Welcome back to WNBA Notes, your journey into trends and analysis around the league. Today we’re looking at the 2026 obituaries, seeing where the non-playoff teams go from here and assessing whether they’re worth having faith in.
Tankathon Check-in
The regular season is over! Let’s see where our teams are right now in the lottery standings and where they project to end up:
| Team: | Odds of No. 1 draft pick*: | Odds of top-two draft pick*: |
| Connecticut | 29.5% | 55.1% |
| Toronto | 29.5% | 55.1% |
| Washington (via Chicago) | 16.0% | 34.0% |
| Seattle | 10.5% | 23.1% |
| Portland | 7.0% | 15.7% |
| Los Angeles | 4.5% | 10.2% |
| Also Los Angeles (via Phoenix) | 3.0% | 6.9% |
Chicago Sky
Bright spots:
- Finding an All-Rookie season from Sydney Taylor out of the Polish league
- The Rickea Jackson trade was a win for four games
Concerns:
- Marquee free agent point guard addition missed half the season with a vague knee injury
- Still the worst front office in the league by some margin
- Still one of the least attractive destinations for free agents
- Do not own their own first-round pick until 2029
- No rotation-caliber players under 25
Yeah, I got nothing. Given the track record, there’s no path to contention here while Jeff Pagliacca is at the helm, and even if ownership does the right thing tomorrow, there’s still little hope of even righting the ship until 2030 given the lack of draft picks, barring some stars bucking years-long trends by electing to go to the Sky.
The only saving grace is that the lowest score I can give is a half-star and not zero.
Hope Rating: ½ ☆☆☆☆
Connecticut Sun
Bright spots:
- About to become a much better free agency destination
- Extra first-round pick in a class with decent depth
Concerns:
- The involvement of Tilman Fertitta
- Almost all the young players did not improve
- Shed an as-of-now unknown number of points in lottery odds after losing the DooDoo For JuJu game Thursday night
This is officially the last article I’m writing in which it’s Connecticut and not Houston. I will not remember these last couple of teams fondly; that was some painful basketball. Did you know Saniya Rivers just had the worst offensive season in the League Pass era?
As I wrote last year, discounting the Wubble season, after each of this franchise’s previous skids, it added: Tina Charles and Kara Lawson; Jonquel Jones; and now, hopefully JuJu Watkins.
Because if not, things are pretty bleak. Leïla Lacan is pretty clearly a plus starter despite by far the worst offensive context in the league, and Aaliyah Edwards is still worth rotation minutes, but every other player under 25 on this roster might be too poor at putting the ball in the hoop to be playable, and the Diamond Miller renaissance has failed for the third time.
On the other hand, you could really talk me into a Lacan-Rivers-Watkins starting backcourt managing to do enough to get the combination of Olivia Nelson-Ododa and whoever wants to move to Houston and start at power forward to the No. 8 seed.
The nice thing about taking a ton of chances on players like Rivers, Edwards, the now-Tempo Aneesah Morrow, Nell Angloma and Gianna Kneepkens is that even if they’re all very unlikely to become a starting-caliber player on a playoff team, collectively the odds aren’t bad that one of them pops. Although it is still looking pretty unlikely, supplanting that in free agency is about to get way easier than it used to be.
Hope Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
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Los Angeles Sparks
Bright spots:
- Probably getting a coaching upgrade this winter
- Two likely late lottery picks in a class with a strong middle
- Total odds that either Sparks pick ends up No. 1 is 7.5%*, and the odds that at least one pick jumps into the top two are 15.5%*.
Concerns:
- There’s no way Cameron Brink is going to be good on this team
- Two of the worst contracts in the league (Dearica Hamby and Ariel Atkins) for two more years
Cameron Brink is a lot like a Kristi Toliver in 2009, or a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2010s, or Courtney Williams in 2016 or Wyatt Langford right now: probably going to make their next team look really smart for acquiring them, but in the meantime absolutely certain to do nothing great in this situation. I’d say somebody should probably be fired to preemptively fix that, but general manager Raegan Pebley was fired in July, with Lynne Roberts following her today.
The bigger issue for the Sparks is that they’re locked into much of the roster Pebley built, and it doesn’t align to any particular competitive window. Dearica Hamby is still tough to build around as an outstanding play-finisher who hasn’t held up defensively in years; Rae Burrell is also purely a play-finisher; Monique Akoa Makani is a complementary piece; and Erica Wheeler is guaranteed starting-level money for backup-level play.
Getting the Mercury first and Akoa Makani for Kelsey Plum was a nice piece of business, but by the time the two upcoming first-rounders are entering their prime, Hamby and Wheeler will likely be, or soon to be, retired, and Burrell and Akoa Makani will both have hit free agency deals.
If I thought the veteran deals were moveable, I’d say Los Angeles is positioned more than anyone for a hard sell and rebuild.
