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Five WNBA storylines that will define the 2021 season

Sparks forward and WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike (Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)

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.

Chelsea Completes Domestic Treble with 2025 FA Cup Win Over Man United

Catarina Macario celebrates her goal during Chelsea's 2025 FA Cup win.
USWNT star Catarina Macario scored Chelsea FC’s second goal to secure the 2025 FA Cup and the treble. (JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Adding to their already historic season, 2024/25 WSL champions and 2025 League Cup winners Chelsea FC handed Manchester United a 3-0 defeat in Sunday's 2025 FA Cup final, completing the club's second-ever domestic treble.

Though the Blues first claimed an elusive treble in the 2020/21 season, this year's roster did so without dropping a single match in any of the three domestic competitions.

"I could not have expected this," said first-year Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor about her debut success leading the Blues. "It is almost ideal in terms of domestic dominance."

To clinch that dominance, Chelsea upended the defending FA Cup champs Manchester United at London's iconic Wembley Stadium behind a brace from French fullback Sandy Baltimore and a header from USWNT attacker Catarina Macario.

Baltimore gave Chelsea the lead by slipping a late first-half penalty past 2024/25 WSL Golden Glove winner and USWNT goalkeeper prospect Phallon Tullis-Joyce, and the Blues never relented, with second-half sub Macario doubling their scoreline in the 84th minute before Baltimore tacked on a final goal in stoppage time.

"It's a very emotional day," an emotional Macario told the broadcast after finishing her first season following a long ACL recovery. "It's a trophy we always wanted to win."

"All the credit to my players," said Bompastor. "We showed our mentality and our values in this game so we ended the season in an almost perfect scenario – we won, we were playing at Wembley, the stadium was nearly sold out, and we had a strong performance and result against a strong opponent."

"It is an almost ideal way to finish the season."

A screen shows the 74,412 attendance at Wembley Stadium during the 2025 FA Cup final.
Sunday's FA Cup final was the third straight with a crowd over 74,000 fans. (Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images)

FA Cup crowds prove sustained demand for women's soccer

Chelsea FC's undefeated treble-winning season wasn't the only notable victory on Sunday, as the FA Cup final drew a crowd of over 74,000 fans for the third straight year.

Sunday's 74,412 attendance mark was just shy of both last year's crowd of 76,082 and the 77,390 fans who watched Chelsea defeat the Red Devils in 2023 — all well beyond the tournament final's previous record of 49,094 attendees achieved in 2022.

Fueled by the football fervor following England's 2022 Euro victory — the country's first international trophy, men's or women's, since the 1966 men's World Cup — the 2023 FA Cup final still stands as the largest crowd at a domestic women's soccer match across all nations.

With Sunday's match joining the over-74,000 attendance club, it's clear the post-Euros enthusiasm wasn't a blip, but a boost to the continued growth and sustained success of the women's game.

WNBA Injury Report Mounts After Opening-Weekend Slate

LA's Rae Burrell shoots a free throw during a 2025 WNBA preseason game.
LA Sparks guard Rae Burrell is expected to miss six to eight weeks of WNBA play due to a knee injury. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

While most WNBA stars hit the court running this weekend, a few saw their 2025 campaigns already shortened as teams released season-opening injury reports.

Phoenix forward Kahleah Copper will miss four to six weeks of play, the Mercury reported on Saturday, after the 2024 Olympic gold medalist underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on her left knee last week.

Another knee injury has LA's Rae Burrell sidelined for the next six to eight weeks, after the fourth-year guard took a knock to the right leg just 41 seconds into the Sparks' 2025 debut win over Golden State.

On Friday, the Mystics released updates on both second-year forward Aaliyah Edwards and rookie guard Georgia Amoore. While another assessment of the Unrivaled 1v1 runner-up's back injury will occur in two more weeks, Washington confirmed that the Australian standout will miss the entire 2025 WNBA season after undergoing a successful surgery to repair her right ACL.

Seattle's Katie Lou Samuelson is also out for the full 2025 campaign, with the 27-year-old Storm forward recovering from last week's successful surgery after tearing her right ACL in practice on May 1st.

Las Vegas's Elizabeth Kitley shoots a basket during a 2025 WNBA preseason game.
2024 Las Vegas draftee Elizabeth Kitley returned from injury to make her WNBA debut on Saturday. (Louis Grasse/Getty Images)

Kitley makes long-awaited WNBA debut as Brink eyes return

In more uplifting news, LA's Cameron Brink is on track to return to the Sparks sometime next month, one year after her standout rookie season came to a halt in a left ACL tear.

