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The WNBA’s 30th season tips off on Friday night. That milestone alone would be cause for celebration, but the blossoming league and its players have plenty more to be pleased about. A new labour deal is in place, superstar Caitlin Clark is healthy again, and two more expansion teams are set to begin play — including Canada’s first WNBA franchise, the Toronto Tempo.
Here’s a quick catchup on some key storylines around the league, including some Canadian angles.
Business is booming.
After months of contentious labour negotiations that threatened to delay the start of the season, the WNBA and its players finally agreed to a seven-year collective bargaining agreement in March that commissioner Cathy Engelbert called “transformative.” The new deal raised the salary cap to $7 million US, a five-fold increase from last year, and top players can earn more than $1 million a year for the first time. The “supermax” salary is now $1.4M, the minimum is a healthy $270,000-$300,000 (depending on service time) and the average is expected to approach $600K. Not bad for a league that paid Clark a mere $76,535 in her rookie year in 2024.
WNBA owners are now willing to shell out a lot more in salaries because, after many lean years, their teams have exploded in value. According to one published estimate, the average valuation has more than tripled in just two years, to $427M, and the Golden State Valkyries are now pegged at around $1 billion after attracting more than 18,000 fans per game in their debut season.
Caitlin Clark is back.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the WNBA really took off right around the time the most popular player in the history of women’s college basketball came into the league. After being drafted first overall in 2024, Clark packed arenas around the league en route to winning the Rookie of the Year award with the Indiana Fever. But her 2025 season was ruined by a series of injuries that limited her to just 13 of Indy’s 44 regular-season games, and she missed the playoffs entirely.
The sixth-seeded Fever went on a surprising run without Clark, upsetting No. 3 Atlanta in round 1 before nearly taking out mighty Las Vegas, losing to the eventual champion Aces in overtime in Game 5 of their best-of-five semifinal series. If the most electrifying shooter in women’s basketball can stay healthy this year, the Fever could go all the way.
The title race looks wide open.
Clark’s Fever are among the top contenders in a field that has no clear favourite.
The New York Liberty, who won the championship in 2024 and feature the formidable trio of Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu, are No. 1 in the betting markets. But their odds are listed at 2-to-1 or higher in most places, suggesting it’s much more likely they don’t pull it off.
Las Vegas will try for its fourth title in five years. The defending champion Aces are led by superstar centre A’ja Wilson, who won the Finals MVP award for the second time and captured her fourth regular-season MVP and third Defensive Player of the Year award last year. She led the league in average points (23.4) and blocks (2.3) while placing second in rebounds (10.2).
Other teams in the title mix include the Minnesota Lynx, who will be without MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier until at least next month as she recovers from an ankle injury, and the Atlanta Dream, who acquired Angel Reese (Clark’s old college rival and the WNBA’s top rebounder) in a trade with Chicago.
Dallas might not be quite ready to contend after finishing second-last in the league in 2024 and dead last in 2025, but the Wings are certainly a team to watch. They feature an MVP-calibre star in Paige Bueckers, who won Rookie of the Year last season, and they just drafted UConn star Azzi Fudd No. 1 overall. Bueckers and Fudd played in the same backcourt together at UConn and also happen to be in a romantic relationship together, so their chemistry could be off the charts (assuming all is well off the court).
Canada finally has a team.
Three decades after the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies joined the NBA, the WNBA is reaching into Canada with the Toronto Tempo, one of two new expansion teams along with the Portland Fire. This gives the league 15 franchises, with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia set to follow over the next few years.
The Tempo play their first regular-season game on Friday night at home against Washington. They’re owned by Canadian billionaire Larry Tanenbaum’s company and coached by Australian Sandy Brondello, who has guided two teams to WNBA titles, including New York in 2024. Their top players are veteran guards Marina Mabrey (14.4 points per game last season for Connecticut) and Brittney Sykes (14.1 for Washington and Seattle) and rookie guard Kiki Rice, picked sixth overall in the draft after helping UCLA win the NCAA title.
Toronto also features a high-profile Canadian player in veteran guard Kia Nurse. The longtime national-team standout, who hails from nearby Hamilton, Ont., and works in television as a basketball analyst for TSN, averaged 7.2 points last year for Chicago. The Tempo are her sixth WNBA team since joining the league with New York in 2018.
Other Canadians in the WNBA include forwards Bridget Carleton of Portland (the first pick in the expansion draft after averaging 6.5 points for Minnesota last year), Aaliyah Edwards of Connecticut (5.4 points last year) and Laeticia Amihere of Golden State (5.4 points as well). Rookie guard Cassandre Prosper was drafted in the second round by Washington after averaging 13.6 points in her final college season with Notre Dame.
For more on the Tempo, read this story by CBC Sports contributor Myles Dichter on the fiery Mabrey and Toronto’s expectations for year 1, and this piece by Shireen Ahmed on what the Tempo mean to the growth of women’s sports in Canada.
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