Close Menu
Let’s Fight Corruption
Sports

The best women’s basketball games and performances from 2024 … and what’s next in 2025

No Comments9 Mins Read

Caitlin Clark. A’ja Wilson. Breanna Stewart.

Scores development. Elevated attendance. Document merchandise gross sales.

It was a historic 12 months throughout ladies’s basketball with skilled and faculty video games breaking into the broader cultural zeitgeist like by no means earlier than. Earlier than turning the web page to 2025, our staff of The Athletic ladies’s basketball writers are handing out their superlatives from the 12 months that was. They spotlight a few of their favourite video games and performances, and even let you know what they’re waiting for as the brand new 12 months will get underway.

Greatest recreation

Sabreena Service provider: Sport 1 of the WNBA Finals. The drama of Minnesota’s comeback (and the fourth-quarter replay critiques) set the stage for a tense, back-and-forth 5 video games with so many large moments, highlighted by Courtney Williams’ four-point play. Regardless that the Lynx didn’t win the championship, they gave us a sequence that can stay on in our reminiscences.

Chantel Jennings: Nationwide title recreation between Iowa and South Carolina. This recreation was most memorable due to how historic it felt within the second. Sitting courtside, even because it turned clear that South Carolina would cap its undefeated season in fashion, everybody understood we had been witnessing historical past. My guess of 15 million viewers (a quantity that might’ve felt unbelievable even a number of years earlier) was nonetheless almost 4 million wanting the ladies’s title recreation viewership totals.

Ben Pickman: I agree with Sabreena right here. Whereas Sabrina Ionescu’s recreation winner in Sport 3 of the 2024 WNBA Finals makes this an in depth dialogue, the insanity that ensued in Sport 1, coupled with Williams’ heroics on the finish of regulation, raise that recreation above all others.

Greatest particular person efficiency

Pickman: With all due respect to the numerous data damaged by Clark, Wilson and Angel Reese this 12 months, Arike Ogunbowale orchestrated one of the best particular person efficiency of the 12 months. Positive, it got here within the WNBA All-Star Sport, however going up in opposition to Workforce USA, Ogunbowale set an All-Star Sport file with 34 factors, all of which got here within the second half. Her 21 factors within the third quarter had been essentially the most in 1 / 4 in All-Star Sport historical past, and the variability by which she scored was one of the best stretch of offensive basketball I noticed in 2024.

Service provider: Nyara Sabally’s third quarter in Sport 5 of the WNBA Finals. Not essentially the most prolific efficiency by any means, however her 9 factors in lower than 5 minutes — as New York busted out a beforehand unused three-big lineup — modified the sport and helped the Liberty win their first title in franchise historical past.

Jennings: Clark’s first quarter in opposition to Michigan. Barring any sort of historic meltdown, everybody knew Clark would break the Division I scoring file in opposition to Michigan in February. Nevertheless it was her unbelievable first quarter, beginning the sport 3-of-3 from the ground and capping it with a emblem 3 to interrupt the file, that felt like one thing out of a film. She ended the night time with a program-record 49 factors (breaking teammate Hannah Stuelke’s file of 48 from only a few video games earlier).

Favourite reporting second

Jennings: Gold medal recreation between Workforce USA and France. Diana Taurasi began the Olympic cycle by saying that not sufficient folks had been speaking in regards to the problem of enjoying France in France, and Workforce USA received a style of that within the gold medal recreation this summer time. The vitality and electrical energy in Bercy Area was unforgettable, and listening to the French followers sing their nationwide anthem forward of the sport gave me chills. It was nail-biter of a recreation, and for a good portion of the second half, I questioned if I used to be actually going to be writing a recreation story on how the run of eight straight gold medals for the American ladies was ending. However Workforce USA pulled out the victory as Gabby Williams’ shot that might’ve tied the sport was only a few inches wanting the 3-point line. The world’s vitality ebbed and flowed with each possession and was in contrast to something I’d ever felt.

