The 25th WNBA season is just days away from tipoff.

We’ve delivered our preseason power rankings and our season predictions are on the way. As the action begins this weekend, we’ll also be tracking some on- and off-court WNBA storylines through the summer.

Here are our top five.

1. New-look Storm

It’s hard not to like the Storm’s chances of defending their WNBA title when they return their core of Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird and Jewell Loyd. But it’s also not often a championship team undergoes as much turnover as the Storm did this past offseason, losing two of their best defensive players in the process.

On Feb. 1, Alysha Clark chose to leave in free agency and sign with the Washington Mystics. On Feb. 8, the Storm signed veteran forward and seven-time All-Star Candice Dupree. Two days later, the Storm dealt Natasha Howard, Sami Whitcomb and a couple of draft picks while acquiring Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, Katie Lou Samuelson and Stephanie Talbot in a series of trades.

Clark, Seattle’s anchor on defense, and Howard, the 2019 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year, were integral to Seattle’s team identity and championship runs in 2018 and 2020.

In their place are Talbot, a 26-year-old journeywoman, and Herbert Harrigan and Samuelson, two promising but unproven players at the WNBA level. Dupree, while a seven-time All-Star, isn’t known for her defense at this stage of her career.

The Storm were setting themselves up for the future with their offseason moves. Herbert Harrigan and Samuelson are in their early 20s and under contract for at least the next two seasons. But with Bird, Stewart and Loyd entering unrestricted free agency after this season, there’s more urgency behind their title defense.

Can Seattle meet the challenge? We think so, but the rest of the league is anxious to find out.

2. The start of another Lynx dynasty?

The Lynx have just one holdover from their 2017 championship team, the last of four titles in a seven-year span. That is center Sylvia Fowles, who won two championships and two Finals MVPs with the Lynx and became the WNBA’s all-time leading rebounder last season.

It would be natural for the Lynx to toil through a rebuild after having all that success in one decade and losing many of the top players from those teams. But coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve has reloaded quickly through the draft and made shrewd moves in free agency. She also has two former Lynx champions on her coaching staff in Rebekkah Brunson and Plenette Pierson.

Natalie Achonwa, who signed with the Lynx in free agency after six seasons in Indiana, got a feel for the championship culture from her first sitdown meeting with Reeve. She took in all the championship memorabilia in Reeve’s office and absorbed the coach’s basketball knowledge.

“When you have a mind like that, there’s no such thing as a rebuild,” Achonwa said of Reeve during Lynx media day.

“Yeah, you lost the legacy of these great players and the careers they had, but you have to see who’s coming in, too. Coach Reeve is bringing in players that have a similar mindset, a similar approach, a similar sacrifice for the team. She’s built a culture here. It’s not about the individual, it’s the Lynx organization, the team that she’s built.”

Aerial Powers won a championship with the Mystics in 2019, so she knows the level of buy-in and sacrifice that’s required. In her first training camp with Minnesota after signing as a free agent, she’s seeing those lessons being ingrained quickly.

“Not only is the culture holding you accountable, but your teammates are holding you accountable,” Powers said. “If someone sees something, they say it, but the other person really listens. That’s what I’ve picked up in the last few days.”

The Lynx are chasing a title this year. And between Napheesa Collier, Crystal Dangerfield, Bridget Carleton, Jessica Shepard and Rennia Davis, they have the young talent to contend for years to come.

3. Off-the-court work is just beginning

2020 was a landmark year for the WNBA in its social justice efforts, building on the activism that has been a part of the league’s identity from the very beginning.

Players formed a Social Justice Council that brought athletes and community leaders together to talk about ways they could organize around issues of inequality and racism. They painted “Black Lives Matter” on the courts and wore Breonna Taylor’s name on the backs of their jerseys. They spoke out against former Atlanta Dream co-owner and U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler after she denounced their promotion of BLM, supporting her opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock, the eventual winner of the Georgia election.

“We took matters into our own hands with every challenge that was thrown at us and every endeavor that we wanted to involve ourselves in,” said Nneka Ogwumike, Los Angeles Sparks forward and president of the WNBA Players Association. “Quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to do it with any other group of women because I really do feel like we’re pushing the dial in society, in the world, in our communities in a way that will show that we’re on the right side of history.”

With teams back in their home markets this season, the players intend to take the learnings and momentum from 2020 into their communities.

The top priorities this season, according to the WNBPA, are as follows:

• Racial justice and voting rights
• LGBTQ+ advocacy, with a focus on anti-transgender legislation
• Public health, with a focus on vaccine confidence, cancer awareness and research, mental health and maternal health
• More “Bet On Women” initiatives, including merchandise collaborations with BreakingT

4. Who will shine the brightest in their debut?

The WNBA’s CBA in 2020 increased the salary cap and gave teams the leverage to recruit top talent with bigger contracts in free agency. So, it’s no surprise that we’ve seen more player movement in the past two offseasons than ever before, shaking up the league for its 25th season.

