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WNBA 2025 Season Preview: Liberty Defend Title Against the Arrival of Paige Bueckers and the MVP Chase for Caitlin Clark
> A'ja WilsonAcesWNBABasketball
> A'ja WilsonAcesWNBABasketball
The WNBA has been around since 1997, but the 2024 season was a watershed moment for the league thanks to the arrival of Caitlin Clark in Indiana. Attendance jumped 48%, and the TV ratings were never better, with people seeking out Ion Television to watch games. Clark was a record-setting Rookie of the Year, A’ja Wilson won another MVP, and the New York Liberty finally won their first championship.
Expectations are only going to be higher for the 2025 season, which kicks off Friday, May 16. There are some key differences in the structure of the season and league this year that we’ll go over below. We’ll also highlight the top stories to watch, like the crazy number of new coaches, the arrival of No. 1 overall pick Paige Bueckers from UConn, and the best picks for who will win the 2025 WNBA championship and individual awards like MVP and Rookie of the Year.
The season is set to run through October, so we’ll be back periodically with some odds updates and statistical nuggets on how things are going in the WNBA this season.
Table of Contents
WNBA Schedule in 2025: A New Team, A Longer Season, A Fairer Postseason
For the first time since 2008, the WNBA has a new expansion team in the Golden State Valkyries, bringing the total teams in the league to 13, with plans to expand to 15 teams in 2026.
The Valkyries will play their games in Chase Center, the home of the NBA’s Warriors. Their head coach is Natalie Nakase, the first Asian American coach to win an NBA title as an assistant coach for the Las Vegas Aces during their repeat in 2022-23. A lifelong Californian, she also served as an assistant for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers in 2018-20.
In other professional leagues, we’ve seen an expansion team get the No. 1 pick in the draft, but there was no such luck for the Valkyries, who missed out on Paige Bueckers. Instead, they used the No. 5 pick on Justė Jocytė from Lithuania, and she could be a work in progress, as well as the rest of the tea,m as they get situated with the WNBA.
This will be the fifth year in a row with the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup, an in-season tournament held from June 1 to July 1, where the best teams from each conference will square off for the trophy. The Minnesota Lynx won the 2024 Commissioner’s Cup. Also, the WNBA All-Star Game will take place on July 19, 2025.
But it’s a longer season this year as the WNBA will play 44 regular-season games, up from 40 last year. They are still going with eight teams making the postseason, but there have been some noteworthy changes to the playoff rounds.
The first round remains a best-of-3 series, but no longer will the higher seed get to play the first two games at home, which felt unfair and didn’t guarantee each team got a home game. So, they’ll play a best-of-3 with a 1-1-1 format, ensuring both teams get a home game.
The semifinals remain the same. For the WNBA Finals, it is going from a best-of-5 to a best-of-7 series with a 2-2-1-1-1 format, just like in the NBA. That’s a smart move.
Top Stories to Follow for 2025 WNBA Season
We have collected some of the top storylines you should keep an eye on in the WNBA this season.
Can the New York Liberty Repeat as WNBA Champs?
Repeating is all the rage these days, and we saw the Las Vegas Aces come up short of a three-peat last year. The championship went to the New York Liberty, a franchise that’s been close for years before finally grinding out that tough Game 5 overtime win against Minnesota to win it all. Sabrina Ionescu infamously shot 1-of-19 from the field and still ended the night with her first championship.
The Liberty (32-8) were the best team all season and got the job done. They’re also the odds-on favorite to win it all again this year with that core of Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Breanna Stewart returning.
The Liberty have finished 32-8 and reached the WNBA Finals in each of the last two seasons. We’ll see if they still have that edge over the rest of the Eastern Conference or if other teams have caught up with them.
Coaching Carousel: Eight New Coaches in the WNBA This Season
Look, basketball coaches switch teams all the time, as ownership seems to have low patience with that job in this sport. The Denver Nuggets fired Michael Malone with the playoffs a week away. Things get crazy in the NBA with coaches.
Apparently, the newfound success of the WNBA also means more expectations need to be met, so we have a whopping eight coaching changes for the 2025 season after there were only two in 2024. We already talked about Natalie Nakase coaching the expansion Valkyries, but there are some other notable coaching changes.
