Welcome to Basketball Insider, powered by The BIG EAST Conference. The legend herself, Pat Summitt, built her reputation and dynasty at Tennessee on the principle of defense over offense. If anything, the lion’s share of WNBA teams, the most successful teams, followed this principle to glory as well.
Basketball Insider
But as you’ve probably noticed, the balance of offense and defense has shifted fairly dramatically here in the 30th WNBA season. Scoring is up dramatically in 2026, a three-year trend accelerated by shifting points of emphasis in officiating, which was universally acknowledged by the 18 players, coaches and front office executives I spoke with about this.
The change is stark. The league’s defensive rating entering Wednesday night’s games stood at 109.5. That is, by far, the highest average in WNBA history, more than four points above 2025’s 105.4 points per 100 possessions, itself one of the highest offensive levels the league had ever seen.
The conversation about what other elements are driving this change is a fascinating one. I had execs point out everything from the emerging skill levels of playmaking guards to the expanding range of bigs and the seemingly endless supply of versatile wings. Teams aren’t necessarily filled with players who make more shots from particular areas, others pointed out, but are working within offenses designed to maximize the most efficient spots on the floor. The league’s offenses are getting more powerful and scores are jumping dramatically, aided by additional freedom of movement provided by officiating, .
But what I’ve continued to wonder as we’ve seen the league evolve is less about these trends and more about what is now required of the team who will win the 2026 championship. A pair of contenders throw this question into especially sharp relief.
Typically, there is a correlation between net rating and title-winning teams, much of it driven by a team’s defensive prowess. Most of the time, you’ll find the WNBA champion in the top 3 or 4 teams by regular season defensive efficiency. Occasionally, a team will find its defensive identity late in the season, such as the 2025 Las Vegas Aces, who clamped down on the opposition dramatically during their season-ending 16-game winning streak, before carrying it into the playoffs. Their overall defensive rating in 2025? Eighth in the league. Over the final 15 games of the regular season? Second.
But for those just joining us in the second half of 2025, that may have been a surprise. For those of us who saw the Aces win a title in 2023 with the best defensive rating in the league, similar personnel and Becky Hammon coaching, nothing seemed amiss.
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
As Mike Thibault, head coach of the 2019 Washington Mystics that were middle of the pack defensively before elevating in the final part of the season and then again in the playoffs, explained to me: “Be playing your best when it counts is the most important thing. Vegas and us had both been good defensive teams in the past and had players that knew what that should look like.”
And even the 2019 Mystics, overall, rated above average in defensive rating, checking in at 100.3 in a league defensive rating environment of 100.9. The 2021 Sky, famous for their mediocre regular season and playoff heroics, finished with a defensive rating of 101.3 in a 102.4 defensive rating environment. League average defense, typically, is the minimum level for ticket to entry for champions, as is finishing in the top half of overall defensive efficiency.
Which brings us to a pair of 2026 contenders who faced off over the weekend: the Indiana Fever and the New York Liberty.
Neither team can claim to be excelling defensively so far in 2026, and neither one even tries to say otherwise. The league defensive rating is 109.5, as mentioned — New York checks in at 110.0, ninth of the league’s 15 teams. Indiana? 110.7, good for eleventh overall, just behind the 7-31 Seattle Storm.
But both teams also clinched playoff berths this week, and are considered among the contenders in the most wide-open WNBA playoffs anyone I talked to can remember.
Offense is not a concern for either of these teams. New York’s offensive rating ranks third in the league, at 113.9. To level set: the only two times that wouldn’t have led the WNBA in offensive rating would have been 2023 (Aces, 114.8) and 2019 (Mystics, 115.9).
But in 2026, New York trails Minnesota, also at 115.9, and Indiana, which is well on its way to setting the all-time regular season record for offensive efficiency, at 117.6. So I wondered: how good do these two contenders believe they need to perform defensively to win it all? We asked both Liberty head coach Chris DeMarco and Fever head coach Stephanie White.
“We’re not really looking at rankings in that sense,” DeMarco told reporters on Wednesday at Liberty practice. “…We’ve got to win, and the biggest thing is winning. And defensively, we’ve got to continue to make strides and make sure we understand going forward, especially as a playoffs approach, how we’re going to play defensively and have a comfort comfort zone with how we’re doing it, based on who’s in the game with each other, are we switching? Are we going to pursue and pick and roll? Are we going to be a drop and pick and roll? We can play up. We have a lot of things in our toolbox.”
Rep The IX Sports at your next game!
Shop the logo collection or special “Women’s Sports are Front Page News” collection now on Shopify.
White drilled down less into tactics and more into benchmarks beyond the top line of defensive rating, pointing out elements like field goal percentage defense, defensive rebounding percentage, and the large gap in performance by the Fever between wins and losses in those areas.
“I think we’ve just got to be middle of the pack for sure because we do have a unique ability to score at a high rate,” White told me Saturday night. “You know, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had a team that could score like like this.”
She hasn’t. Because there’s never been a team who has scored like the 2026 Indiana Fever. (Although, adjusting for league average, the 2019 Mystics were even better — what an absurdly great team that was!)
But a league that is already adjusting how it values offense and defense in relative terms may treat offseason team-building quite differently if Indiana prevails, rather than, say, Golden State, Minnesota or Atlanta, each of whom enters Wednesday’s games at least four points better than league average defensively.
Even New York, should the Liberty figure things out and win it all, feels like a similar story to Thibault’s definition of figuring it out late and drawing on past success. The Liberty were third in defensive rating in 2024, and the return of Leo Fiebich paid immediate dividends on Saturday night.
To be clear, Indiana isn’t giving up on defending and going all-in on simply outscoring opponents. Lexie Hull, one of their few players with a positive defensive net rating, told me Saturday night that she takes the team’s defensive performance “personally because I know that in that starting group, that’s my role out there is to be an anchor on the defensive side.”
Kelsey Mitchell added, “I do think our defense has to be better. I think if we put ourselves in a position to at least be a B-minus, I think that’s a good position to really stay in that top hunt. I think that’s important as down in the stretch of the season happens.”
When I told White what Mitchell had said, she smiled and replied, “You know, I’d love to have a B. But we’ll see.”
Jackie Powell contributed reporting to this story.
This week in women’s basketball
No one can guard Olivia Miles.
Terrific Tia Reid on LaToya Thomas.
Maitreyi Anantharaman with some important context on the Toronto Tempo.
I joined NBC Sports to discuss Sophie Cunningham and Enes Kanter Freedom.
And Talking Points Memo provides needed context on how we arrived here.
Did you know Cheryl Reeve is from South Jersey? It’s true!
Oh, and Olivia Miles is from Central Jersey. This may come up again!
“Becoming Caitlin Clark“ is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
Five at The IX: New York Liberty talk win over Indiana Fever
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The IX Sports. The IX Sports’ editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
Soccer: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer
Tennis: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer
Basketball: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports
Softball: Maren Angus-Coombs, @Maren-Angus, The IX Sports
Golf: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports
Hockey: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden
Gymnastics: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer
