With injuries mounting across the WNBA, several teams have started stocking up on recently waived free agents, bolstering their depleted rosters with hardship signings as they head into a busy stretch of the 2025 regular season.

With both guard Kahleah Copper and forward Alyssa Thomas sidelined, the Phoenix Mercury signed former Atlanta Dream guard and 2023 first-round draft pick Haley Jones to a rest-of-season hardship contract on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Fever picked up ex-LA Sparks guard and 2021 first-rounder Aari McDonald on Sunday, with Indiana looking to boost their backcourt depth in light of injuries to guards Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and Sydney Colson.

These hardship signings come in clutch to keep benches stocked and WNBA teams in action.

However, the longevity of these early-season additions remains uncertain as teams attempt to balance league-maximum 12-player lineups with restrictive salary caps.

Hardship contracts allow teams to temporarily expand the salary cap, but when injured players return, so do tough roster calls — much to the dismay of front office decision-makers.

"More bodies would be good," Fever president Kelly Krauskopf told reporters with a wry laugh ahead of McDonald's signing.

Roster limitations will likely be a key issue when CBA negotiations rev up, with this week's emergency signings only adding fuel to the fire.

WNBA roster shakeups kept rolling this week, with a deluge of moves radically reshaping the 2022 and 2023 league champion Las Vegas Aces.

After three seasons in Las Vegas, backup guard and popular locker room presence Sydney Colson signed a one-year deal with Indiana on Thursday. The Fever, who've been aggressive about inking athletes they believe will bring a title back to Indianapolis, targeted Colson for her veteran experience.

"[Colson] brings a championship pedigree to the Fever, adding depth to our point guard position, said Fever COO and GM Amber Cox in the team's announcement. "We have the utmost confidence in her ability to step into any situation and deliver on both ends of the floor."

Joining Colson in leaving Las Vegas is forward Alysha Clark. A key factor in the Aces' 2023 title run — which ultimately earned her the WNBA's Sixth Woman of the Year award — Clark is returning to the Seattle Storm, where she played from 2012 to 2020.

The Aces are also losing their 2024 Sixth Woman of the Year, Tiffany Hayes. Despite the Aces protecting her in December's expansion draft, the free agent guard will take her talents to incoming franchise Golden State. There, she'll link up with former Las Vegas assistant coach-turned-Valkyries boss Natalie Nakase.

"Having coached Tiffany last season in Las Vegas, I know firsthand the impact she brings both on and off the court," Nakase noted. "Her versatility, intensity, and ability to score will be invaluable as we build our team's identity."

Atlanta's Cheyenne Parker-Tyus guards Las Vegas's A'ja Wilson during a 2024 WNBA game.
Cheyenne Parker-Tyus will join A'ja Wilson in the Aces' front court this season. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Las Vegas Aces take aim at refreshed dynasty

After falling short of a three-peat championship last season — despite three-time WNBA MVP A'ja Wilson's outstanding 2024 performance — a significant Aces roster reshuffling was all but guaranteed ahead of the 2025 season.

Las Vegas kicked things off by shipping All-Star guard Kelsey Plum off to the LA Sparks last month. The blockbuster three-team trade sent Seattle's two-time champ Jewell Loyd to the Aces in return.

To shore up their front-court, Las Vegas inked 6-foot-4 power forward Cheyenne Parker-Tyus on Thursday. The 2023 All-Star averaged 15 points and 6.7 rebounds for Atlanta that season, and was on her way to matching that production last year when an ankle injury curbed her 2024 run.

Ultimately, Las Vegas's roller coaster offseason reflects both the WNBA's shifting landscape and the Aces' quest to revive their former dynasty, hoping a fresh start can fuel them all the way to another league title in 2025.

The Las Vegas Aces want to take their talents to a different type of game –”Family Feud.”

On Sunday, Kiah Stokes posted on X (formerly Twitter) about the game show, asking if there was any way the two-time reigning WNBA champions could be featured as contestants. She even wanted to take the pitch directly to host Steve Harvey.

“Can we go on ‘Family Feud’??” she wrote, speaking about the Aces. “Who got Steve’s number?”

The Aces have had quite the championship tour, which already has included attending Usher’s residency in Las Vegas. And everyone – including the Aces’ social media admin – appeared to be on board with a potential “Family Feud” appearance.

“Let’s goooooo!! I’m down someone let Steve know!!” A’ja Wilson wrote.