Star players making their debuts in new markets this season include Candace Parker in Chicago, Tina Charles in Washington, D.C., Natasha Howard in New York, Chelsea Gray in Las Vegas, Kayla McBride in Minnesota, Kia Nurse in Phoenix and Erica Wheeler in Los Angeles.

With fewer preseason games this year, and players like McBride still making their way back from their overseas seasons, it may take longer for them to adjust to their new teams. In a shortened 32-game season, building chemistry will be critical.

Parker won’t have very long to get acclimated before meeting her former team. The Sky welcome the Sparks to Wintrust Arena for a two-game set on May 28 and 30 before traveling to Los Angeles for a June 5 matchup.

5. WNBA expansion

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stirred excitement among WNBA fans last month when she said expansion is something “we’re prepared to start talking about” on the condition of a “very successful season.”

Talk of expansion has gotten louder as the WNBA has become more competitive. There are only 144 roster spots in the league, and with star players able to earn more money under the current CBA, some teams will carry only 11 players (as opposed to the usual 12) to meet salary cap requirements. Simply put, as more talent enters the league from the college and international ranks, more WNBA-caliber players are getting cut, and that’s a problem.

Even those within the WNBA have different views on the best approach to adding more teams.

“We’re always in a rush to get more,” said Sparks coach Derek Fisher. “I think the best thing to do for the league to expand in a healthy way is for all of us to continue to work our tails off to make the 12 teams we have now the best operating teams in sports. … The league should and will expand, ultimately, but we can’t wait for that to continue to strive to be great.”

Said Reeve: “We have this strange notion that we treat women’s sports differently than men’s sports. In men’s sports, the narrative isn’t that you have to have 30 financially healthy teams or quality teams before you expand. In women’s sports, the narrative is we have to have 12 healthy teams before we’ll do anything. That makes no sense. … The more teams in the league, the healthier the league becomes overall. The business gets better with expansion, with revenue opportunities.”

However quickly Engelbert decides to address it, the calls for new markets and more roster spots are not going away.

The Chicago Sky showed up in a big way on Tuesday night, taking down 2023 WNBA Finals runners-up New York Liberty by an impressively wide margin. 

The Sky walked away with a 101-53 win, boasting a 48 point swing that still looms large despite the fact that it's only preseason. Perhaps the team felt extra pressure to perform — not only did WNBA League Pass follow through on their promise to stream the game for free, but Chicago Bears rookies Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze also happened to be watching on from the stands.

“I’m gonna just say — it’s about time," said Sky guard Dana Evans in response to the star-studded turnout at Wintrust Arena. "Everybody wants to watch women’s basketball. I feel like we’ve been doing a really good job of doing stuff on the court and off the court. So just having them support us is great — but keep bringing them out."

Chicago's Marina Mabrey was lights out with four threes and 20 points on the night, while training camp addition Chennedy Carter racked up 11 points and two steals. 

Sky rookie Angel Reese proved that she can do it all, putting up 13 points, five rebounds, and two steals in 19 minutes — all less than 24 hours after she walked the Met Gala red carpet in New York. The 6-foot-3 top draft pick out of LSU even knocked down a layup over 2023 WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart in one of the night's many highlights.

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"So now yall can delete them drafts & tweets saying i shouldn’t have gone to the met gala & i can’t do both," she later wrote on social media. 

While some may chalk it up to preseason coaching choices and the fact that it was the Liberty’s first real game outside of training camp scrimmages, New York head coach Sandy Brondello still voiced disappointed in her team’s result.

"We just got our butts kicked, everywhere. I mean everything. It’s an embarrassing effort, I don’t care that it’s preseason," she said in a postgame press conference. "Our starters didn't get us off to a good start. We missed a lot of layups early, but they just took us out of everything."

On a lighter note, the third-year Liberty coach had some kind words for undrafted rookie Jaylyn Sherrod, who showed real effort on defense.

"She has speed," remarked Brondello. "She could guard Dana Evans. No one else could."

As the WNBA plans to implement league-wide charter flights, the NWSL is struggling with some travel issues of its own. 

Missed flights, inclement weather, and a stretch of midweek games have spurred workload and logistical concerns for a number of NWSL teams. Last week, three games were played Wednesday night, while another three games are set to be played tonight. 

"You can't play your best XI right now because of the amount of games you have," said Red Stars head coach Lorne Donaldson after last Wednesday's 4-2 loss to Washington. Donaldson emphasized the importance of rotating through the team’s depth so as to avoid injury.

"You have to get to about 16 deep where you can," he continued. "Or else your best XI is going to be injured or walk off the field and they can’t finish the season."

Kansas City has faced some of the league's most extreme turnaround times this season. On Sunday, the Current missed an evening flight to Seattle due to a multi-hour rain delay in Houston, throwing off their training schedule ahead of their midweek match against the Reign. The NWSL eventually gave them the green light to charter a plane, but not before frustration spread throughout the team.

