In the professional sports landscape, the WNBA is still a relatively young league. On Friday, it tips off its 30th season. Watching the WNBA grow, you get the sense that you’re watching history unfold in real time. Any dominant player could end up an all-time great. Any dominant team could be the WNBA’s version of the ’90s Chicago Bulls.
Only a few teams have ever approached dynasty status. The Houston Comets won the first four league titles from 1997 through 2000, and the Minnesota Lynx won four titles in seven years from 2011 through 2017.
The 2020s’ Las Vegas Aces could surpass them both. The Aces have won three of the past four WNBA titles, including last year in a 4-0 sweep over Phoenix. They have the sport’s best player in A’ja Wilson, arguably the sport’s best coach in Becky Hammon and a supporting cast of All-Star guards Jackie Young, Chelsea Gray and Jewell Loyd.
Wilson is still in her prime, only 29 years old, and already being discussed as the WNBA’s greatest player of all time. She’s a 6-foot-4 center who, last year, averaged 23.4 points, 10.2 rebounds and 42.4% on 3-pointers, on the occasions she took them. In eight seasons, she has won four MVP trophies, three Defensive Player of the Year awards and two Finals MVP awards.
“I’ve worked so hard to get to these situations and put myself in these spaces that I’m like, ‘OK, yeah, I’ve earned it, of course,’” Wilson recently told The Associated Press. “But when it comes to people and where they want me and they’re saying are you the next GOAT? I have no idea, because in my mind I have a lot more winning to do.”
One might assume Wilson and the Aces are expected to repeat as champs — but the odds-on favorites are in Brooklyn, where the New York Liberty are building a superteam. New York won the title in 2024, the only time in the past four years the Aces didn’t.
This offseason, the Liberty re-signed their “big three” — guard Sabrina Ionescu and forwards Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones — while bringing in free agent forward Satou Sabally, who happened to be Ionescu’s college teammate at Oregon. Now, New York can run out a lineup that is as tall and versatile as any in the league. Stewart, Jones and Sabally are all 6 feet 4 or taller, and all can shoot from deep.
To lead them, the Liberty hired Chris DeMarco, who was a longtime assistant coach with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, a team that once upon a time had to figure out how to incorporate Kevin Durant into its existing “big three,” led by Steph Curry. Now DeMarco will face a similar task, getting a group of stars to coalesce as a unit.
If anyone can crash a seemingly inevitable Aces-Liberty showdown, it might be the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark, who remains the face of the sport even though injuries limited her to 13 games last year. Something to monitor: When Clark did play, her numbers dipped from her stellar rookie year in 2024. She shot only about 28% from 3-point range.
“It’s very isolating to come to practice every single day and spend two hours getting treatment and rehab and then you come out here and you have to show up and be the best teammate you can be,” Clark told the AP.
On the Fever, Clark also has an ascending sidekick in Aliyah Boston, a 6-foot-5 forward and former No. 1 draft pick herself, who’s emerging as an impactful two-way player. Given the Aces’ and the Liberty’s frontcourt size, Boston could be key to a deep playoff run.
Meanwhile, the Atlanta Dream, the No. 3 seed in last year’s playoffs, made a major trade this offseason, acquiring Angel Reese from the Chicago Sky. During her first two years, Reese led the league in rebounding at 12.9 per game.
Last year’s top seed, the Lynx, appear to be in a transition period. They lost several key players to free agency and will start the season without star forward Napheesa Collier, who averaged nearly 23 points per game and shot 40% from 3-point range last year. She had surgery on both ankles this offseason and won’t be back until next month at the earliest.
All those stars across the league are about to be paid like it, too. After lengthy labor negotiations, the league’s new collective bargaining agreement includes supermax contracts that pay $1.4 million annually, along with a $7 million salary cap for every team, a big increase over the cap last year, which was just $1.5 million.
The No. 1 overall draft pick now makes $500,000 in her first year, and Wilson recently signed a three-year, $5 million supermax deal, the biggest in league history.
Business is so good — attendance and TV rates are both up — that the WNBA added two expansion teams this year: the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo. Over the next few years, three more arrive: in Cleveland (2028), in Detroit (2029) and in Philadelphia (2030). By then, the WNBA will have 18 teams. It started with eight in 1997.
Who knows what the league will look like by 2030? Clark will be in her prime, and so will Dallas’ young duo of Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. For now, we get to watch the Aces and the Liberty battle to see who stands atop this growing, thriving league.
