2023 WNBA Season thread

Sources have informed @Winsidr that a three team trade is in the works and close to being finalized that would send 2021 MVP Jonquel Jones to the New York Liberty.

— Rachel Galligan (@RachGall) January 15, 2023

gotta have some place to put this, could make the liberty a legit playoff team

obv they were in the playoffs, but this could make them a contender.

the only offseason move that would be bigger than this is if stewart leaves seattle.

also: we're taking a short trip up to dallas to go to the aces/wings game in july. they play at my wife's alma mater.

https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/35496694/dearica-hamby-claims-aces-unethical-trade-sparks

terrible look for the aces front office

"To be treated this way by an organization, BY WOMEN who are mothers, who have claimed to 'be in these shoes,' who preach family, chemistry and women's empowerment is disappointing and leaves me sick to my stomach," Hamby continued in her social media post. "We fought for provisions that would finally support and protect player parents. This cannot now be used against me."

As part of the new CBA enacted in 2020, WNBA players receive their full salary while on maternity leave, as well as a childcare stipend. There is a maternity cap exception that allows teams to sign a replacement player at her applicable minimum if they don't have cap room.

Aces sign Candace Parker

That's too many good players!

yeah, this mustve been in the works if they traded hamby the way they did. depending on where stewart lands, aces looking like the team to beat again.

Liberty constructing a rival superteam would be a fun storyline

Will Breanna Stewart return to the Seattle Storm? According to ESPN, the superstar forward has narrowed her free agency down to two choices: the Storm and the New York Liberty.https://t.co/wmPMkmo0Mi

— Seattle Sports (@SeattleSports) January 30, 2023

and they just may!

.@KDTrey5 REALLY wants Breanna Stewart to join the New York Liberty. 🗽👀

"I hit [Breanna Stewart] the other day, and I never do this, and was like, 'Yo, it would be an incredible dynasty in New York City if you came here.'" pic.twitter.com/BTnCtkETJW

— Boardroom (@boardroom) January 30, 2023

kd recruiting, too

LFG!!!🗽🗽🗽🗽 https://t.co/bsqCZ6VsGG

— Breanna Stewart (@breannastewart) February 2, 2023

k so im usually anti-super team but aces v liberty finals will be possibly historically good

like
gray-plum-young-parker-wilson
v.
ionescu-sloot-stewart-jones-dolson

is that 9 all-stars between them?

https://www.wnba.com/leaguepass/

preseason underway, season opener on friday, and you can get the whole year for $25

just catching up. i never dove deep into the off season shenanigans. i think i like the super teams as new trend, but maybe that makes the league less fun, esp come playoff time.

caught some of the dallas conn game. renewed league pass again. still prob the best deal in pro sports

the aces are unfair

when are they gonna lose a game

2025

aces are very good

its not just the candace parker pickup which is obv huge, it's also alysha clark who is coming off the bench and just bombing 3s. and jackie young is on an absurd shooting streak and leading the team in scoring right now. wnba needs to expand, theres just too much talent

young has been incredible.

Aces lost one! 41 points for DeWanna Bonner

so the aces are slaughtering the lynx again and will go 10-1 on the season. they're on pace to beat the all-time wnba record set by the 1998 houston comets team that won 90% of their games (27-3) en route to their 2nd title.

i think part of this is just other teams getting shittier by subtraction (sky lose parker and vandersloot, seattle loses breanna, ct loses jonquel). but the sun are still good. wnba needs to expand and spread some of this talent out.

a possible finals preview last night, and aces owned the libs. the liberty are still very good, but you'd think the would have been more competitive given all the moves they made. idk if jonquel jones is injured but her production has cratered this year, and she's playing significantly fewer minutes. ionescu is shooting a career best from 3 (42.4%) and a career-worst from 2 (32.8% what the ever loving fuck).