“Count me in!!!!” Alysha Clark added.

“Oh yeah I guess I shoulda asked if y’all would be down,” Stokes responded.

Meanwhile, the Aces kept tweeting out Steve Harvey reactions with various captions, including calling out Sydney Colson – whose answers would undoubtedly warrant a classic Harvey reaction.

“We would be doin’ the most,” Colson wrote Monday.

Social media drama swirled around the LSU basketball team Thursday, with former Tigers and current WNBA players stirring the pot.

The kerfuffle started with posts by the mothers of Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson, each seemingly directed at the other. Reese’s mother Angel Webb Reese complained about text messages with grammatical errors on Instagram Stories, and then Johnson’s mother Kia Brooks called out mother and daughter in her own post.

“You definitely know about grammar errors when your daughter got a 2.0 or less GPA. … Stop being petty, fake and hateful, and take responsibility for you and your daughter’s actions,” Brooks wrote.

While neither Reese nor Johnson addressed the posts on their own social media platforms, former teammates Alexis Morris and Jasmine Carson jumped into the fray.

All four players won the national championship with LSU in April. Morris and Carson now are playing overseas, while Reese and Johnson are still with the Tigers, whose title defense got off to a rocky start.

“Switched up to gang up on me, now y’all fallin’ out,” wrote Morris, who got herself into hot water on social media earlier this year after calling out WNBA veterans.

In another post, she wrote: “Can we just all get (along)? Heck no that’s over with.”

Morris also stood up for LSU head coach Kim Mulkey, writing: “You can’t pay me to bash Kim!”

“Y’all better hope I don’t say nothing,” Carson wrote.

WNBA players also got in on the action, with Las Vegas Aces guard Sydney Colson writing: “I wanna see LSU play LSU cuz what’s goin onnn??”

Washington Mystics center Shakira Austin tried to offer advice, writing: “Listen I’m ALL for speaking your truth, if everybody told their story we all know 75% of coaches would not have a job. But don’t let no quick attention cause any harm to your brand. The best thing is to focus on what’s next bc these folks still gonna get contract extensions…”

NCAA basketball champion Flau’jae Johnson and WNBA champions Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance all share a passion for their sport and a flair for entertainment.

But they definitely don’t share musical talent, as seen on the latest episode of Colson and Plaisance’s unscripted comedy series “The Syd + TP Show.”

In one segment of the show, the Las Vegas Aces players crash Johnson’s studio time, much to the LSU guard’s chagrin. Colson’s attempt at rapping includes a Chuck E. Cheese reference.

“Look Flau, you want these bars or not?” Colson asks Johnson. “Because we’re trying to be the realest and the illest in the league, you know? They say you’re the best, so show us the best.”

Luckily for Colson and Plaisance, Johnson provides a demonstration of her own skills at the microphone. The LSU sophomore balances her burgeoning basketball and music careers, with the Tigers preparing to start their title defense months after Johnson dropped a 13-song mixtape with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation under its Equity Distribution platform.

“I love making records. Like, I can spit and enjoy freestyling, but I love making songs because I can show my versatility,” Flau’jae told Revolt in August. “I cannot wait for the fans to start hearing my new music.”

While Colson and Plaisance might not have rap careers in their futures, they’re showing off their own talents through their comedy show, which is produced by TOGETHXR, Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort and Fubo.

“I feel like our sense of humor and our personalities are what could attract people to basketball, if they don’t already watch it,” Colson told Forbes.

Sydney Colson isn’t usually a trash-talker, she says. But she is leaning into the persona after the Las Vegas Aces’ 2023 WNBA title win over the New York Liberty.

The 34-year-old guard continued post-WNBA Finals run Thursday with an appearance on “The Daily Show,” in which she discussed her viral mimicking of Sabrina Ionescu’s “night night” celebration but also the impact of the championship series as a whole.

“It’s incredible. I think about when I came in the league in 2011 and what it looked like then versus what these arenas will look like today and how many times we’ll see players on commercials, on TV shows, on just a variety of things,” she said. “It wasn’t anything I ever expected to see in my time that I was playing.

“But especially as a young Black player, to see women that look like me doing it and killing it, I was like, I just got to keep working.”

And while she had some choice words for the doubters after of the Aces’ series-clinching win, what host Desus Nice described as her “villain era” wasn’t planned. But she’s embracing it.

