I genuinely think she is what the league needed. Outside of her gameplay, this year specifically she’s been on of the most intriguing players to watch. She’s funny, keeps the same demeanor and never apologizes for just being her. She’s growing on me each and everyday I see these random clips of her just being Paige. It’s a beautiful thing and I’m glad I get to experience it!

I got this from the banned site, but it is translated from a Chinese article. The actual translation is in the comment section, the short explanation someone else provided I’m sharing here in the body.

Paige trolling Angel 😂

The Liberty have signed Madison Scott to a developmental contract to replace Anneli Maley, who was called up after it was announced that Satou Sabally is out for the season. Scott was drafted 14th overall by the Wings in 2025 and competed for San Giovanni in the offseason, averaging 13.1 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 2.2 steals + blocks in EuroCup competition.

U.S. coach Lawson: WCup most challenging yet

I thought this write-up by Dan Falkenheim offered some thoughtful insight into RAPM. Full text below!

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Suppose you wanted to rank the most impactful players of the 2026 WNBA season without using box score statistics. How would you do it?

A natural place to begin is to compare how a player’s team performs when they are on the court versus when they are off of it. The idea is straightforward—the most impactful players should create the largest on-off differences (or splits)—but it is missing context. It can be improved by adjusting for the strength of who a player played with and against, which is exactly what Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) is built to do.

Yet, RAPM is still missing context in a one-year setting. At the beginning of the season, every player is a stranger, and their estimated impact from previous seasons has no bearing on their baseline for the next one. Intuitively, recent history contains information worth valuing. Take Breanna Stewart, who entered 2026 ranked third in three-year RAPM from 2023 to 2025. If you wanted to predict Stewie’s impact in 2026, knowing how she performed over the last few seasons would provide a useful starting point.

One solution, then, is to carry some of that information forward. Prior-informed RAPM does this by incorporating a small share of each player’s previous three-year baseline; in other words, it encodes a prior belief about each player’s likely impact. As it turns out, the added information helps one-year RAPM's predictive power while keeping player impact estimates grounded in current season play.

So, what does that model make of the 2026 season?

By single-season prior-informed RAPM, Valkyries guard Veronica Burton ranks as the WNBA’s most impactful player. That might be surprising, as her game isn’t loud. She doesn’t sink logo threes like Caitlin Clark, deliver soul-crushing rejections like A’ja Wilson or whip mind-bending passes like Olivia Miles. From the outside, Burton looks like an efficient two-way player on a top team. Nothing more.

Is there evidence that helps explain why prior-informed RAPM views Burton so highly, then? Start with its closest cousin: lineup-based impact. Burton appears in the first- and seventh-best lineups by defensive rating. She also has the third-best individual net rating (+13.7) and the fifth-highest net rating on-off split (+14.0) in the entire league.

Dig a little deeper, though, and Burton looks like an elite two-way player. While prior-informed RAPM doesn’t see anything beyond who was on the floor and what the scoring margin was for a given possession, box score statistics can help explain why those aggregated numbers look the way they do.

Begin with ball security and playmaking. Burton is on pace to become the third player in league history to start for an entire season and finish with an assist-to-turnover ratio above 4.0. The Valkyries commit about four fewer turnovers and generate two more assists per 100 possessions with her on the floor than with her off it. With Burton running point, the Valkyries share and take care of the basketball.

Move on to foul pressure. Burton has drawn 8.2 personal fouls per 100 possessions (10th in the WNBA, nearly on par with Kahleah Copper) and shooting fouls on 22.8% of her two-point attempts (11th). Even if she isn’t forcing her way to the rim as often as a player like Copper does, Burton still finds a way to tag her opponents with fouls and get to the line.

Then dive into efficiency and self-creation. Burton is one of 15 players leaguewide who have an effective field goal percentage of at least 50% and have made at least 45% of their field goals without an assist. To put another spin on it, Burton has maintained those numbers despite having the seventh-lowest expected field goal percentage (38.4%) among guards. She has been efficient without always being set up.

And, finally, end with defense. Golden State forces its opponents to shoot 41.7% from the floor and commit turnovers 19.6% of the time when Burton is on the court, the third- and sixth-best individual marks in the league, respectively. Burton had also surrendered the fewest points per direct drive and the second-fewest points per play as the ball handler defender on pick-and-rolls among qualified players as of mid-August, per GeniusIQ data via Nekias Duncan. Simply put: Burton is one of the three wardens of Valkatraz, alongside Gabby Williams and Kiah Stokes.

That helps explain why Burton’s impact looks the way that it does, even if prior-informed RAPM sees none of that information directly. Still, prior-informed RAPM may be overrating Burton’s impact. Work backwards: Burton, while a strong defender in her own right, plays next to two All-Defense candidates in Williams and Stokes. On offense, she has been relatively efficient but not overwhelmingly so. (Her 1.02 points per shot attempt is average for players with usage rates below 20%.) All told, Burton’s impact on a deep Valkyries team should be viewed with more uncertainty than her No. 1 ranking might suggest.

