Source: https://bsky.app/profile/flybyknite.bsky.social/post/3mpweazwlac26

Update: Russo confirms on Threads that Laura Ziegler was released.

On the positive side, it turns out the league CAN schedule four games on the same day without overlapping. Also, I really thought the Starzz were back for a minute. (Source here.)

Los Angeles took her at No. 20 overall (second round) in the 2026 draft after she led Division I in scoring at Florida State, averaging 25.4 points per game as a junior.

She spent her final college season at South Carolina, where her scoring dropped to 14.1 per game but her efficiency was the best of her career. As a rookie she’s averaging 1.8 points, 1.0 rebound, and 0.3 assists in 5.0 minutes a night.

In the clip she talks about staying ready despite the limited role and learning to play point guard after spending most of her college career at shooting guard. Per a recent ClutchPoints interview, she says she stays ready whether the night brings 20 minutes, four minutes, or none.

h/t: johnwdavis

I always enjoy learning about the overseas play experience for W players (as well as how players from outside the U.S. experience the W). I thought it would be fun to try to compile a list of firsthand accounts of playing in leagues outside the W. This can be a massive list and can include media in other languages -- feel free to share anything you've got.

I think Alanna Smith kept a vlog of her time in China somewhere, right? There are also interviews and media where players tell anecdotes about their time overseas within a larger narrative: the Diana Taurasi documentary talking about Shabtai Kalmanovich; Maya Moore's Love and Justice; various interviews with Candace Parker where she talks about her time in Russia; Stewie and Marta telling the story of how they met. What else?

I've been meaning to write up a long, careful, well-researched post about the results of past mid-season coaching changes in the WNBA, but time constraints are what they are, so I think I'll just do the lazy crowdsourced version instead. We've had a few recent examples: head coaches fired from Los Angeles in 2022 and Phoenix in 2023; a head coach who left Chicago voluntarily in 2023. Briefly summarized:

• Chicago Sky head coach James Wade took a coaching job with the Raptors at the end of June 2023, handing over coaching responsibilities to his assistant Emre Vatansever. This wasn't a termination for cause; the team hadn't been doing too badly before and continued to perform at about the same level, barely making the playoffs and exiting in the first round as 8th seeds typically do.
• Vanessa Nygaard was fired in late June 2023 from the Phoenix Mercury. The Athletic gives a decent breakdown of what happened: a historically bad opening to the season and interpersonal conflicts. Wikipedia has useful season summaries for teams, and it's clear from this one that the change of coach didn't much improve the season record. The funniest piece of this, to me, is that interim head coach Nikki Blue sued the organization last year claiming, among other things, that the front office "set her up to fail, making roster decisions in 2023 that made the team noncompetitive."
• The Los Angeles Sparks parted ways with Derek Fisher on June 7, 2022, in his 4th season. This was the infamous roster with both Liz Cambage and Chennedy Carter; Liz would also leave the team midseason and eventually leave the WNBA. Interim head coach Fred Williams couldn't do much to salvage the season record either, and the Sparks missed the playoffs again.

What other midseason changes do you all remember from earlier seasons? What were your thoughts about these, if you lived through them as fans? If you happen to want to see your team's current head coach fired... what do you think is the best case scenario for the remainder of the season?

(FWIW, I do think Jeff Pagliocca has to go ASAP. Trading the 2028 FRP to Washington for Jacy Sheldon was the last straw for me, and has convinced me that he believes taking picks away will motivate the team to win. Skye would be a better GM.)

Peyton keeps an online journal and wrote up a two-part account of her time in the WNBA earlier this season. Part 1 covers her stint with the Fire:

https://journalingjock.wordpress.com/2026/06/10/my-weekend-as-a-wnba-player/

>The thrill of the brand-spanking-newness of it all—new team, new system, new franchise—continued throughout training camp. This was largely due to the team’s north star, the Constraints Led Approach (or CLA). The staff operated under the bible of CLA, which preached the value of skill instruction through varied, dynamic drills over structured, rote repetition. Conceptually, the method seeks to challenge the athlete through adaptability, better equipping them to handle the variability of a game and its wide-ranging demands on the mind and body.

