The NBA Finals are only three weeks away, but the WNBA is just starting. The 2025 season, the league’s 29th, gets underway Friday.
Last year saw the arrival of Caitlin Clark, record attendance and TV ratings, and the New York Liberty winning their first championship. This year looks to build off that momentum and become the biggest WNBA season ever.
Here are some of the main storylines.
Welcome to the W
The expansion Golden State Valkyries debut Friday night, the first new WNBA franchise since the Atlanta Dream joined the league in 2008. How will they perform in Year One? Despite signing Sixth Woman of the Year Tiffany Hayes and drafting Lithuanian standout Justė Jocytė fifth overall, Golden State is facing an uphill battle just to reach .500. Only one expansion team (the 1998 Detroit Shock) finished with a winning record, and all 10 prior WNBA expansion teams, including that Shock squad, failed to make the playoffs.Bigger and Better
Adding a team isn’t the only way that the league is getting bigger—it also added four games to the schedule. Each team will play 44 games this season, the most ever played in a season. The WNBA Finals is also expanding and will be a best-of-seven series for the first time, after being best-of-five since 2005. More games means more stats, so one can expect lots of new records to be set this season.Record Breaker
Speaking of records, Clark set lots of those last year—both good and bad. She became the first WNBA rookie to record a triple-double, set a league record for most assists in a season (337), attempted the most three-pointers in a single year (355), and also had the most turnovers in a season (223).Clark helped the Indiana Fever (20-20) end a seven-year playoff drought, and the team has had nearly a complete roster overhaul for her second season. Indiana had the youngest average age last year (25.5) but will have the oldest average age (29) come opening night. The Fever have surrounded Clark with several veterans, as well as new coach Stephanie White, who previously coached Indiana from 2015-16.
Inexperience on the Sidelines
White is an outlier of sorts, in that she actually has WNBA head coaching experience, while most WNBA head coaches do not. Of the 13 coaches, seven will be making their career debuts this season. Of the seven rookie coaches, three were promoted from assistant positions, three were plucked from the college level, and one comes from coaching overseas.Old Faces, New Places
Player movement is a part of every sports league, and several big names will have new digs for the 2025 season. Tops among them is 10-time All-Star and future Hall of Famer Brittney Griner. After a dozen years in Phoenix, Griner joined Atlanta this offseason, while her old team added Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally. Meanwhile, 2012 MVP Tina Charles left Atlanta to join Connecticut, while the league saw a three-team blockbuster trade this offseason.A pair of two-time WNBA champions in Kelsey Plum and Jewell Loyd changed locations, with Plum joining the Los Angeles Sparks and Loyd going to the Las Vegas Aces. Just as the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis NBA trade was historic as reigning All-NBA players were exchanged for the first time in league history, this WNBA trade marked the first time that a pair of No. 1 overall draft picks were included in the same transaction. Loyd was the top pick in 2015, while Plum went first in 2017.
Old Faces … Out the League
Someone on the short list of “Greatest Players in WNBA History” decided to hang up her sneakers: Diana Taurasi retired this offseason. She is the league’s all-time leading scorer who spent two decades with the Phoenix Mercury, but she’s not the only MVP to head off into the sunset. Elena Delle Donne, a two-time MVP, announced her retirement in April after sitting out last season.Going for History
While Taurasi and Delle Donne combined to win three MVP awards, A’ja Wilson has three all by herself, including last year. She joined Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, and Lauren Jackson as part of the three-MVP club, and there is no such thing as a four-MVP club. Wilson is aiming to become the first player to win MVP four times, a year after she also set a single season record by averaging 26.9 points per game.Buckets in Big D
Before the Dallas Mavericks shockingly won the NBA Draft Lottery—and the right to select Cooper Flagg—the hotshot rookie in the DFW everyone was talking about was Paige Bueckers. The 2021 College Player of the Year at UConn, and the 2025 NCAA champion, went first overall in the 2025 WNBA Draft, and the Dallas Wings are expecting an immediate impact from her in the vein of Clark last year.Bueckers is the only Division I player over the last 20 years with 2,000 career points and 50/40/85 shooting splits, and anything less than winning Rookie of the Year will be seen as disappointing. Since 2004, 14 of the 21 top overall picks (66.7 percent) have won Rookie of the Year, including each of the last three. Bueckers also has a UConn standard to uphold as each of the last four No. 1 overall picks from Connecticut—Taurasi, Charles, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart—have also claimed WNBA Rookie of the Year.