Hope Rating: ⭐⭐☆☆☆
Phoenix Mercury
Bright spots:
- Will probably have what could be the best top three in the league
Concerns:
- Alyssa Thomas’ peak has finally ended
- No first-round pick
The Mercury took a lot of swings on their roster; most of them whiffed, and both Alyssa Thomas and Sami Whitcomb might be too far past their primes in a way that tangibly lowers the team’s ceiling. So that’s not a great start here.
On the bright side, Kahleah Copper firmly turned around her abysmal start, and Noémie Brochant and Natasha Mack are still cost-controlled pieces that could play big minutes on a contender. Assuming Phoenix re-signs Kelsey Plum, there’s still some money to throw at the free agent market to improve on what was a dreadful bench this year. Given how much this roster is leveraged toward three players in their 30s, and the difficulty of finding the right frontcourt partner for Thomas, I’d expect at least the Mercury’s 2028 first-round pick to be shopped, if not their 2029 pick as well.
The path to contention here is pretty straightforward, even if it banks on no one suddenly entering the decline phase and nailing at least a couple of offseason acquisitions.
Hope Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ ☆
Portland Fire
Bright spots:
- Carla Leite is awesome
- One of the best coaches in the league
- Found or developed a handful of good complementary pieces
Concerns:
- Almost everyone turns the ball over way too much
The approach of using the end of the roster on a middling team to rotate through interesting role players that Connecticut and Phoenix also tried actually worked incredibly well here.
At the top of the roster, Carla Leite can be an offensive engine, Bridget Carleton can add usage without losing efficiency, adjusting Emily Engstler’s shooting form makes her a strong complementary frontcourt piece, Sarah Ashlee Barker — assuming she doesn’t lose more than expected to the ACL tear — is a high-leverage scorer, and Megan DiLeo can hold up in bigger minutes as a great play-finisher off the PnR. Frieda Bühner could join that list if her 3-point shooting holds up in a larger sample.
Engstler, Barker, DiLeo and Bühner turn the ball over too much for the limited playmaking ability they’ve demonstrated in this system, and more importantly, Engstler is a free agent. That’s probably not a huge concern, because what else is Portland going to do with its cap space, but it’s a sign this franchise is limited in how quickly it can build to contention, barring a lottery miracle.
The early returns are encouraging for Alex Sarama’s ability to make demonstrable gains in player development, and a full offseason should only help shore up that foundation as the Fire move toward a competitive window. Being able to develop quality role players also provides a solid base for possible future trades for stars if they don’t come via the draft or free agency, another area where their unique payroll flexibility can shine.
Hope Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
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Seattle Storm
Bright spots:
- Best young frontcourt duo in the league
- Two-game head start on Suffering For Sarah (Strong)
Concerns:
- Ezi Magbegor will have missed most of 2025 and 2026 to right leg injuries
- Can Dominique Malonga be less addicted to midrange fadeaways?
- If Seattle doesn’t win one of the next two lotteries, where is the difference-making star coming from?
- Jordan Horston still can’t shoot
Between Dominique Malonga and Awa Fam, Seattle has a strong chance of joining Washington as the only teams with multiple rookie-scale All-Stars. That’s a better starting point than any other team here short of Phoenix.
It’s cliché to say that how the franchise builds around them is a tougher, crucial step, but it’s true. The Storm still need high-level lead guard play, and that’s unlikely to come through this draft unless they can jump into the top two. If adding that presence, which would scale down Flau’jae Johnson’s role, allows Johnson to improve her issues with shot selection and tunnel vision, that gives Seattle an extremely strong piece to pair with the stars for the future.
That assumption is also predicated upon Malonga developing her post game beyond spamming turnaround fadeaways, which has been an issue for a couple of years now, and Fam’s interior scoring game rounding out. But thanks to the Storm entering 2027 with the best lottery record, getting Sarah Strong — or JuJu Watkins, if she elects to use her fifth year — might negate any of those concerns.
Hope Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Toronto Tempo
Bright spots:
- The accidental tank job actually worked; won the DooDoo For JuJu game
- Remember when the Tempo were trying to trade this pick for a rotation big? Close call
- Marina Mabrey and Kiki Rice
Concerns:
- How many WNBA-caliber players are actually on this roster? How many of them are going to be on the first Toronto contender?
Like most teams on this list, the Tempo churned through a lot of players this year. What did they learn? Marina Mabrey can be a 1A-level scorer, Laura Juškaitė is a W-level player but maybe not a playoff rotation player, and Kiki Rice is as much a draft-day steal as we thought. They also discovered a bunch of players weren’t W-level — which, to be clear, is an approach I admire, even though it did not work out for most of the 20 players who saw the floor for Toronto.
As long as the Tempo stick in the top three after the lottery, the lineup of Rice-Mabrey-Watkins/Madison Booker/Mikaylah Williams-Juškaitė-Whoever is going to be incredibly fun. That’s not a winning formula, at least not yet, but there are worse places to be starting from. Just go back and read the Chicago or Los Angeles sections!
Hope Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ ☆
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