The WNBA Has a Lot to Celebrate This Year, but There’s Still Plenty of Work Ahead

It’s the moment WNBA fans have been waiting for since before the start of the 2023 season: The Liberty and Aces are facing off in a superteam Finals. In truth, a New York–Las Vegas battle for the title has been written in the stars since Breanna Stewart announced her move to Brooklyn from Seattle in February. Now, one of the most highly anticipated Finals series in WNBA history is just days away.

And that’s not even the biggest headline in the WNBA right now, with an expansion plan finally in the works. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced the addition of a Bay Area team Thursday, with the franchise set to join the league in 2025.

It’s been a busy week for the WNBA, and with the 27th campaign hitting an apex there is plenty to unpack.

Expansion

After years of expansion talk, and a series of cheeky social media posts, the WNBA is finally adding another franchise to its existing 12 teams. Engelbert announced the news Thursday, revealing that the Golden State Warriors had been awarded a WNBA expansion team. The franchise will be owned and operated by Warriors co-executive chairman and CEO Joe Lacob and co-executive chairman Peter Guber and will play at the Chase Center starting in 2025. As for the expansion draft, Engelbert said that selections will be held at the end of ’24, ahead of the ’25 WNBA draft.

Expansion has been a hot topic around the league for some time, with Engelbert signaling the addition of one or more teams for the 2025 season for over a year now. The last expansion team came 15 years ago, when the Atlanta Dream joined the WNBA in 2008.

“Since joining the WNBA as commissioner in 2019, I have often been asked when will the WNBA expand, and for the most part my response has always been when the time is right,” said Engelbert during her announcement. “Well, the right time, the right moment is today, and I am very pleased to announce that the WNBA is coming to the Bay Area.”

The franchise has yet to settle on a name, but there are already high expectations for the team. “We will win a WNBA championship in the first five years of this franchise,” Lacob said during the announcement. The high bar is welcome in an area with such a rich basketball history, with the new Bay Area team capitalizing off the longstanding fandom of women’s college basketball programs like nearby Stanford.

The Bay Area addition may not be the W’s only either, with Engelbert revealing that the goal is for a 14th team to join the league by 2025. “We’re in continued discussions, productive discussions, with other cities,” said Engelbert. Howard Megdal of The Next reported this week that “discussions about adding Portland to the WNBA’s next round of expansion have reached the Board of Governors level.”

This long-awaited expansion comes as the WNBA is set to deepen its talent pool with generational collegiate prospects like Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, adding intrigue to this offseason.

Dearica Hamby

In the same week that the league is celebrating the upcoming Finals and forthcoming expansion, other much less congratulatory news hit the WNBA. The Washington Post reported that last week Dearica Hamby of the Sparks filed a gender discrimination complaint against the league and her former team, the Aces, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In the filing, Hamby states that the Aces accused her of signing her two-year contract extension while knowingly pregnant. She also alleges that the team began to retaliate against her following the news of her pregnancy.

The WNBA conducted an investigation into Hamby’s claims of discrimination at the start of the 2023 season, resulting in a two-game suspension for Aces coach Becky Hammon. Las Vegas also lost its 2025 first-round draft pick for violating the league’s impermissible player benefits policies. Hamby was traded to the Sparks in January.

In response to Hamby’s EEOC complaint, WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson issued a statement Wednesday that read: “In the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement, player parents gained protections that ensured becoming a parent did not mean the end of a career. Obviously, these protections did not change the nature of this business. Any team can trade any player for any reason or no reason at all. But that reason cannot be on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, or pregnancy status.”

There is plenty to unpack as this story develops, with far-reaching implications regarding the league’s 2020 CBA and WNBA players’ parental rights. With the Aces in pursuit of a back-to-back title run, Hamby’s complaint will likely permeate this year’s Finals, with many questions yet to be answered.

Finals rivalry

For all the evolution and developments off the court, the WNBA has enjoyed a highly competitive season on the hardwood, featuring one of the most hotly contested MVP races in league history. The Sun’s Alyssa Thomas, along with Stewart and Wilson, shattered records and upended stat sheets, making choosing one MVP a tall task. For only the second time, a W player was awarded MVP despite not earning the most first-place votes, with Stewart taking home the prize while Thomas beat her out in first-place tallies. While contentious, the debate and angst that broke out as league insiders grappled with whom to crown the most valuable player ultimately points to the W’s progress over 27 short years. Each candidate accomplished feats never seen before in the WNBA, racking up triple-doubles, 40-point games, even 50-point games. The high-quality product resulted in record viewership, including Game 4 between New York and Connecticut, which brought in a peak audience of 925,000 on ABC during the crowded Sunday afternoon NFL slate.

Lucky for WNBA supporters, part of that three-way MVP rivalry will continue through the Finals, as Wilson and Stewart go head-to-head with a trophy on the line. Wilson has been hot through the postseason, helping Las Vegas cruise through the playoffs by logging three consecutive 30+ point games, the first WNBA player to do so. Stewart, meanwhile, has been slower to get hot this postseason, shooting 35.6% from the field compared to her regular season 46.5%. It will be interesting to see whether her offensive efficiency picks up moving forward, as Wilson and Stewart traditionally haven’t played their best games when facing one another during the regular season.

The stakes are high for the MVP-stacked Finals, with the Liberty looking for the franchise’s first WNBA title. The last time New York advanced to the Finals was in 2002, also the same year a team won back-to-back trophies—a feat Las Vegas hopes to pull off. During that series between the Liberty and the Sparks, Hammon was donning a New York jersey. Which brings us to the next first, as this year’s Finals marks the first time two former players will serve as the two competing head coaches, with Hammon and Sandy Brondello at the front of the Aces and Liberty bench.

Already billed as a Finals unlike the WNBA has ever seen, the superteam clash is a welcome precursor to the league’s next era.