Here’s what you missed this WNBA offseason: More money, a healthy Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese in Atlanta and the contenders reload

There has never been an offseason as full of colossal milestones as the time between the anointing of the 2025 WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces on Oct. 10 and the first tip-off of the 2026 season on Friday.

The WNBA’s Board of Governors and the WNBA Players Association needed 160 of those 211 days, on top of the 12 months prior, to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that altered the women’s sports landscape. The long-form agreement is still being finalized, but the deal sets a $7 million salary cap (up from $1.5 million) with a $1.4M supermax and average revenue share of nearly 20% across the deal.

The first million-dollar contract was signed this offseason, a monumental feat ahead of its 30th season. In all, 31 players will earn at least seven figures this season. Four-time MVP A’ja Wilson and 2025 MVP finalists Naphessa Collier and Kelsey Mitchell will each make $1.4M.

Fever center Aliyah Boston, who was eligible for an early extension under the new EPIC provision, signed the richest total deal of the offseason at four years, $6.3 million.

The marathon March negotiations kept the season on schedule, although it squeezed offseason business into a condensed six-week window. To catch up on the furious push to tip-off, here are the most pivotal highlights from a long, exhausting offseason.

Caitlin Clark faces off against Azzi Fudd during a preseason game on April 30 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Now healthy, the expectations are high for Clark in her third season. (Photo by Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Caitlin Clark is back and healthy

It was a difficult second season for Caitlin Clark. The 2024 Rookie of the Year missed 31 regular-season games and all of the Indiana Fever’s run to the brink of the Finals while dealing with a litany of soft-tissue injuries. But now Clark is back, healthy and ready for another season of WNBA championship aspirations on a team built to go deep into the playoffs.

Fever head coach Stephanie White said she could sense a different energy from Clark ahead of the first preseason game against the Liberty. It wasn’t the first game action Clark had seen, however. She earned tournament MVP during Team USA’s gold-medal winning run at the FIBA Women’s World Cup 2026 qualifiers in March. In her international senior debut, Clark averaged 11.6 points and 6.4 assists in 21.2 minutes per game.

Clark is the MVP betting favorite and, should she stay healthy, could become the rare guard to win the award. She’s averaging 18.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 8.5 assists with a .405/.329/.887 shooting split over 53 WNBA games. The Fever re-signed Kelsey Mitchell, Sophie Cunningham and Lexie Hull; added Monique Billings; and drafted South Carolina guard Raven Johnson.

Angel Reese helms offseason movement

The initial splash of the offseason set everything off-kilter with news that the Chicago Sky traded two-time All-Star Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream. Reese’s relocation is the most notable of a free agency period in which every player off a rookie contract was available, with the exception of Lexie Brown and Kalani Brown.

The move lifted the Dream into Final contender status once Atlanta re-signed its core of Allisha Gray, Rhyne Howard, Naz Hillmon, Jordin Canada and Brionna Jones. (Jones underwent knee surgery in April; a return to play timeline is unknown.)

Most players stayed with their former teams, though there was some notable movement. Satou Sabally opted to sign with New York, where her younger sister won a WNBA championship. She’ll team up with former Oregon teammate Sabrina Ionescu as the top two picks in the 2020 WNBA Draft. Sabally’s move broke up the big three that included Alyssa Thomas and Kahleah Copper in Phoenix.

Many opted to return home, or close thereto. Nneka Ogwumike is back in Los Angeles, where she won the 2016 Finals. Veteran champion Brittney Griner signed with Connecticut ahead of their move to her hometown, Houston. And Skylar Diggins signed in Chicago.

Dallas made its major move by signing co-Defensive Player of the Year Alanna Smith and forward Jessica Sheperd, contributing to the decimation of the Lynx’s roster.

Toronto, Portland fill out inaugural rosters

After a longer-than-expected offseason, Portland and Toronto finally began to fill out their inaugural rosters with a two-team expansion draft in April.

Portland, under first-time head coach Alex Sarama, used the first pick to select Lynx and Canadian national team forward Bridget Carleton. Its picks included Emily Engstler, Maya Caldwell, Chloe Bibby, Haley Jones, Sug Sutton and Nika Mühl. Mühl sustained a second ACL injury this offseason and will not play.

The Fire signed Aces champion center Megan Gustafson and veteran journeywoman Karlie Samuelson as its main free agent signings. Only Carleton, under the core designation, is making more than $500,000. Portland drafted Spanish point guard Iyana Martín Carrión seventh overall in the collegiate draft.

Toronto selected Julie Allemand (Sparks) with its top pick, adding Nyara Sabally from New York and veteran guard Marina Mabrey from Connecticut. Sabally played a vital role in the deciding Game 5 win of the 2024 Finals with Sandy Brondello, whom the Tempo hired as head coach in early November.

The Tempo added to their tenacious backcourt by signing Brittney Sykes in free agency, as well as former Fever and Valkyries rim-runner Temi Fagbenle. In the collegiate draft, they used the No. 6 pick on UCLA national champion point guard Kiki Rice. The Tempo will play most of their games in Toronto, with home games also in Montreal and Vancouver.

Connecticut finalizes its last roster

While two franchises celebrate a beginning, another is mourning the end.