"We lost the whole day of the opportunity to recover," said Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski after the Current's weekend draw against the Dash. "So the schedule, it's already challenging to begin with. We have by far the worst schedule in the league, and this just made it even worse.

"We don't have a hotel, we got to figure out a hotel. We don't have flights for tomorrow, we got to figure out flights. We had trainings for some players that we believe needed training time to be able to perform on Wednesday.”

While the team was given permission to charter a plane, navigating such approvals has proven difficult in the past. This past July, the NWSL fined Kansas City $55,000 over the unauthorized use of a charter flight.

Recently retired WNBA superstar Candace Parker has her next gig lined up: president of women’s basketball at Adidas.

Parker announced her retirement at the end of April, bringing a close to a 16-year professional career spanning three WNBA championship titles with three different teams. And now, she’s stepping into a slightly different role — this time off the court — with longtime sponsor Adidas.

"The brand and I have grown together, and we’ve done some amazing things," she told Fast Company in an exclusive interview published Wednesday morning. "I’m excited about what the future holds on this side of things, because I’m so passionate about growing the game of basketball."

Parker initially signed with Adidas at the end of her first professional season in 2008, going on to spend the vast majority of her illustrious WNBA career linked to the German athletic brand. In 2010, she became the first woman to receive a signature Adidas shoe: the ACE Commander.

Her most recent Adidas collaborations include basketball sneakers Exhibit B (2022) and Exhibit Select (2023) in a variety of different colorways, as well as limited edition off-court apparel.

In 2022, Parker led a mentorship program for the brand’s first class of NIL-sponsored college athletes, a stacked roster that involved the likes of rising star Hailey Van Lith, among others. In her new position, she’ll be "overseeing pretty much everything" when it comes to the brand’s women’s basketball operations.

That "everything" includes weighing in on shoe and clothing design, navigating new and existing athlete partnerships, and taking control of Adidas' grassroots growth strategies. She’ll also help with "how we actually speak to the women’s basketball consumer," Eric Wise, who leads the brand’s global basketball business, told Fast Company.

According to Parker, the decision to accept the offer hinged on her desire to be more than just "the face" of Adidas women’s basketball.

"I said to [Adidas], 'I don’t want to be a mascot,'" Parker said. "'I really want to be in the meetings, and I want to be a part of making decisions.'"

Charter flights are on the horizon for the WNBA, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert saying on Tuesday that the league will provide teams with full-time private travel services beginning as soon as this season. 

The move is set to address years of player safety concerns, among other issues. Engelbert told AP Sports Editors that the league aims to launch the program "as soon as we can logistically get planes in place."

The initiative is projected to cost around $25 million per year over the next two seasons.

The WNBA has previously provided charter flights on a limited basis, including during the postseason and when teams were scheduled to play back-to-back regular season games. Individual owners seeking to independently provide their teams with private travel — such as the New York Liberty’s Joe and Clara Wu Tsai back in 2022 — faced significant fines for using unauthorized charters.

While players and team staff have been calling for league-wide charters even before Caitlin Clark and other high profile rookies joined the league, Engelbert has routinely cited steep year-to-year costs as the reasoning behind sticking to commercial flights. 

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However, the WNBA's surging popularity means increased visibility, and a subsequent uptick in security concerns — especially when it comes to big name newcomers like Clark — has Englebert reconsidering her previous decision. 

WNBA Players Association president Nneka Ogwumike called the move "transformational," and credited the WNBPA as well as the league for its implementation. 

"Our league is growing, the demand for women's basketball is growing," Ogwumike told ESPN. "That means more eyes on us, which is what we want, but that means more protection from the organization that we play for, the whole W that we play for.

"Chartering flights not only is a safety measure, the biggest thing, and then obviously what it means to be able to play a game and go home and rest and recover and be the elite athletes that we try to be every single night when we step out onto this court."

Aces coach Becky Hammon called the immediate response to the charter announcement "great" but noted that there are still kinks to be worked out. 

"What it all looks like, we’re still gathering information, we don’t know," she said Tuesday.

Several players emphasized the importance of safety, highlighting how last season the Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner was harassed in an airport while traveling commercial.

"All these players and these faces are becoming so popular that it really is about that as much as it as about recovery," Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said.

"Above everything else, I think it's the safety of our players," Mercury player Natasha Cloud added. "We have a prime example with BG on our team that needs to be safe. At airports, it's like a madhouse. You see Caitlin Clark walking through airports, people following her, people trying to touch her, get pictures with her. It's just a safety measure, through and through. You would never have an NBA team walk through an airport."

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, the league had said it would charter flights for the playoffs and back-to-back games via a program introduced last year. The latest news, however, promises that teams will also be provided charters to and from all regular season games.

"Our safety is being taken seriously now, finally. In no world should our security not be a priority," Griner told ESPN. "If we want to be the league that we want to be and have the respect that we have, it comes with some risks. Sometimes people want to get close to you and it's not people you want, so I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with that anymore."