As for the remaining players in the top 10? Kaila Charles features in the league’s top defensive lineup alongside Burton. The rest are the usual suspects. Jackie Young, Wilson and Allisha Gray have the three best on-off net rating splits (+28.5, +26.3 and +17.1, respectively) in the WNBA. (Wilson pairs her lineup impact with massive box score production. She’s the MVP frontrunner for a reason.) Natasha Howard and Miles both are a part of the league’s top lineup by offensive rating, and the fourth lineup by net rating. They sit behind Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell, who have both powered the Fever to one of the best offensive seasons in league history.

That leaves Paige Bueckers. No one in the league takes on a more difficult offensive role and elevates her team quite like Bueckers: The Wings’ effective field goal percentage jumps from 47.1% when she’s off the court to 53.9% when she’s on it, the second-largest positive difference for an individual player.

Get all that? Those numbers help explain the top 10, but the more interesting cases might be the players whose previous baseline is helping (or hurting) their ranking in prior-informed RAPM. Take a player like Jacy Sheldon. She had the second-worst three-year RAPM rating from 2023 to 2025, which may have been influenced by playing for struggling teams in Dallas, Connecticut and Washington. Now playing for Chicago, Sheldon has produced a positive on-off net rating split (+4.6) for the first time in her career.

Both ordinary one-year RAPM and prior-informed RAPM agree that Sheldon has had a positive impact in 2026, but they disagree in terms of magnitude. Ordinary one-year RAPM only sees her positive possessions in ’26 and ranks her as this season’s 26th-most impactful player. That could be true, but it seems high. Prior-informed RAPM “remembers” Sheldon’s previous baseline and ranks her 61st. Still above average, but with a more moderate, informed view of her impact this year.

Sometimes, imbuing RAPM with a little memory of the past helps make it a better judge of what’s happening right now.

The height really shouldn't be a problem.

Average height according to to the heights listed on the official FIBA website:

1:CHINA-6'2"(187.25CM)

2:GERMANY-6'2"(187.17CM)

3:USA-6'1"(186.50CM)

4:NIGERIA-6'1"(185.42CM)

5:SPAIN-6'1"(184.58CM)

6:TURKIYE-6'1"(184.17CM)

7:AUSTRALIA-6'1"(184.17CM)

8:FRANCE-6'0"(183.00CM)

9:HUNGARY-5'12"(182.50CM)

10:CZECHIA-6'0"(182.00CM)

11:BELGIUM-5'12"(181.92CM)

12:ITALY-5'11"(181.25CM)

13:PUERTO RICO-5'11"(180.67CM)

14:MALI-5'11"(180.42CM)

15:JAPAN-5'10"(177.58CM)

16:KOREA-5'10"(177.17CM)

I also looked at the roster, and if you look at our 4 "bigs" (Boston, Stewart, Iriafen, Reese) they are listed as forward or power forward. So I went on to every roster and calculated the average height for other teams' forwards, power forwards and centers and this is what I got:

1:CHINA-6'6"(197.17CM)

2:HUNGARY-6'4"(193.25CM)

3:SPAIN-6'4"(192.25CM)

4:GERMANY-6'4"(191.80CM)

5:USA-6'3"(191.25CM)

6:CZECHIA-6'3"(190.25CM)

6:ITALY-6'3"(190.25CM)

8:TURKIYE-6'3"(190.00CM)

9:AUSTRALIA-6'3"(189.67CM)

10:FRANCE-6'2"(189.00CM)

10:NIGERIA-6'2"(189.00CM)

12:BELGIUM-6'2"(188.80CM)

13:PUERTORICO-6'2"(188.60CM)

14:MALI-6'1"(186.50CM)

15:JAPAN-6'1"(185.60CM)

16:KOREA-5'11"(180.75CM)

USA'S still 5th.China is obviously huge, but the size isn't an issue generally speaking. Team USA's roster is still one of the biggest. ​

For me, it's AT making that three and Kia scoring the first pre-season bucket in Tempo history. I momentarily felt patriotic for Canada.

The future -- or as Paige Bueckers quipped the "Young and Turnt" crew -- is here. And they're perhaps even younger, and being thrown into the fire even more, than anticipated. - Alexa Philippou

Happy World Cup eve! I know people watch this tournament from all over, so I built a calendar generator that you can import into your preferred calendar app (ie Google/outlook/apple) that imports the game schedule at your own local time. You can generate a calendar for the whole tournament or just the team(s) you select. Just wanted to share here in case it might be helpful

https://dubsports.io/calendar?sel=l.fiba

Each event has where to watch info for that specific game. The schedule also auto-updates as the knockout rounds get decided and teams get eliminated, so there’s nothing to re-add after the group stage. No scores anywhere either so no spoilers will come up if you watch games after they air (like I sometimes do).

