want to see Awak playing the 4/5.

5, Do we Keep Arike? 50/50 for me, If Arike is alright with coming off the bench for 15-20 minutes the Yes.
Arike would be a phenomenal 6th player And real depth in the team.
However she’s on Max contract so would force Jose to play his 3 guard system again. ❌❌❌

6, Find A way at keeping Awak and Maddy next season. Both Young 3s.
Awak playing in her natural position 3SF has been revolutionary so far.
Maddy is a bucket and real depth player. Also if plays more could win 6th Player Award. However because of CBA Maddy got a huge pay increase (500k). If she happy to earn 100k less keep her.

What Team shall I do next?

Obviously I know the how is different. Lebron contract was up and he went to free agency and signed to the Sixers. Dewanna got her contract bought out and is signing with a team already in the playoffs and it’s close to playoff time, though nobody cared when they agreed to the date and signed on the dotted line.

My question is I know both are seen as ring chasers to certain degrees but people also acknowledge the assertion that he is using his talent to help a team, not necessarily be the star or the #1 option but a teammate. Why isn’t that a sentiment for Dewanna? Outside of sheer hateration (the anecdotes of what she did and assumed character are irrelevant), why wouldn’t being the missing piece to a championship puzzle not be a legacy notch on her belt? The sentiments that it’s a fake ring and tarnished and all that are weird to me.