aces are now 14-1. the only knock on them is that plum shoots too goddamn much. she leads the team in 3PA despite shooting just 32.9%, meanwhile young and gray shoot 49% from 3 each. plum is obv v good but she's the 4th most important player and plays like she's #2. obv a minor problem, theyre just rolling over the competition most games.

aces v sun on abc rn, sun somehow lose jonquel jones and dont miss a beat. bonner and thomas are such a formidable duo.

an amazing sequence with a'ja getting the block, catching her own rebound from said block, pass to gray, pass to parker who finds clark open under the bucket for any easy layup in transition. takes like 5 seconds to go from one end to the other with just passing and good spacing. really highlights parker's value as sort of a connective tissue, too.

missed the game, will need to rewatch later. been impressed with how well the sun are again, but the aces just look so dominant right now

more acesposting, lv toughed one out tonight against the dallas wings as they were down p much the whole game until the 4q. pretty rough shooting night for a'ja though she lived at the line. could tell they were missing kelsey plum's dynamism. jackie young continues to be that girl tho.

rn the 12-team wnba has 4 teams with winning records, and the aces are 16-1

dynasty

SABRINA IONESCU COULD NOT MISS‼️#WNBAAllStar pic.twitter.com/lEbXwvoTIp

— ESPN (@espn) July 14, 2023

20 straight

that’s so sick

aces v libs is crazy, sabrina is going very off

watched the 2nd half and the liberty were crushing the aces mainly with defense/rebounding. the WNBA game feels more disciplined than than the NBA. there's tons of switching and help defense and hardly any fouling.

aces are missing candace parker who is pretty important in that regard as their starting pf. stokes has been starting in her place and she has basically no value offensively other than getting putbacks. she can rebound and defend all right, but as long as stokes was out there, aces were playing 4 on 5 on offense. wilson looked pretty rough and i think aces just didn't have a counterpunch when ionescu went super saiyan.

a'ja dropped 53 tonight what the fuck

i think lv is off the record pace for the regular season after dropping a couple in their last handful. that libs-aces final seems more and more inevitable at this point

playoffs on rn, aces v sky feels illegally mismatched

liberty-mystics was a nailbiter

is it good or bad that everyone knew all along it would come down to aces vs liberty

bad for the regular season, but the finals will be great

so i didnt watch the libs v sun game, uhhhhh wtf happened?

also aces are cooking rn but stokes' lack of shooting is their major weakness offensively

here we go

its the motherfucking finals babyyyyyyyy

this has been a great start to the game, just back and forth intensity and bucket-getting

hope we get 5 games from this series

i was wondeirng if anyone had made an a'ja wilson steely dan album cover shirt, and i discovered that she was named after the album?????

https://womenshoopsworld.com/2018/07/13/wilsons-father-also-adjusting-to-the-wnba/

Though Wilson is on her way to becoming a household name, that name had humble beginnings, in a European airport.

“I went to a Steely Dan concert in either Sweden or France,” Roscoe Wilson said. “I always liked Steely Dan, and at the concert they had this album ‘Aja,’ in 1977. I just like the song, Aja. And the name, simple – you spell it backwards, forwards, same thing. I said, back then, if I ever have a daughter, I’m going to name her Aja. And I kept my word; when A’ja was born I said, we’re going to name A’ja, A’ja.”

right now:
*johannes is going AWF
*aces have no answer for jonquel jones on the offensive glass
*jackie young outstanding
*point god TOO QUIET

also becky's gonna need to find a new defensive scheme bc switching on screens is getting the libs some tremendous mismatches and they are capitalizing big time. stewart and jones are feasting on smaller defenders.

aces gotta figure out a way to own the libs

a: a'ja block the shit out of everyone

the downside of the aces short lineup is how susceptible they are to foul trouble, but it's not their conditioning at all. theyve been playing heavy minutes all year and they are running circles around the libs in the 2nd half.

libs looked totally fuckin cooked rn

they showed one quarter of fight, but folded in the second half. poor guard play and Stewart seemed mostly absent.

