The Valkyries looked like a cute story a few weeks ago. Now they look like a problem.
Golden State jumped three spots in this week’s power rankings after dropping wins on the Dream and the Liberty, and it wasn’t fluky. Their defense has reached a point where it’s not just annoying opposing stars — it’s dismantling them. Late-game execution, which was shaky early in the season, has tightened up. They are no longer the team you overlook on the schedule. They’re the team you dread seeing in the Commissioner’s Cup conversation.
Minnesota still sits at No. 1, and that’s because the Lynx keep doing what they’ve done all year. They defend at an elite level. They find ways to win whether the game turns into a rock fight or a track meet. The separation between them and everyone else is starting to look real. Las Vegas, after a stumble against New York, answered with wins over Dallas and Chicago. The Aces still have the talent and the experience to run this thing back, but they’re not getting the same cushion they had last season.
Atlanta slips. New York stays unpredictable.
The Dream had a rough week. Back-to-back losses to Golden State stung, and a surprising L to Seattle kept them from climbing. But Atlanta still plays that physical brand of basketball that gives anyone trouble. They’re not out of the mix. They just need to stop dropping games they should win.
New York is the hardest team to pin down. They beat Vegas in what was basically a Commissioner’s Cup preview. Then they went cold against Seattle and Golden State. The ceiling is there. The consistency is not. If the Liberty ever figure out how to avoid those scoring droughts, they might be the scariest team in the league. But that’s a big if.
Dallas dropped two in a row, but context matters. Those losses came against the Aces and the Lynx. The Wings are competing. They move the ball well. They’re not dominating, but they’ve got a real shot at being a tough out in the playoffs.
The middle of the pack is a mess. That’s good for basketball.
Washington won a quadruple-overtime thriller against Portland, which says something about their grit if not their consistency. Indiana blew out Los Angeles even without Caitlin Clark, which suggests the Fever are building something real. Toronto keeps competing through injuries, but Marina Mabrey can only carry so much weight. The Sparks had that impressive win over New York and then immediately lost to Toronto and Indiana. That’s the story of their season — flashes followed by frustration.
Portland keeps losing but keeps hanging around. That quadruple-overtime loss to Washington showed fight. Phoenix finally put together back-to-back wins for only the second time this year. Seattle had its best week of the season, taking down the Liberty and the Dream. Flau’jae Johnson and Awa Fam look like legit building blocks. Chicago keeps seeing encouraging individual performances — Kamilla Cardoso shot 13-for-13 in one game — but wins are still hard to come by. Connecticut is still at the bottom, though they did beat the Sky and the Mystics. The Sun’s next game against Dallas will tell us if that was real progress or just a good couple of nights.
Nearly half the season is done, and the playoff picture is starting to sharpen. But the middle of the standings is so tight that one hot week can flip everything. Washington, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Portland all have paths to climb before the All-Star break. The bottom four are trying to prove they’re better than their records. That kind of volatility makes the next few weeks the most interesting stretch of the year so far.
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