The Chicago Sky have replaced Teresa Weatherspoon with Tyler Marsh, a former assistant for the Indiana Pacers (2020-22) and Las Vegas Aces (2022-24). There was a sense that maybe Weatherspoon was playing into boosting Angel Reese’s double-double streak rather than playing winning basketball after the Sky missed the postseason.
The Connecticut Sun were 28-12 and lost a Game 5 in the semifinals to Minnesota last year. But coach Stephanie White, the WNBA Coach of the Year in 2023, parted ways with the team. A few days later, she was hired by the Indiana Fever to go coach Caitlin Clark. White was the Fever’s coach in 2015-16, losing Game 5 of the WNBA Finals in her first year on the job. Meanwhile, the Sun hired Rachid Meziane, a newcomer from France.
Caitlin Clark Year 2: The Sky Is the Limit
There haven’t been many sophomore seasons in the history of sports with higher expectations than Caitlin Clark this year in Indiana. The great thing about her rookie season is that it should, in theory, be the worst version of her we see in the WNBA. Things didn’t get off to a great start for the Fever at 2-9, but Clark picked up her game and had that offense humming. Look at her splits from last year:
- Clark’s first 11 games: 2-9 record, 15.6 PTS, 5.1 REB, 6.4 AST, .357 FG%, .297 3P%
- Clark’s last 29 games: 18-11 record, 20.6 PTS, 5.9 REB, 9.2 AST, .437 FG%, .360 3P%
Not only did Clark shatter a lot of WNBA rookie records, but she’s already set some single-game and career records in just 40 games.
But the playoffs did not go well for Clark as the Fever lost 2-0 to the Sun. Fittingly, the Sun’s coach, Stephanie White, is now Clark’s coach.
They say you coach based on the players you have. In Connecticut, White’s team played a slow pace and were No. 1 in points allowed per game both seasons. She’ll likely open things up more with Clark and company in Indiana, but any edges she can bring to improving their defensive intensity will be significant in helping this team turn into a legitimate championship contender.
But with the way Clark finished last season, you have to think she’s going to improve her 3-point shot this year, and she should cut down on her record number of turnovers. Still, she handles the ball so much and her teammates flubbed so many of her passes that it shouldn’t be viewed as a huge negative that she has the turnovers she does. She’s also talented enough to average 25 points and 10 assists per game, something she could do this year.
It should be a lot of fun tracking Clark’s progress this year. She is also the slight favorite at FanDuel to win the MVP award this year in what could be a 3-player race with A’ja Wilson (Aces) and Napheesa Collier (Lynx):
- Caitlin Clark (+200)
- A’ja Wilson (+230)
- Napheesa Collier (+300)
- Breanna Stewart (+1400)
- Sabrina Ionescu (+2000)
Meet Paige Bueckers
You have to admit that a lot of the Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese rivalry felt forced at times last year, especially the summer debates about Rookie of the Year. It also got quite nasty online with a racial divide and arguments that strayed away from the court.
Well, get ready for a potential new rivalry as Paige Bueckers joins the Dallas Wings as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA draft. Dallas sure is lucky this year, getting Bueckers and the Mavericks probably getting Cooper Flagg after winning the NBA draft lottery.
But Bueckers already has a legion of fans from her success at UConn, where she returned for her senior season to win her first championship for the program that has been a juggernaut in women’s college sports.
That ring is already entering the debate, but let’s make no mistake about it. Bueckers is the kind of player who can lead a well-built team to a championship. Clark is a franchise savior who makes her team a contender by herself. That doesn’t often result in a championship without enough proper help, but there is a difference in talent here.
Still, Bueckers is a very good shooter (.423 3P% in college) with big-scoring capability. She isn’t the passer that Clark is, but she can set up her teammates, too. She’s going to be a problem for the league going forward, but we should hold up on the talks that “she was Caitlin before Caitlin” as some fans blame injuries for her not being viewed as the better prospect. Yeah, this one has been brewing for years.
She’ll get her shot to prove her value this season. Bueckers is already the overwhelming favorite for Rookie of the Year with -370 odds at FanDuel.