h8 2 say it bc she's such an exciting player, but sabrina has been AWOL in both games

yep, Vamdersloot too

vandersloot legit looked scared to shoot 3s last night, i could not tell what was going on

like maybe nyl has a role confusion problem. aces are a superteam, but they've played together for a while so there's a clearer sense of what everyone is there to do. the only libs player who seems to understand what she's supposed to do is jonquel jones who's been great. even stewie seems out of sorts.

also want to say a'ja is positioning herself to be in the wnba goat conversation very very soon and jackie young would be the best player on like every team not in these wnba finals

liberty coming out with appropriate energy, just way more locked in, aces are at least weathering the storm, but need to string together some runs and get momentum on offense. they're forcing a lot of stuff and getting to the line, but there's not much in the way of open looks.

feel like ny gave a good punch but aces still right in there.

jonquel jones has been unstoppable, good lord

JJ is on one, and Stewart’s defense? wowwee!

really really worried about chelsea gray's injury. hoping it's minor, but she looked like she was in a lot of pain.

doesn’t seem great

Took my girls to Game 3 at Barclay's, really fun. Great seats - lower level section one over from behind the hoop - for about the price of Broadway tickets on stubhub, grabbed them as soon as NYL won the series against Connecticut. Great crowd and atmosphere, really sweet. JJ and Stewie took over. Great game.

nice game to catch! even when i was out of the room, i could hear the crowd going nuts.

i’ve had a blast at the few games i’ve seen and would love to catch a playoff game at some point

chelsea gray AND kiah stokes out for game 4, jesus christ.

wife was just reading that earlier tonight. not great, Bob

wife was just reading that earlier tonight. not great, Bob

theoretically theres enough firepower at guard between plum and jackie young, but theyre gonna struggle to guard jones and stewart when theyre out there together. clark is gonna get the starting job on the wing and will, and i'd bet cayla george is gonna start on jones. kierstan bell will get some small ball minutes, too.

and will

this may not go well for the aces. turned the game on at 11 all, libs go on a 10-0 run

aces were hanging around until the last minute of the first half

this game is ugggggly but it might be the only chance the aces have

i cannot believe this. libs looked they were gonna run away with this.

aces digging deep, wild

motherfucking a'ja wilson

put this performance in her permanent record, this is a legendary game

god fucking damnit

LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

well, what a fucking finish

yikes gregggg doyel

Reporter: 🫶

Caitlin Clark: "You like that?"

Reporter: "I like that you're here."

Caitlin: "Yeah, I do that at my family after every game.”

Reporter: "Start doing it to me and we'll get along just fine."

Caitlin: 😳

(via @IndianaFever / YT)pic.twitter.com/BBjU881K7a

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 17, 2024

read elsewhere, twitter or reddit, that this guy is a total prick on the regular as a local reporter, but this was just fucking terrible

he absolutely is

but he's *such* an incredible prick that i can't fully discount the idea that he did it on purpose for notoriety/anti-woke cred

it would be cool if he was banned from the press pool 4 lyfe

2024 WNBA Season: The first one with Caitlin Clark in it

btw

he absolutely is

but he's *such* an incredible prick that i can't fully discount the idea that he did it on purpose for notoriety/anti-woke cred

― mookieproof, Thursday, April 18, 2024 10:29 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Eh Gregg Doyel might be the local blowhard sports columnist, but I don't think he's on that side of the fence; think he's more of an ass than an asshole? Looks like he's already apologizing instead of doubling down. If this had been Dan Dakich, different story!

yeah he made what is at least on the surface a genuine apology

he shd still banned from covering women's sports

his apology column was pretty weird, his big takeaway was that he shouldn't talk to young women the same way he would talk to men

oh I just saw his apology tweet I ain’t reading all that and feeding the main character

did he think he was asleep and dreaming of how he'd win caitlin clark's heart at a press conference? i have no other explanation.