A lot has gone down in the WNBA since the unprecedented bubble season ended in October. Rosters have turned over, stars have switched teams, injuries have taken their toll and draft picks are ready to make their mark.

It all amounts to what could be one of the most entertaining seasons in the WNBA’s 25th year.

With limited preseason games this year, it’s hard to project where every team stands heading into the season openers Friday night. But based on what we’ve seen and heard out of training camps, here are our inaugural WNBA power rankings for the 2021 season.

Check back every week for updated rankings and fresh analysis as the games unfold. (Note: Records in parentheses indicate those from the 2020 regular season.)

12. Indiana Fever (6-16)

It’s been five years since the Fever last made the WNBA playoffs. Their chances of breaking that drought this season are riding on their defense. In 2020, Indiana gave up 89.5 points per game to opponents, the most in the league. Teaira McCowan has been a menace on the boards in each of her two WNBA seasons, averaging 8.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in that span, but she can’t do it alone.

Kelsey Mitchell is in line for a breakout year offensively, Julie Allemand is one of the best distributors in the league, and No. 4 draft pick Kysre Gondrezick should get plenty of chances to produce. Can they put it all together to bring playoff basketball back to Indiana? The rebuild might need one more year.

11. Atlanta Dream (7-15)

The team that gave up the most points next to the Fever? That would be the Dream, who surrendered 87.6 points per game in the bubble and recorded their second-straight losing season. Now, their head coach is gone (with Nicki Collen taking the job at Baylor in the middle of training camp) and they’ll be starting the season under interim head coach Mike Petersen while the front office searches for Collen’s permanent replacement.

Along with the turnover at the top comes many new faces on the roster. Tianna Hawkins, Cheyenne Parker and Odyssey Sims will bring much-needed veteran experience, while Elizabeth Williams and Tiffany Hayes bring stability. The biggest X-factors will be second-year player Chennedy Carter and No. 3 pick Aari McDonald, who could blow by teams in transition.

10. Dallas Wings (8-14)

The Wings will be one of the most intriguing teams in the league this season. They came one Mystics loss away from making the playoffs last year, and the young players who led them there are now one year older. How quickly their four rookies adjust to the league will go a long way toward their ability to break the franchise’s two-year playoff drought.

Those chances largely rest on the shooting hand of Arike Ogunbowale, who led the WNBA last season with 22.8 points per game. First-year head coach Vickie Johnson will be looking to her to run the offense. No. 1 pick Charli Collier, who posted a double-double in Dallas’ only preseason game, and second-year forward Satou Sabally (when she returns from German national team duties) will carry a heavy load in the paint.

9. New York Liberty (2-20)

Here’s where the power rankings get particularly interesting. I’m not yet convinced the Liberty, a team with many moving parts under a second-year head coach, are ready to contend with the best teams in the league. That said, they have just the tools to prove me wrong.

Sabrina Ionescu recorded barely 2 ½ games of play before going down with an ankle injury last season, but her numbers in that span were a scary sign of what’s to come — 18.3 points, 4.0 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game. 2020 Most Improved Player Betnijah Laney and 2019 Defensive Player of the Year Natasha Howard now enter the picture to make this team formidable on both sides of the ball. How effective their supporting cast is — notably, rookies Michaela Onyenwere and DiDi Richards, as well as Jazmine Jones and Layshia Clarendon — will be the difference-maker for the Liberty.

8. Washington Mystics (9-13)

The season-ending foot injury Alysha Clark suffered overseas was a devastating blow to this team. With her, the Mystics would have more insurance while Elena Delle Donne eases into game shape after undergoing two back surgeries in the past year. Now, how quickly Delle Donne can get back to her old MVP self will likely determine the Mystics’ postseason path two years after they won it all.

The return of emotional leader Natasha Cloud, who sat out last season to focus on social justice initiatives at home, is key for this team. She’s joined by Tina Charles, the seven-time All-Star suiting up for Washington for the first time, and 2020 offensive leaders Myisha Hines-Allen and Ariel Atkins. Emma Meesseman, the 2019 Finals MVP, remains an unrestricted free agent and said she will not return to the WNBA until after the Olympics, if at all.

7. Los Angeles Sparks (15-7)

The Sparks will be an interesting case study this season in team chemistry. The past few years, they have had the individual talent to go the distance but were ousted from the playoffs in the second round or semifinals. Gone this season are Candace Parker and Chelsea Gray, and in their place are Erica Wheeler and Amanda Zahui B. While less proven stars, Wheeler had a breakout 2019 season and Zahui B. recorded her best season as a pro in 2020.

