2025 WNBA Regular Season Discussion Thread

[ellobo]

If everybody is healthy, does Messeman come off the bench?

Seems ludicrous because she's easily one of the top 15 players in the world.

But I don't know how you break up the Liberty starting lineup. it's one of the most dominant starting lineups in the history of basketball, men or women.

Seems crazy to mess with a +40 net rating lineup. But this is one of the incredibly rare cases where it might make sense.

I would expect her to come off the bench for exactly that reason -- the full strength starting lineup has been so good. But there should be plenty of minutes carved out from backing up Stewie and JJ, jumbo lineups with Stewie at the 3, and just playing Stewie and JJ fewer minutes. In Stewie's last 5 games, she's played 36, 30, 37, 37, and 35, and last year in the playoffs, she played 37.4 per game. JJ has played less in the regular season, but she played 32.5 mpg in the playoff, which could get cut down by a few.

In any case, Meessemen chose to join this team, and I'm sure there were discussions about role and minutes before she committed.

[Green Chile]

Kayla Thornton out for the season following knee surgery. Just terrible. She's been one of the best storylines of the year.

[Green Chile]

Big one between the Mercury and Liberty.

Mercury may have as much upside as any team in the league when healthy and and enough time for them to all get on the same page.

Not that anybody is beating the Evil Empire (sorry MDB. With the Messeman signing, you get the Jeter era Yankees treatment)

[hermes]

bridget!

pretty good game so far

[Green Chile]

You can come up with all kinds of solutions on paper, but nobody is ever able to really answer the question of what the hell do you do with Alyssa Thomas.

[hermes]

refs blew it again, the ball hits the top of the backboard but they let it go and the aces score

[hermes]

nice run at the end of the quarter

offense looking really good

[hermes]

there's been a few times now where a lynx player is just standing wide open at the rim for an easy layup

[hermes]

courtney is on tonight

[hermes]

phee has some kind of arm/shoulder sleeve on her left arm

[Green Chile]

Liberty showing their championship chops.

Would be a great Playoff series (earmuffs Lynx fans, but I don't think it would be shocking if it were the Finals).

Mercury have a lot to get figured out to get there. So many good rotation players I don't know how they found the right rotations. And no real traditional bigs outside of Mack and Kalani Brown (who is unplayable in a lot of big matchups).

But AT with other stars, shooting and depth is not to be trifled with.

[Green Chile]

This Ionescu kid is pretty good.

[Green Chile]

Marine with the likely dagger.

I don't know if Phoenix can get it together by October but if they do they're going to be very dangerous.

[MrDollarBills]

This Ionescu kid is pretty good.

She went off last night

[Green Chile]

Aneesah and the Sun looking really good early.

Valkyries -Sun probably not going to get a big Sunday afternoon viewership number, but they are both fun teams.

[Green Chile]

Paige out for rest.
Valkyries looked like crap in the midst of a brutal schedule in a 1:00 cross Coast game.
Obviously, CC and Angel out today.

I think I saw that teams are averaging 2.7 days of rest between games this year.

I don't know the right answer but I hope the W doesn't end up in a spot where load management is a common thing. That would be disastrous.

With two more teams hopefully next year we can get these ladies more time off between games and still fill the schedule.

And certainly hope they don't go adding any more games. But I have a bad feeling they will.

[Green Chile]

Demoralizing loss for Seattle, and a great win for Dallas.

Even Haley Jones was great in this one (no disrespect but she's been cut by two other teams this year). Paige came alive after Gabby made her life hell in the first half (Gabby on the bench while the game got out of hand it really doesn't make any sense).

I have always been a Haley Jones skeptic, but she's played really well in this tour with Dallas. She's played good D, provided secondary ballhandling, made a lot of the right passes, and has especially been good cutting off ball and running the floor, especially when playing with Paige. She can still be maddening when she tries to shoot outside layup range or otherwise do too much with the ball, but you can see the makings of a positive player if she embraces the Naz Hillmon hustle/glue role player mentality. I don't really understand starting Quinerly along with Paige and Arike. A longer, lower usage wing like Jones actually makes more sense, especially if you want to keep Carrington with the second unit, and especially since their current starting bigs (Li and Geiselsoder) can space the floor.

She's looking pretty good again today.

Nice block on NaLyssa. Got some mid-range going and getting to the rim. Even dropped a three A'ja's face (not sure if I want to see her shooting too many of those but it's nice to see it go in).

Becoming one of the best storylines of the year. We're seeing a young woman save her career.

[hermes]

Paige out for rest.
Valkyries looked like crap in the midst of a brutal schedule in a 1:00 cross Coast game.
Obviously, CC and Angel out today.

I think I saw that teams are averaging 2.7 days of rest between games this year.

I don't know the right answer but I hope the W doesn't end up in a spot where load management is a common thing. That would be disastrous.

With two more teams hopefully next year we can get these ladies more time off between games and still fill the schedule.

And certainly hope they don't go adding any more games. But I have a bad feeling they will.

to counter the player's union pay proposal, the owners will propose fitting 48 games into the same amount of time

[Green Chile]

Jackie's no look pass to A'ja was pretty badass.

[Green Chile]

Ace is doing everything they can to give this game away.

Wings just missing shots and don't have the long term team chemistry yet to snatch it from them.

But if the Aces keep effing around they're going to find out.

Wings have outplayed them about 75% of the minutes that they've played this year.