>However, the staff also paid homage at the shrine of data-analytics. They crunched numbers, ran the percentages, solved for X. In the pursuit of efficiency, they eliminated the post-up and mid-range game, pushing for finishes at the rim and shots around the three-point line. They drilled cutting patterns, elegant solutions arrived at through formulas and the movement of players like chess pieces. Improvisation was encouraged… but there were right and wrong answers. 

>Adaptability and efficiency. These two ideals reigned in the Portland Fire training camp. The combination, and often juxtaposition, of the two led to a frenetic environment that was both fun and chaotic. Some players thrived under the approach, while others sometimes left practice feeling like they were sacrificing their unique identity to the holy-grail-promises of empirical data.

>I was one of the latter. Though I am also a believer in learning through failure and adaptability, I had made a career out of an “inefficient” skill: the mid-range jumper. Very quickly, I realized I would have to prove myself at camp without the use of the very skill that had gotten me there. It’s like asking a chef to prepare her signature dish with her dominant hand tied behind her back: doable, for sure, but the process would be messier and slower. But, don’t forget, the chef also is working against the clock. And the chef hasn’t cooked in two months.

In Part 2, she moves on to Phoenix:

https://journalingjock.wordpress.com/2026/06/21/pt-2-my-weekend-as-a-wnba-player/

>If the Fire had the energy of a tech start-up, the Mercury had the reverence of a church. The two programs were polar opposite. While Portland bustled with the tumultuous energy of a new franchise, Phoenix operated with the assuredness of a team that had existed since the beginning of the W thirty years ago. The Mercury moved with the confidence and purpose of a more veteran squad (the average age of the starting five was 32), and a team that had gone to the finals last year.

>I was greeted by a whole new cast of characters, and I repeated my name enough times that it ceased to sound like a real word anymore. Next I knew, I was in practice, with a different team in a different state. I did my best to bring energy, to make my presence felt, even if my head was reeling from the new terminology and tactics. The style of practice felt more familiar to me than it had in Portland, lending itself to more structured, repetitious drills. But, gone was the almost democratic style of play where everyone mixed in with everyone else. In Phoenix, there was a pecking order. There was a group of the starters and then there was the rest of us. Occasionally, the two groups would mix, but rarely.

>After day one, I felt it went pretty well. I thought I’d held my own within my practice group, and perhaps even made a few new friends. However, that night, four players got cut. Followed by two more players the next day. As season drew nearer, the business side of basketball was rearing its ugly head. No one was safe.

Graphic from Tankathon. I lost my draft of this post last night, so you lucky people get the shorter rewritten version in bullet points:

• The Connets still have the worst 2-year record and very good odds of getting #1, probably the highest. (However, in this scenario where Chicago and Washington are second- and third-worst, I think Washington combines odds because of the pick swap and ends up highest with a 40% chance. Right?)
• For the Sky/Mystics pick swap, my sense is that Chicago benefits most from the teams being close together in standing (to minimize the effects of the swap), while Washington benefits most from at least one of them being terrible. The incentives are weird, but there's still a chance for Chicago to come out of this with a high draft pick (but not #1), if both teams do poorly.
• Beyond that, a number of teams could end up in the lottery with 2-year records between .400 and .500. I don't know if any of them really has an edge over the others, unless Dallas or one of the expansion teams collapses. It also seems unlikely that we'd see Phoenix having a high position in the lottery, even if their record continues to be terrible.

Thoughts? Right now, it looks pretty likely that #1 goes to either Houston or Washington.

Source here. Games cited are Lynx vs. Aces (Lynx won 88-73) and Lynx vs. Sparks (Lynx won 87-76).

What do you think: if you put together a roster of the 12 oldest players in the league this year, and another roster of the 12 youngest, who would be on each roster and who would win? Best of 5?