But if you’re hoping that the toxic elements of the Clark-Reese debates will die down if they start debating between two white girls, I have some bad news. Expect think-pieces like this to pop up often this season (not here, though):
This budding rivalry could get ugly too, as Bueckers has excessively advocated for more support of the game’s Black stars that built the league, which almost feels like a backhanded shot towards Clark’s meteoric rise in women’s basketball. Throw in Bueckers having a ring and being objectively prettier, and let’s just hope people can stick to the on-court analysis with these two.
Will Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky Make the Playoffs?
Angel Reese was certainly a big part of the story of the 2024 WNBA season. She can rebound with the best of them, but her struggles to finish at the basket did inflate her rebounding numbers, so she must get better at scoring short baskets if the Sky are going to rebound and make the playoffs under a new coach.
Reese will have a new but familiar teammate in Hailey Van Lith, who played with Reese at LSU for a year. Van Lith was the No. 11 pick in the draft and could play a big role this year in Chicago. She’s a former Big 12 Player of the Year and is the only NCAA player (men or women) to ever lead three different schools to the Elite Eight.
Van Lith also has been getting praise for her Sports Illustrated photos this month, so between her and Reese, this team is sure to garner headlines all season, regardless of how things go on the court.
But the Sky have -106 odds at FanDuel to make the playoffs, so it is a coin flip at the moment.
WNBA 2025 Championship Odds
Here are the current odds from FanDuel to win the 2025 WNBA championship:
- New York Liberty (+220)
- Las Vegas Aces (+370)
- Minnesota Lynx (+370)
- Indiana Fever (+390)
- Phoenix Mercury (+1200)
- Seattle Storm (+2900)
- Atlanta Dream (+3200)
- Los Angeles Sparks (+5000)
- Chicago Sky (+6500)
- Dallas Wings (+6500)
- Washington Mystics (+39000)
- Connecticut Sun (+50000)
- Golden State Valkyries (+50000)
Historical data on WNBA championship odds is hard to find as the league just hasn’t been as popular until now. But it appears all the recent champions were in the +200 to +400 range before the season, with the exception being Chicago in 2021. That’s not surprising since that team was only 16-16 before going on its run during a COVID year, which produced some outlier results in sports.
Bu 2025 does feel like a 4-team race with the Liberty having the championship pedigree and shooting that separates them ever so slightly from the Aces (A’ja Wilson is incredible), the Lynx (great coaching and defense), and the Fever (they have Clark and some other young pieces with a new coach).
As for the other teams, the Sky should be better this year, the Los Angeles Sparks will be happy to get Cameron Brink back from injury, and Bueckers will make Dallas worth watching. But as far as contending for a title in 2025, it doesn’t feel likely.
Those odds for the Valkyries are a ghastly reminder of how tough it is to operate as an expansion team in an established league.
Best Futures Bets for 2025 WNBA Season
It should be another fun season with heightened stakes and more star power as long as everyone stays healthy. Bueckers winning Rookie of the Year is a chalk pick that feels very likely, but you know injuries can always mess those up, so bet wisely at your own risk on that one.
As for MVP, count me in as being fully sold that Clark is going to improve her shooting, still dish out the most assists in the league, win more games, and claim her first MVP award this year.
But when it comes to the championship, I still think the Liberty are the best team and the Fever should move up to second best in the Eastern Conference. The Western Conference could be another battle between the Aces and Lynx with their MVP candidates.
However, the WNBA playoffs are just a seeding of the top eight teams by record. It’s not broken down into conference play, which is how the Liberty defeated the Aces in the semifinals instead of that being a rematch in the Finals.
That means you realistically could see the Fever vs. Liberty in the WNBA Finals, which has +650 odds at FanDuel to happen. I like that as my favorite championship match pick, but if I had to pick one team to win it all, I’m going with a Liberty repeat, and this time, Ionescu won’t shoot 1-for-19.
- WNBA Pick: 2025 Rookie of the Year – Paige Bueckers (-370) at FanDuel
- WNBA Pick: 2025 MVP – Caitlin Clark (+200) at FanDuel
- WNBA Pick: 2025 WNBA Finals – Indiana Fever vs. New York Liberty (+650) at FanDuel
- WNBA Pick: 2025 WNBA Championship Winner – New York Liberty (+220) at FanDuel
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