1. Lottery standings take into account results from the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Strength of schedule data is from\u00a0Massey<\/a>. Tune in to Locked On Women\u2019s Basketball<\/strong><\/p>\n Here at The Next, in addition to the 24\/7\/365 written content our staff provides, we also host the daily Locked On Women\u2019s Basketball<\/a> podcast. Join us Monday through Saturday each week as we discuss all things WNBA, collegiate basketball, basketball history and much more. Listen wherever you find podcasts or watch on YouTube.<\/p>\n Atlanta Dream<\/p>\n Te-Hina Paopao<\/a> is well on her way to being one of the greatest shooters of all time. Or at least being statistically recognized alongside the all-time great shooters.<\/p>\n Paopao last week became the 10th true rookie to make 14 threes in a four-game span, per Sports Reference<\/a>, and did so on just 19 attempts \u2014 a 73.7% mark, by far the highest of anyone on that list. She is shooting 17-for-26 on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers on the season per Synergy<\/a>, good for a 65.4% mark. That is not only the highest mark in the league, but the next-closest player with as many attempts is Kennedy Burke<\/a>, 12.5 percentage points lower.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Connecticut Sun<\/p>\n Jacy Sheldon<\/a> is averaging over her last eight games: 10.6 points on 57.4\/51.6\/100 shooting splits (FG%\/3P%\/FT%) \u2014 a 74.5% true-shooting \u2014 1.9 assists against 1.0 turnover, 1.3 steals in 26.1 minutes.<\/p>\n The names of the other 30 players who have had such a strong offensive streak (double-digit scoring, incredible efficiency, more assists than turnovers), per Across The Timeline<\/a>, are pretty notable: With only a couple of exceptions, all are or were plus offensive players for several years.<\/p>\n Is Sheldon at that point yet? Eh, probably not. Even for how good she\u2019s been during this heater, she\u2019s only sixth in shots for what is, per Her Hoop Stats<\/a>, one of the worst teams in league history. She\u2019s not good right now at forcing the issue off the ball and creating openings if they don\u2019t present themselves.<\/p>\n Your business can reach over 3 million women\u2019s sports fans every single month!<\/strong><\/p>\n Here at The Next<\/a> and The IX<\/a>, our audience is a collection of the smartest, most passionate women\u2019s sports fans in the world. If your business has a mission to serve these fans, reach out to our team at editors@thenexthoops.com<\/a> to discuss ways to work together.<\/p>\n That being said, there have been legitimate steps forward for Sheldon. She is being far more decisive off the catch when she does get the ball, with a more efficient power transfer in her spot-up 3-point form and a stronger drive to get downhill (pun intended). She\u2019s finishing at a rate above 90% at the rim, per Synergy<\/a>, after barely sneaking above 50% last year. Defensively, she has been much smoother chasing over screens, and has looked more comfortable pressuring the ball and managing physicality both at the point of attack and going downhill.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Given her game at Ohio State, it\u2019s probably not a bad bet to think those process improvements for Sheldon could continue to stick even after the shot comes back to Earth. Being so low-usage during such a streak isn\u2019t encouraging for her ceiling, but there\u2019s still room to slot in as the fourth- or fifth-best offensive player on a good offense.<\/p>\n Phoenix Mercury<\/p>\n The Mercury are 12-4, now second in the WNBA after beating a Liberty team that was missing Jonquel Jones<\/a> and Leonie Fiebich<\/a>. Their Pythagorean win-loss record, also known as their \u201csecond-order win-loss\u201d or on Basketball Reference their \u201cexpected win-loss,\u201d is 10-6. That is essentially based on their point differential, though I won\u2019t get into math here. The important point is that Pythagorean record is a stronger predictor of future results than standard win-loss.<\/p>\n The Mercury are 12-4, now second in the WNBA after beating a Liberty team that was missing Jonquel Jones<\/a> and Leonie Fiebich<\/a>. Their Pythagorean win-loss record, also referred to as \u201cexpected win-loss\u201d or \u201csecond-order win-loss\u201d, is 10-6. I won\u2019t get into the math<\/a> here, but the important point is that Pythagorean record leverages points scored and points allowed to output a stronger predictor of future results than standard win-loss.<\/p>\n Only a couple of other teams have outperformed their Pythagorean records by even one game \u2014 Indiana and Dallas have actually underperformed by multiple games. So, by a generally handy-if-surface-level metric, Phoenix is overperforming.<\/p>\n But that shouldn\u2019t be taken as wholly predictive either. The Mercury\u2019s net rating is over 5.5 points shy of New York\u2019s, but their net rating in games Alyssa Thomas<\/a> has played is 10.7, which translates fairly close to their actual win-loss. It\u2019s also in the same zip code, but still not the same neighborhood, as the Liberty. Regardless, those two head-to-head wins are banked and may matter for playoff seeding.<\/p>\n Save 30% when you order \u201cBecoming Caitlin Clark\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Howard Megdal\u2019s newest book is here! \u201cBecoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar\u201d captures both the historic nature of Clark\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30<\/strong> at checkout.<\/p>\n Washington Mystics<\/p>\n Shakira Austin<\/a> over her last seven games: 16.1 points on 51.7\/0.0\/74.2 \u2014 56.1% true-shooting \u2014 8.4 rebounds (2.6 offensive), 1.9 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.3 blocks in 25.8 minutes.<\/p>\n Austin had one of the more impressive rookie seasons in recent WNBA history in 2022 before showing outlier offensive development in early 2023<\/a>. The way her game was going, the sky was the limit. Then she suffered a hip strain and missed 16 games, came back for six games, and got shut down again for the rest of that season. She had surgery that offseason to repair a torn hip labrum, playing the first six games in 2024 before reaggravating the injury and missing 19 games. She came back for another six games only to lose the rest of the season to a left lateral ankle sprain.<\/p>\n Serious hip injuries take time to come all the way back from in basketball \u2014 just ask Sylvia Fowles<\/a> or Just\u0117 Jocyt\u0117<\/a>. As our Mystics beat Jenn Hatfield wrote last weekend<\/a>, the team brought Austin along quite slowly and deliberately early this season, and it\u2019s paid off both on the stat sheet and in her process, which, as she described, has slowed down quite smoothly. This has culminated in her averaging 20 points, 9.5 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.5 steals over her last four games, against the likes of Brittney Griner<\/a>, Brionna Jones<\/a>, Alanna Smith<\/a> and A\u2019ja Wilson<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Austin can stay healthy, which is far from a given, this may be a continuation of the leap that was cut short two years ago.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The Next. The Next\u2019s editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tankathon Check-in To be clear, no one in the WNBA is currently tanking on purpose (at least, the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1503,2472,16093,1502,12795,62,11583,67,132,68,1514,232,8201],"class_list":{"0":"post-22217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-atlanta-dream","9":"tag-connecticut-sun","10":"tag-jacy-sheldon","11":"tag-phoenix-mercury","12":"tag-shakira-austin","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-te-hina-paopao","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-washington-mystics","19":"tag-wnba","20":"tag-wnba-notes"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
2. Minnesota owns Chicago\u2019s pick
3. Chicago owns the rights to Connecticut\u2019s pick if the Sun finish worse than the Mercury
4. Seattle owns Los Angeles\u2019 pick<\/p>\n![\"Locked](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1751127369_896_locked-on-wbb-ad.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1751127369_409_Untitled-design-13.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n