Already celebrating, however, is 2024 second-round draftee Elizabeth Kitley, who battled back from injury to make her WNBA debut and score her first league points in Las Vegas's Saturday loss to New York.

The Aces took a draft chance on Kitley, despite the center suffering an ACL tear in her final NCAA postseason. In response, the former Virginia Tech star successfully translated her year-long delayed shot at a pro career by surviving Las Vegas's brutal 2025 roster cuts.

Notably, Kitley's close friend and collegiate on-court counterpart with the Hokies is the aforementioned Amoore, who will aim for a rookie-season redo of her own next year.

Kansas City Eyes the NWSL Shield as Gotham Skid Continues

Temwa Chawinga celebrates her game-winning goal against Orlando with Kansas City teammates Bia Zaneratto and Debinha.
First-place Kansas City has a four-point lead in the 2025 NWSL Shield race after this weekend's win. (Morgan Tencza-Imagn Images)

The No. 1 Kansas City Current strengthened their grip on the 2025 NWSL Shield race on Friday, taking down now-No. 3 Orlando 1-0 on the road to earn a four-point lead atop of the NWSL table.

Reigning league MVP Temwa Chawinga scored the top-table game's lone goal. With five goals in nine matches, Chawinga now sits in a four-way tie for second place in the 2025 Golden Boot race.

"If you don't come with heart, you have no chance," Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski said after the match. "And today I think we showed heart."

Kansas City now stands 7-2-0 on the season, putting the NWSL Shield firmly within their grasp.

Kansas City's rise aside, the weekend's biggest drama hovered near the playoff line.

Gotham FC fell to No. 2 San Diego 1-0 on Friday, sending the Bats skidding to No. 8 on a three-game winless streak while boxing No. 9 North Carolina out of playoff contention — despite the rising Courage securing their third win in four games with Saturday's 2-0 victory over last-place Chicago.

"Obviously, we were hot for a little bit, and teams have slumps all the time, so now it's just finding a way," Gotham midfielder Jaelin Howell said of the team's recent struggles.

While some rebuilds soar, last year's postseason contenders are still finding their way as the league moves into the second third of the 2025 season.

WNBA Launches Investigation into Fan Misconduct After Clark-Reese Spat

Indiana's Caitlin Clark commits a hard foul on Chicago's Angel Reese during their 2025 WNBA season opener.
The WNBA is investigating Indiana fan conduct after Caitlin Clark’s Flagrant 1 foul on Angel Reese. (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Indiana's 35-point blowout win over Chicago wasn't Saturday's only newsmaker, as a controversial foul on Sky forward Angel Reese by Fever guard Caitlin Clark sparked intense off-court conversations and a WNBA investigation into subsequent fan misconduct.

Clark's third-quarter foul against Reese incited a brief dust-up between the second-year stars, with Clark's offense upgraded to a Flagrant 1 while Reese and Fever center Aliyah Boston picked up a pair of offsetting technicals for their reactions.

"Basketball play. Refs got it right. Move on," Reese said after the game, while Clark told reporters, "It was just a good play on the basketball. I'm not sure what the ref saw to upgrade it, and that's up to their discretion."

Immediately following the flagrant ruling, however, Indiana fans allegedly directed racially charged remarks toward Reese, prompting the league to open an investigation on Sunday.

Officials acknowledged allegations of racist abuse inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, saying the WNBA "strongly condemns racism, hate, and discrimination in all forms," and that they're "looking into the matter."

"We stand firm in our commitment to providing a safe environment for all WNBA players," said Pacers Sports & Entertainment CEO Mel Raines, who oversees the Fever, in a statement.

"We will do everything in our power to protect Chicago Sky players, and we encourage the league to continue taking meaningful steps to create a safe environment for all WNBA players," echoed Sky CEO and president Adam Fox.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time Fever-related fan misconduct has taken center stage, as last season's storylines start to spill over into the 2025 WNBA campaign.

In anticipation of the issue, the league launched "No Space for Hate" on Thursday, describing the campaign as "a multi-dimensional platform designed to combat hate and promote respect across all WNBA spaces — from online discourse to in-arena behavior."

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