One of the more noteworthy comments from last night's postgame media here. Her instructions to herself to do better: “look at lineups, hold more accountability, less freedom. I also think, let’s not lose sight of the fact that KP really is the head of the snake in terms of the system, and we don’t have her … therefore, we really need to execute. Therefore, we really need to be in the right spots. Therefore, we really gotta set those screens right. It’s not ‘therefore, oh, bummer.’”

Nneka, asked a follow-up as a “team leader,” remarked: “It’s not often that you have a coach that will take that amount of responsibility on a game that, obviously, we were out there playing. So I just want to play harder. I want to be able to bring to life this system that she has for us, that we’ve seen work this season. I took more accountability for my lack of aggression the last few games. I think sometimes, in an effort to execute a system, I try my best to not overdo what I’m doing. But I think a part of this is that I need to be able to be aggressive in the right spots, be in the right situations, get my teammates open, be involved in the actions, without trying to force it. And coach is right: we have to have an understanding of our roles on the offensive end, and tonight we definitely did not show that. The fight was there, but we have to give that fight some type of framework. And you know, she’s a pro’s coach, and we have to be pros in that way to respond so that we can get the result we want.”

(I have to say here: Nneka was caught on video a few weeks ago leading the team in a “1-2-3 CEREBRAL” cheer. It’s her great strength and her great weakness.)

What do you all think is really missing here? Is "less freedom + different lineups" going to do it? Detail on x's and o's welcome -- I know we can insult and berate these people to no end, but I'm also cerebral-on-3 and I'm curious.

No games today, so I thought I would share this article about Portland's star from the Shelby County Reporter, published just before March Madness 2025. It discusses her early years playing with her twin brother on a boys' team, her major knee surgery as a young teen, her bonds with coaches at Georgia and Alabama, and her religious faith. (Her high school is in a large suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, which I point out for anyone as ignorant as I am about the geography of the American South. Hopefully that's not many of you.)

Former Spain Park star Sarah Ashlee Barker's faith, work ethic drive Alabama's resurgence

By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

Standing underneath the basket at Coleman Coliseum on Sunday, Feb. 23, Sarah Ashlee Barker locked arms with her parents Jay and Amy staring down the end of a journey.

It was a journey that took her from basketball courts around the Hoover area and Spain Park High School to Athens, Georgia and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. One that went from the exhilarating highs of state championship buzzer-beaters and the NCAA Tournament to the crushing lows of deep physical and emotional pain.

Through it all though, Barker has remained the same, working for everything she has while trusting in someone greater than herself to guide her along the way.

"I just know that whatever God has for my life, that's how my story is going to be written and I'm not writing it. God is," Barker said. "The only thing that I can control is how hard I work and how much effort I put into the game, but I can't control you know the wins and the losses. Because it's not my story to write, it's His, and it's already been written."

One of the boys

Barker's love for the game started at a young age, but she almost turned the game away. When her mother asked her twin brother Harrison and her if they wanted to sign up for 6-year-old YMCA basketball, she declined.

It only took watching one practice to change her mind.

"We went to his first practice, he started running around, he was dribbling the basketball, and I looked at my mom and I was like, 'Wait, I actually want to play,'" Barker said.

Not only did she want to play the same sport as Harrison, she wanted to play with him. From then until sixth grade, the Barker twins played together as Sarah Ashlee honed her skills by playing against boys, not girls. She quickly became one of the best players and caught the eye of everyone watching.

One of those people told then-Spain Park head girls basketball coach Mike Chase about her talent. He almost missed her though simply because he looked in the wrong place.

"They were telling me about this Barker kid and so I was going to all these rec games trying to find her and I couldn't find her and finally got in touch with somebody and they were like, 'Well, coach, you're not finding her because she doesn't play with girls,' and I was like, 'OK, well, where does she play?' 'Well, she's got a twin brother and she plays in the boys rec league,'" Chase recalled. "So then I went to a boys practice and there's all these boys practicing in the gym and then there's just one girl over there playing, and sure enough, that was her, so that was my first introduction to her."

Read more: https://www.shelbycountyreporter.com/sports/former-spain-park-star-sarah-ashlee-barkers-faith-work-ethic-drive-alabamas-resurgence-627344