The Connecticut Sun will play one final season in Uncasville, Connecticut, before the franchise is officially sold and moved to Houston. Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta reached a deal in March to purchase the franchise from the Mohegan Sun Tribe. The deal still needs to be approved by the Board of Governors.

The franchise began in Orlando before the tribe stepped in to save the team, moving it to Connecticut and becoming the first Native American tribe to own a professional sports team. But the league passed the franchise by, and it lagged behind other franchises in player support systems. The Sun will honor its history with a final “sun down” season in the Basketball Capital of the World.

Azzi Fudd drafted No. 1 to Dallas

Azzi Fudd, the No. 1-ranked recruit in her high school class, took another top overall spot by becoming the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft last month. Fudd will join former UConn teammate Paige Buckers, last year’s No. 1 pick, in Dallas.

The duo is the latest in a long line of back-to-back No. 1 picks going to a single WNBA franchise. The most recent are Clark and Boston in Indiana, and before them, a string of three to the Aces. Fudd and Bueckers went public with their romantic relationship during Bueckers’ Rookie of the Year season. Following a question about it to Fudd that the Wings shut down at her introductory press conference, Bueckers addressed it during Wings media day last week as “nobody’s business but our own.”

The prospects’ draft order moved around consistently during the offseason, and became complicated when free agency overlapped the annual event. After Fudd, TCU’s Olivia Miles went second overall to Minnesota, Spain’s Awa Fam Thiam went third to Seattle and UCLA champion center Lauren Betts was selected fourth by Washington.

The lasting moment of the draft came in the second round when it was announced that the Valkyries had traded the rights of their No. 8 pick, LSU champion Flau’jae Johnson, to the Seattle Storm. Golden State received the Storm’s No. 16 pick, Marta Suárez. The teams made a pre-draft agreement to swap the picks, but it created an awkward draft-night debacle in the Bay.

Dynasty Las Vegas still the team to beat

The Aces sealed their dynasty status in October with a third title in four years. It was their most unlikely championship run to date, squashing any future major doubts of a squad led by head coach Becky Hammon and four-time MVP A’ja Wilson.

Las Vegas dropped back down to .500 in a 53-point loss to league-leading Minnesota on Aug. 2, barely clinging to the eighth and final playoff spot. They didn’t lose again in the regular season, and escaped full-count series against Seattle (2-1) and Indiana (3-2) before sweeping the Mercury in the league’s first seven-game Finals series.

The core of Wilson, 2022 Finals MVP Chelsea Gray and four-time All-Star Jackie Young all re-signed in Las Vegas, as did former Storm champion and super-sub Jewell Loyd.

Center Cheyenne Parker-Tyus is back after missing the majority of last season on maternity leave, and the team signed Chennedy Carter as a lethal backcourt scorer. Carter, whose WNBA career has been bumpy, set the collegiate scoring record with 34 points for Texas A&M against the 2019 Team USA roster that included Gray and Wilson.

New York bulks up — again

There’s nothing New York can’t do; the front office found a way to make the money work again in another landscape-altering free agency move. The Liberty re-signed their core of center Jonquel Jones, forward Breanna Stewart and guard Sabrina Ionescu at $1.19 million each, then added to the embarrassment of riches by adding Sabally ($815K).

Their starting lineup is filled out by Leonie Fiebich, an overtime X-Factor in the 2024 title win, while Benijah Laney-Hamilton is back from injury and likely the first off the bench. Marine Johannès, the French guard nicknamed the “Wizard,” officially re-signed last week. Chinese center Han Xu also returned to the WNBA, and specifically the Liberty, for the first time since 2023.

It allows the Liberty, playing under first-year head coach Chris DeMarco, to play a jumbo lineup of Han (6-11), Jones (6-6), Stewart (6-4) and Sabally (6-4), complemented or replaced by Laney-Hamilton (6-0), Fiebich (6-4) or Ionescu (5-11).

The betting favorites at BetMGM are the Liberty (+225), followed by the Aces (+400), Fever (+425), Dream (+600) and Lynx (+700).

Officiating is a focal point

The indelible image of the Minnesota Lynx’s 2025 season isn’t what they felt was a destined record-setting fifth Finals trophy. No, it’s head coach Cheryl Reeve earning an ejection in the semifinals and ripping into the league’s poor officiating, while MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier, after wheeling in on a scooter, made her own damning remarks.

The agitation at the play that knocked Collier out of the rest of the playoffs, the second Unrivaled season and now the first month of this season, broke open the bubbling conversation on the league’s officiating process. The level of physicality and inconsistency received rebuke from Reeve, White and Aces head coach Becky Hammon, among others, all season.

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, who took direct fire from Collier, announced a “state of the game committee” to assess the issue ahead of the Finals. At the WNBA Draft in April, she said the task force spent significant time reviewing film, evaluating calls and identifying areas for improvement that will be instituted this season.

“We certainly want to make sure that we’re putting on the best product on the court,” Engelbert said. “Obviously, it’s going to be a physical game. But you know we’ve got to draw lines, and I think you’ll see more lines being drawn around that physicality as a result of some of the insights we gleaned from the ‘State of the Game’ committee, and what I’ll call officiating subcommittee, where those were the people that were really watching the hundreds of hours of film.”

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