“I didn’t even know I would be in it,” she said. “I’m trolling people at this point online because I don’t care. They’re like, ‘You only had 2 points. She’s got 2 points, how is she on ‘The Daily Show’?”

As for the newfound rivalry between the Aces and the Liberty? For Colson, it’s based out of respect for one another.

“It’s like when you got a sibling or you got cousins you grew up with,” she said. “You rag on each other. You joke on each other, but you love them.”

A’ja Wilson did not see Usher at the Las Vegas Aces’ WNBA championship parade. But she could be seeing him very soon.

Wilson offered up multiple invites to the eight-time Grammy Award winner, but ultimately the “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love” singer couldn’t attend the parade. Rapper 2 Chainz performed following the team’s parade and celebration.

Still, Usher didn’t let Wilson’s invites go unanswered. He replied Wednesday on a social media, writing: “I wish I could’ve been there, but pull up to my show… I got U.”

“Shoutout to the defending champs, the Vegas Aces. A’ja Wilson, I got your message, I see you, I hear you,” he said in the accompanying video. “Couldn’t be at the parade but wanted to send this out to you to say congratulations to you and all the lovely ladies that once again did it again.”

He then extended an invite to Wilson and the rest of the Aces squad to come to his “My Way” Las Vegas residency show.

“I wanted to invite you to come see the show, come see me do it my way here in Vegas,” he said. “We stick together, we love one another. Congratulations on this day and I’ll see you soon.”

Sydney Colson later took to social media, saying that Wilson had hit up the team group chat about the invite.

“A’ja hit us in the group chat talkin bout WE are invited to go see Usher, but now that I’m seeing the video…SHE was invited,” she wrote. “Which is cool, that’s fine! But why lie to ur teammates?”

Wilson responded jokingly, writing: “Lolololololololol syd scores 2 points in game 4 and think she can get usher tickets awww.”

New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu used Steph Curry’s signature “night night” celebration after hitting a key 3-pointer in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals.

When the Las Vegas Aces clinched the 3-1 series win over the Liberty in Game 4, Sydney Colson remembered.

As the Aces celebrated Wednesday’s 70-69 win and their second straight WNBA title, Colson shared a message with ESPN’s Holly Rowe and with the crowd at New York’s Barclays Center.

“People wanted to count us out because we had two of our starters down, but they don’t know we’ve got some dogs on this team,” Colson said. “So I’ve got two words to say: night night!”

Colson later clarified to reporters that Ionescu told her to “take her ass to the bench” earlier in the season. The 34-year-old Aces guard took issue with the trash-talking, tweeting on Wednesday that “if you play in my face and start being disrespectful, then ima match that energy.”

As Colson mentioned, Las Vegas played the deciding game of the series without two of its five starters. Chelsea Gray and Kiah Stokes were sidelined with foot injuries sustained in Game 3, pushing Colson and Aces forward Cayla George into much bigger roles on Wednesday night.

Colson played 14 minutes off the bench, while George started in place of Stokes and matched her season high with 11 points in 30 minutes.

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Sabrina Ionescu performed the "night night" celebration after hitting a key 3-pointer during New York's Game 3 win. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Sydney Colson believes in the WNBA’s potential to grow. But first, she said in an interview with Gilbert Arenas, the league needs to actively court more women fans.

“Y’all should have been getting beauty deals for women,” Jones said. “There should’ve been skin deals, lipstick, feminine products, tampons. There are so many things that should be easy, like, low hanging fruit.”

Colson, 34, a point guard for the Las Vegas Aces, has been in the league since 2011, when she was drafted by the Connecticut Sun with the No. 16 pick in the WNBA Draft. She’s seen the WNBA grow in that time but believes there’s even more room.

She has developed an audience of her own, with 139,000 Instagram followers, and is set to star in an unscripted series for Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort alongside Theresa Plaisance. The show, called “The Syd + TP Show” will follow Colson and Plaisance’s efforts to become the faces of the WNBA despite being bench players.

Colson has been a key role player for the Aces as they look to repeat as WNBA Champion. Earlier in the season, her teammate, A’Ja Wilson, scored 53 points against the Atlanta Dream, tying the league’s all-time record for points in a single game.

Colson believes more of an emphasis on scoring could bring additional fans to the league.

