A third of the way into the WNBA season, we have continued to see key signings, players activated to rosters, coaching changes and broken records.

The Las Vegas Aces have earned the top spot in this week’s JWS Power Rankings following a dominating win over the Los Angeles Sparks in their only game last week. The Aces are still without Jackie Young as she recovers from an ankle injury, but they have not skipped a beat on offense, leading the league in scoring at 91 points per game.

The Seattle Storm have now won three in a row, and yet it still doesn’t feel like they have reached their full potential. Meanwhile, not much seemed to change for the Sparks after they parted ways with Derek Fisher as head coach and general manager. In their first game under interim coach Fred Williams, the Sparks were routed by the Aces and fell to ninth in the league standings at 5-8. This team has the sheer talent to turn its season around, but finding stability and chemistry is the first step toward righting the ship.

The New York Liberty are getting reinforcements and looking more like a contender every day. Marine Johannès, added to the roster last week, gives the Liberty another playmaker and scoring option in the backcourt. Sabrina Ionescu became the first player in WNBA history to record a triple-double in just three quarters against the Chicago Sky on Sunday, giving her the second triple-double of her career and growing confidence as the franchise player many predicted her to be.

In Minnesota, the bad news keeps coming for the Lynx, who will be without Sylvia Fowles indefinitely due to a cartilage injury in her right knee. Minnesota heads into a new week on a three-game losing streak and last in the WNBA standings at 3-11. In better news for the team, Damiris Dantas has returned and Nikolina Milić continues to play well, finishing with 23 points in the Lynx’s heartbreaking loss to the Fever on Sunday.

Mercury: Taurasi and Diggins-Smith elevate their play

After raising the alarm bells with seven straight losses, the Phoenix Mercury have now won three in a row. The streak would be four if not for their heartbreaking 92-88 loss to the Connecticut Sun on June 3, when Phoenix was in control but the Sun stormed back down the stretch to take the game. As challenging as this season has been for the Mercury without superstar Brittney Griner, they seem to have found a bit of a rhythm that’s allowed them to grind out wins.

What’s changed? Offensively, the Mercury are averaging 90 points in their last three games compared to 79.8 points in their first 10. Much of that can be attributed to the increased production from Skylar Diggins-Smith and Diana Taurasi (who earlier in the season drew attention for other reasons, having to be separated after getting into a skirmish on the Mercury bench in May).

Diggins-Smith, leading the team with 19.2 points per game, has increased her output from 17.1 points to 24.6 points per game in Phoenix’s last three wins. After missing a pair of games with an illness, Diggins-Smith has raised her intensity, determined to do whatever it takes to keep Phoenix in the win column.

The same can be said for Diana Taurasi, who celebrated her 40th birthday last week. The WNBA’s all-time leading scorer continues to show us why she is arguably the greatest player in league history.

Below, we compare Taurasi’s numbers in the Mercury’s last four games versus the early-season stretch that included their seven-game skid. Not only is Taurasi playing more minutes now, but the Mercury have also increased their pace of play and are finding ways to get Taurasi more shot attempts.

Last four games vs. first nine games

Points per game: 23.5 — 13.2
Minutes per game: 35.0 — 28.8
Shot attempts: 16.2 — 10.6
3-point shot attempts: 10.5 — 7.3

Here is a look at a quick action Phoenix will run in the half court out of the high post between Taurasi and Diggins-Smith. It forces defenses to pick their poison between the pair and gives Diggins-Smith the ability to isolate one-on-one against a switch. Diggins-Smith dumps the ball down to Taurasi and receives the quick pitch back. At the same time, Mercury center Tina Charles is looking to step in and screen for Taurasi cutting away from the ball, i.e. a flare screen.

