The confetti has barely landed from the historic WNBA season that saw the Las Vegas Aces run to a second-straight championship, and already the attention turns to the college game, which is stacked with potential WNBA stars.
Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers, Cameron Brink and other stars of women’s college basketball are all on the verge of taking that leap into the professional ranks, with one huge variable in play — where will the ping-pong balls bounce?
The 2023 WNBA Draft Lottery on Dec. 10 is shaping up to be one of the most important in league history, especially with expansion also on the horizon.
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Situation and fit will play a major role in whether stars like Clark, Bueckers, Reese, Brink and others forfeit their eligibility and move on to the WNBA next season.
The way the WNBA Draft Lottery works is a little different than in the NBA. In the WNBA, lottery odds are determined by the previous two regular season records factored in (not just the previous season).
That means the Indiana Fever (44.2%) have the best lottery odds of the four teams in contention for the No. 1 overall pick.
Behind them in the odds are the Phoenix Mercury (27.6%), Los Angeles Sparks (17.8%) and Seattle Storm (10.4%).
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All four of these teams present a quality runway for a young star to build on. Some are potentially championship contenders with the right moves and others have elite young talent just waiting for a leader to take the keys of the franchise and push the pedal to the floor.
The case for Indiana is simple and clean: it already has Aliyah Boston and NaLyssa Smith. Add in an elite playmaker like Clark or Bueckers and this team could be in the playoffs immediately.
No other team in the lottery offers the opportunity to play with the No. 1 pick from last year’s draft and the No. 2 pick from two drafts ago.
This would give Indiana the building blocks of something similar to what Las Vegas just did with multiple high draft picks developing into an unstoppable juggernaut. With the highest lottery odds, this is the most likely situation for the next top pick.
Phoenix offers the most ready-made championship roster of the lottery teams. Sure, Diana Taurasi is aging, but how fun would it be to see her age alongside the next potential G.O.A.T. of the game?
Brittney Griner alongside Taurasi, Brianna Turner, Sophie Cunningham and a rookie phenom? That is a championship-caliber team immediately.
Los Angeles presents a similar case to Phoenix with former WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike and a pretty malleable roster around her. They are probably not as good as Phoenix or as young as Indiana, but they offer one thing those franchises cannot – the allure of Los Angeles. The potential for opportunities on and off the court is just different in Los Angeles compared to Indiana, Phoenix or Seattle.
Playing in the shadows of Lisa Leslie, Candace Parker and alongside Ogwumike as a potential future fourth MVP for the franchise would be an ideal way for a top pick to break into the league.
The team with the lowest odds is Seattle, which went from the top of the league to the bottom overnight when Breanna Stewart left and Sue Bird retired before the 2023 season.
Seattle is built around an elite scorer in Jewell Loyd, who if paired with another dynamic playmaker could create another women’s basketball boom in the city. As Las Vegas showed this season and last; multiple elite perimeter playmakers is a luxury worth having.
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The other variable in whether or not these stars decide to make the jump to the WNBA this season — or opt to wait until next — is the impending league expansion.
Golden State has already been announced as a franchise that will begin in 2025, and a second is very likely on the way. A Portland franchise hit a hiccup recently, with plenty of other viable cities for the league to expand into if that ultimately does not work out.
What are the rules with any and all expansion franchises heading into the 2025 WNBA Draft?
Will they automatically get the top two picks, setting the stage for someone like Clark to become the face of Golden State basketball for the WNBA?
Or will they be given odds like the other bottom teams in the league, setting up one of these star players to land with an existing franchise that is less desirable?
These uncertainties of the impending expansion are potentially the biggest variables in what these elite basketball players – and potential faces of the game — decide to do for this year’s draft.
Is the opportunity to be the first face of a franchise more appealing than playing with Boston and Smith in Indiana? Or is competing for a championship or even joining franchises in cities with more lore a bigger draw?
We will see.
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Las Vegas might be an outlier with its core four stars, with three of them arriving via the draft, but let’s not forget that this came after years of struggles, losing and adversity.
It all started in San Antonio — before the franchise moved to Las Vegas — when it selected Kelsey Plum No. 1 overall. Then came two more No. 1 picks in A’ja Wilson (2018) and Jackie Young (2019).
It may all seem easy in retrospect, but building a championship contender is not as easy as “get the No. 1 pick three years in a row.” What the Aces managed to do is nail each pick with the clear best player two of the three times while getting an All-Star with the other.
That is, however, a path. It is a path that Indiana provides right now if it wins the lottery.
So when the ping-pong balls fly, the team that wins the WNBA Draft Lottery could be in a position to draft a future face of the franchise. The teams drafting second, third and fourth could as well.
We could also see that the WNBA’s expansion – and the corresponding expansion rules — have a major impact on what the stars of college decide to do with their remaining years of eligibility.
Women’s college basketball and the WNBA are a great place with talent now and going forward, and things are only going to get more interesting during the WNBA Draft Lottery on Dec. 10.
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