If they mesh well with Nneka Ogwumike, Chiney Ogwumike and Kristi Toliver in coach Derek Fisher’s system, the Sparks could be a force to be reckoned with in the WNBA. Also keep an eye on second-year guard Te’a Cooper and No. 7 pick Jasmine Walker, who dropped 23 points and drained 7-of-11 3-pointers in Los Angeles’ final preseason game.

6. Phoenix Mercury (13-9)

The Mercury had a target on their back last season after adding Skylar Diggins-Smith in free agency and forming a Big 3 with her, Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner. They got off to a slow start, losing seven of their first 13 games in the bubble. Then Phoenix hit its stride in late August, riding Taurasi’s hot hand to a six-game win streak and a spot in the playoffs. It offered a sign of what this team can be in 2021.

Making the Mercury even more dangerous this year is their supporting cast. Bria Hartley is coming off a season in which she recorded career highs in nearly every category, and Kia Nurse joins the team after three steady years with the Liberty and one All-Star nod. Guard Sophie Cunningham and forward Alanna Smith also provide a spark off the bench.

5. Chicago Sky (12-10)

The Sky could easily move into the upper tier of the power rankings if they perform to the level they’re capable of on paper. Candace Parker, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, will immediately draw defenders and take some of the pressure off Chicago’s playmakers and sharpshooters, like Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley. Diamond DeShields is healthy and primed to return to her All-Star form from 2019.

The question remaining for the Sky is whether they can win when the stakes are highest. Despite having good teams and winning records the past two years, they haven’t advanced past the second round, losing by 13 points to the Sun in the first round last season.

4. Connecticut Sun (10-12)

The Sun like to use a perceived lack of respect as a motivational tactic, and for the past two years, it’s worked out quite well for them. They have a case for beating that drum again this season with the way free agency has people talking about the other top teams.

Connecticut will have to adjust to the loss of Alyssa Thomas, who’s out indefinitely with a torn Achilles tendon after dominating in the playoffs last season. This team gets a huge boost, however, with the return of Jonquel Jones, a two-time WNBA All-Star who’s been overseas winning EuroLeague championships with UMMC Ekaterinburg. The combination of Jones, DeWanna Bonner and Jasmine Thomas has me liking the Sun’s chances in 2021.

3. Minnesota Lynx (14-8)

The Lynx have been the most consistently good team in the WNBA in the past decade, and it doesn’t look like that trend is changing anytime soon. If there’s one thing that held the Lynx back last season, it was that they didn’t have enough offensive weapons to spread defenses out and score enough points to beat the best teams. That showed in the semifinals, where they were swept 3-0 by Seattle.

This year, Minnesota welcomes Kayla McBride and Aerial Powers to an already potent lineup led by six-time All-Star Sylvia Fowles and reigning Rookies of the Year Napheesa Collier and Crystal Dangerfield. McBride and Powers each shot over 34.0 percent from 3 last season, giving the Lynx two more threats from deep along with Rachel Banham and Bridget Carleton. Minnesota also has Damiris Dantas coming off her best year in the league and 2020 second-round pick Jessica Shepard returning from an ACL injury.

2. Las Vegas Aces (18-4)

The Aces were without Liz Cambage and Kelsey Plum last season and still made a run at the WNBA championship. That was in large part because of A’ja Wilson, who put up ridiculous numbers (20.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.0 blocks per game) in her MVP season.

Now, the Aces return Cambage and Plum and have free-agent signee Chelsea Gray to run the offense alongside 2019 No. 1 pick Jackie Young. Angel McCoughtry’s season-ending ACL and meniscus tear is a tough blow for this team, but Las Vegas has the depth to overcome it. Two-time Sixth Woman of the Year Dearica Hamby should lead the effort off the bench.

1. Seattle Storm (18-4)

The Storm lost a few key players from their championship team in the offseason, but I am not buying that those roster shake-ups will set them back this year. If not for Wilson’s dominant 2020 season, Breanna Stewart likely would have won her second MVP trophy. She leads Seattle’s title defense and is only 26 years old.

Sue Bird, meanwhile, is 40 and on the backend of her career, but she’s still dishing out assists. Jewell Loyd was a more efficient shooter last season, averaging 44.3 percent from the field and 39.0 percent from deep, and Jordin Canada continues to be a steady contributor. The Storm will miss Alysha Clark and Natasha Howard, but they’ve patched holes with additions like Candice Dupree and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, and third-year player Ezi Magbegor’s tantalizing potential could come to fruition this year.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this 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. 

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.

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.