Pickman: I do know I communicate for the three of us in saying how lucky we had been to attend so many memorable moments in ladies’s basketball in 2024. But when we’re narrowing it all the way down to only one second of our personal reporting, I’ll take breaking the information of Candace Parker’s retirement to Breanna Stewart. Parker retired on the primary day of WNBA coaching camp, and the Aces introduced the information not even three minutes earlier than Stewart’s first media scrum of the season. I keep in mind studying the discharge about Parker’s retirement time and again within the intervening minutes as a result of I used to be so shocked by its timing — and actually to make sure I wasn’t being punked. Then, I requested Stewart about it, and her response was one which I and the web will keep in mind for some time.

Service provider: Overlaying the final Pac-12 event. For the entire convention’s lifers, like Tara VanDerveer, it gave the unusual feeling of attending one’s personal funeral. It was emotional to rejoice the greatness of the convention with previous legends in attendance, particularly in a 12 months when there have been so many particular person highs for the Pac-12. It was a reminder of how our job in overlaying this sport is to inform the tales of the folks concerned, and when these folks (broadcasters, directors, households, and so forth.) are seeing their lives change in a significant means due to forces past their management, it hits you.

Greatest quote

Pickman: I’ll throw two on the market. The primary got here within the WNBA Finals after I requested Courtney Williams if she knew what it meant to be “Minnesota good.” She laughed and responded, “I ain’t by no means heard that.” Chantel is the Midwesterner on this roundtable, however I — as a New Yorker — had simply assumed it was a ceremony of passage for anybody residing within the state to know what “Minnesota good” means. However alas. On one other notice, Cheryl Miller gave a uncommon information convention forward of teaching Workforce WNBA in July’s All-Star Sport and gave a very sturdy response after I requested her in regards to the WNBA receiving a $2.2 billion TV rights contract. The road that stands out: “A two’s good, an eight can be higher,” referring to her perception the WNBA remains to be not receiving sufficient in its media rights offers.

Service provider: All the pieces Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve stated in her postgame presser after shedding Sport 5 of the WNBA Finals. From calling out the referees and saying the sport was “stolen” to subtly shading New York for needing 28 years to win one title whereas Minnesota was chasing its fifth, the total quarter-hour was uncooked emotion at its best.

Jennings: By the point coaches and gamers get to the Closing 4, there aren’t many questions that may be requested in a information convention that they haven’t heard already. However Daybreak Staley determined to modify issues up in Cleveland when she kicked off her Closing 4 presser with a extremely critical query for reporters: Is it lay down or lie down? After which, she dropped this gem: “Somebody taught me you misinform get laid, proper? Sorry. So excited to be right here!”

What we’re trying ahead to in 2025

Service provider: How do the Las Vegas Aces reply after developing wanting their expectations in 2024? If New York and Las Vegas are purported to be the nice rivals of this technology, then it’s the Aces’ flip to raise their recreation and determine as soon as once more play championship-worthy basketball for a full season. On a associated notice, the South Carolina Gamecocks misplaced their first recreation in additional than a calendar 12 months to UCLA, however they nonetheless seem poised to say their second straight title. Can they finish the eight-year repeat drought within the NCAA Event?

Jennings: The funds of ladies’s faculty hoops are going to drastically change in 2025. For starters, ladies’s faculty basketball will lastly obtain models beginning through the 2025 NCAA Event (assuming the Division I membership approves the plan in January). Additionally through the 2025-26 educational 12 months, income sharing will hit faculty sports activities. It’s an unprecedented second in NCAA historical past, and it might shift the facility steadiness in ladies’s faculty basketball. The identify, picture and likeness mannequin will change considerably because the NCAA might want to approve all NIL offers, and the “pay-to-play” NIL mannequin, as many coaches have referred to as the present construction, will fall by the wayside. Cash makes the faculty sports activities world go ’spherical, and 2025 is a 12 months by which the cash — particularly in ladies’s faculty basketball — goes to vary.

Pickman: One on-court matter: After an All-WNBA first-team season, what occurs with Clark’s growth and the Indiana Fever, extra broadly, below new coach Stephanie White? One off-court: After a 12 months of explosive development in ladies’s basketball in 2024, what is going to TV rankings, attendance, merchandise gross sales and total enterprise modifications appear like subsequent 12 months?

(Photographs of Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson: Scott Taetsch / NCAA Photographs by way of Getty Pictures, Ethan Miller / Getty Pictures)



Source link

Share.

Related Posts

Add A Comment
Leave A Reply