“With scoring, that could be a thing that men and women want to see, and kids, you want to see a fast-paced game. I want to see somebody score 53 points in a game,” Colson said. “There are definitely things they could be doing to grow the game, and the viewership.”

The confetti had barely settled from the Las Vegas Aces’ 2022 WNBA championship. Yet Becky Hammon already was evaluating ways in which her team could improve.

Sure, the Aces had just hoisted the trophy. But a new season was brewing, bringing with it new challenges and, more importantly for the Las Vegas coach, new opportunities to get better.

When she thinks of that 2022 squad, one weakness stands out: defense.

“Being an average defensive team wasn’t good enough,” Hammon said. “So I’ve challenged them. These women are not average at anything they put their hands in. So why would we settle for anything less than great defense every night?”

This season is different. The Aces hold a 13-1 record heading into Thursday’s superteam clash with the New York Liberty. They started the year with a seven-game winning streak, which included close calls against the Dream (87-92), the Fever (84-80) and the Sun (90-84) – but in each instance, the Aces held off their opponents, and in every case, it was because of their defense.

“A goal of ours is to stay top three of the league defensively,” A’ja Wilson said. “That’s where we need to aim, and we’re trying our best to do that.”

The Aces finally dropped a game on June 8, a 94-77 loss to the Connecticut Sun. Of that game, Hammon said the Sun “kicked our ass,” on both ends of the floor. Las Vegas gave up its highest point total of the season, allowing the Sun to shoot 57.1% from 3-point range. A career-high 41 points from DeWanna Bonner didn’t help.

But after the dismal performance, the Aces bounced back with six consecutive wins, many of them fueled by – you guessed it – defense. The streak included a 96-63 win against the Seattle Storm and a 93-62 win against the Minnesota Lynx in back-to-back games, their lowest point totals allowed this season.

In 2022, the Aces gave up 84.1 points per game, which ranked ninth in the 12-team league. This season, that number is down to 77.4, good for second-best in the WNBA. It wasn’t a major offseason overhaul that led to the improvement but rather a combination of key signings and a change in mindset.

Candace Parker was, of course, the Aces’ most high-profile signing during the offseason, and the 16-year veteran provided an instant defensive upgrade. At 6-4, she makes for a scary defensive combination with Wilson inside, but she also can match up with guards on the perimeter.

While the 2020 Defensive Player of the Year may be nearing the end of her career, she’s still a skilled defender, and her 1.5 steals per game so far this season is her highest mark since 2017.

Alysha Clark also joined Las Vegas in the offseason, and while not as high-profile as Parker, she also is another experienced player with a strong defensive skill set. A two-time All-WNBA Defensive team selection, Clark allows the Aces to play a smaller lineup, either to combat guard-heavy opponents or to bring pressure in the backcourt that speeds up the game.

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Offseason addition Alysha Clark helps the Aces flex their defensive muscles. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

And 6-3 center Kiah Stokes is making an impact off the bench, playing more minutes – up from 15.3 to 18.5 – and averaging a career-high 1.5 blocks per game. Wilson, last season’s DPOY, points to Stokes as the player that holds the Aces’ defense together.

“Kiah’s the anchor to our defense,” Wilson told the Hartford Courant on June 7. “A lot of people say that it’s me, but I pass that to Kiah 100%. She is just always at the right place at the right time and I trust her, like guards trust us and then I trust Kiah when she’s behind me. So she literally holds it down.”

The offseason additions and Stokes’ increased role takes care of the X’s and O’s of the team’s defensive attack, but a large part of Las Vegas’ improvement comes from approach.

The 40-game WNBA schedule comes with quick turnarounds, and teams often play with just one day between games. The Aces take advantage of their limited practice, devoting even the smallest windows of time to defensive drills.

“Even though we don’t have a ton of time, we’ll just do a quick drill to make sure people are talking and active, and being as physical as we can be,” Sydney Colson said.

The team’s mindset has changed too, with defensive assignments becoming more of a priority. Everyone has turned up the intensity, and Hammon says that early in the season when Kelsey Plum wasn’t shooting well, it was the guard’s defense that kept her in games.

The team is bigger and stronger thanks to additions in the offseason, but if everyone isn’t contributing on defense, then there are breakdowns.

The goal for the Aces? Zero breakdowns.

“Sometimes things change game by game,” Colson said. “But it’s also the MO that we have. We want to be more physical, we want to compete on every possession.”