It’s free, no ads, no account needed, and I make absolutely no money off of it. I’m just a software engineer who builds stuff and a women’s sports fan, and I figured this might be useful here.

Happy to answer any questions or take feedback if something looks wrong or off!

The FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup will tip off on Friday, September 4th in Berlin, and 52 players from across the WNBA’s 15 teams will lace up represent their countries.

The US has a tournament-high 12 WNBA players, trailed by Australia (8), France (8), Spain (6), Germany (4), Belgium (3), and Nigeria (2). China, Mali, Italy, Korea, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, and Czechia each have one WNBA player. Puerto Rico is the only country without a WNBA player on its national team.

Atlanta Dream - 4 players
Isobel Borlase (Australia)
Rhyne Howard (United States)
Sika Koné (Mali)
Angel Reese (United States)
Dallas Wings - 2 players
Paige Bueckers (United States)
Alanna Smith (Australia)

Connecticut Sun - 2 players
Kennedy Burke (Turkey)
Leïla Lacan (France)

Golden State Valkyries - 4 players
Janelle Salaün (France)
Milea Sowah (Australia)
Gabby Williams (France)
Cecilia Zandalasini (Italy)

Indiana Fever - 2 players
Aliyah Boston (United States)
Caitlin Clark (United States)

Las Vegas Aces - 4 players
Chelsea Gray (United States)
Stephanie Talbot (Australia)
Mai Yamamoto (Japan)
Jackie Young (United States)

Los Angeles Sparks - 1 player
Jihyun Park (Korea)

Minnesota Lynx - 5 players
Chloe Bibby (Australia)
Napheesa Collier (United States)
Antonia Delaere (Belgium)
Eliska Joklova (Czechia)
Dorka Juhász (Hungary)

New York Liberty - 8 players
Rebecca Allen (Australia)
Pauline Astier (France)
Elizabeth Balogun (Nigeria)
Raquel Carrera (Spain)
Leonie Fiebich (Germany)
Marine Johannès (France)
Breanna Stewart (United States)
Han Xu (China)

Phoenix Mercury - 3 players
Valériane Ayayi (France)
Kahleah Copper (United States)
Kyara Linskens (Belgium)

Portland Fire - 6 players
Freida Bühner (Germany)
Megan DiLeo (Spain)
Luisa Geiselsöder (Germany)
Carla Leite (France)
Iyana Martín (Spain)
Amy Okonkwo (Nigeria)

Seattle Storm - 4 players
Awa Fam (Spain)
Ezi Magbegor (Australia)
Dominique Malonga (France)
Jade Melbourne (Australia)

Toronto Tempo - 3 players
Julie Allemand (Belgium)
Maria Condé (Spain)
Nyara Sabally (Germany)

Washington Mystics - 3 players
Sonia Citron (United States)
Kiki Iriafen (United States)
Alicia Floréz (Spain)

One note: Team USA initially had A’ja Wilson (Las Vegas Aces) and Kelsey Plum (Phoenix Mercury) on their roster, but both players bowed out due to injury. They have been replaced by the Mystics’ Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen.

Dallas Wings center Li Yueru was supposed to be on the Chinese national team, but posted on Instagram on Wednesday that her passport had been lost in the mail, and that she would not be participating.

The Chicago Sky are the only team in the WNBA without any players participating in the World Cup.

I haven’t had time to deep dive into how to watch the World Cup games. Is everyone just getting an HBO Max subscription to watch or is there other ways ? Please help this very busy wnba super fan 🙏

I’d say they were about 92% accurate lmao

She led the Valkyries to a 10-2 record in August. The Valkyries ended the month with a 4-game win streak including wins over the Lynx and Liberty. And the Valkyries have continued to have the best defense in the league during this month

Welcome to Throwback Thursday!

The WNBA has been built on the shoulders of giants, from Cheryl Miller, the 84 and 96 Olympic Squads, and the early years of the WNBA

Post throwback uniforms, outfits, stats, players, anything relevant to the history of women’s basketball/the league!

Olivia Miles takes home August Rookie of the Month honors, her fourth of the season!

STATS: 20.6 PPG | 4.3 RPG | 6.5 APG

They got Stewie and Chelsea shaking their booties?! Wow! Did not expect that!

Gouache painting.

Hope I'm not being annoying by reposting in the WNBA subs. I just hope you all enjoy.

Yes it's been a rough year but I'm so proud of our team, and our stars. Can't wait to see what the future holds. I have never followed a team from the beginning and it is so addicting.

I didn't know what to do for the background so I winged it.