In this scenario, the Mystics switch and Natasha Cloud is locked in on Taurasi as the flare screen is not actually set. Diggins-Smith briefly catches Alysha Clark on her heels, capitalizing on the defensive miscue with an open 3 and a crucial four-point play to help seal the game for the Mercury.

https://t.co/SaCqApBqXU pic.twitter.com/Zu8oCHkw7v

— Phoenix Mercury (@PhoenixMercury) June 13, 2022

While the Mercury are 10th in the league in scoring defense, allowing 86.5 points per game this season, they have improved slightly from 87.2 points per game allowed in their first 10 games to 84 in their last three. Phoenix’s ability to sustain this momentum will be tested on the road this week against the Mystics, Fever and Wings.

A frustrating stretch for the Dallas Wings

The Wings have lost five of their last six, including three in a row, after starting the season 5-2. Four of those five losses have come within six points or fewer.

Frustrations have seemed to mount during the stretch, with Arike Ogunbowale being issued a technical for kicking the scorer’s table against the Sparks and getting ejected for kicking a basketball into the stands on Sunday against the Storm. The Wings’ third-leading scorer, Marina Mabrey, has missed the last two games with a nose injury and health and safety protocols, and Satou Sabally went down with a knee injury mid-way through Sunday’s game.

Teaira McCowan has become increasingly involved in the Wings’ system over the last two weeks, averaging close to 13 minutes per game. Prior to that, the recently acquired 6-foot-7 center was playing only 7.5 minutes per game for Dallas. In the Wings’ loss to Seattle on Sunday, McCowan played a season-high 17 minutes and posted season-highs in points (13), rebounds (six), free throws made (7-for-7) and blocked shots (two).

With McCowan on the floor, the Wings slow down a bit, forcing them to execute more intentionally in the half court and find ways to manufacture deep paint touches. McCowan grabbed five offensive rebounds for the Wings on Sunday, which led to the bulk of her scoring on putbacks.

With her size and strength, McCowan has the ability to duck in, establish two feet deep in the paint, turn and finish at the rim. Dallas should look to get the former No. 3 overall pick even more moving forward.

Afternoon Tea, anyone? pic.twitter.com/M5BnBaQnEM

— Dallas Wings (@DallasWings) June 12, 2022

Week 6 Power Rankings

1. Las Vegas Aces (11-2) +1
2. Chicago Sky (9-4) +1
3. Connecticut Sun (10-4) -2
4. Seattle Storm (8-5) +1
5. Washington Mystics (9-6) +1
6. Atlanta Dream (7-6) -2
7. Phoenix Mercury (5-8) +3
8. Dallas Wings (6-7) -1
9. New York Liberty (5-9) +2
10. Los Angeles Sparks (5-8) -2
11. Indiana Fever (4-12) +1
12. Minnesota Lynx (3-11) -3

Rachel Galligan is a basketball analyst at Just Women’s Sports. A former professional basketball player and collegiate coach, she also contributes to Winsidr. Follow Rachel on Twitter @RachGall.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony on Friday afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

"I'm surrounded by so many extraordinary people in so many different fields," Ledecky told Just Women's Sports on Friday. "I feel like I've made a lot of friends today among that group, and their families and their friends."

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

Ledecky said she was surprised to learn how recent it has been that athletes in women's sports have been considered for the honor. Billie Jean King was the first to receive the award in 2009. "That kind of blew my mind that it was that recent," she said.

"There are so many great female athletes that I've looked up to for so many years," she continued. "And I know we're just going to keep pushing ahead, and doing our best to continue to get a seat at every table."

Like Biles, Ledecky receives the Medal of Freedom while she's still actively competing in her sport, a fact not lost on the 27-year-old. "My goals in the pool are to continue to push forward and swim good times, hopefully win some more medals. And then secondly to continue to do good things out of the pool, whether that's inspiring young kids to learn how to swim, get into the sport, set big goals in whatever pursuits they're interested in."

"I've recognized I've had a long career now, and it's important to reflect every now and then. But at the same time, I'm still competing and still working hard into the future."

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.