The WNBA’s Superteam Era Enters the Postseason

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4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

The first regular season of the WNBA’s superteam era has concluded, and we set our sights towards the playoffs. The two most talked about teams all season have been the Las Vegas Aces, who added the GOAT Candace Parker to their championship core of Aja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, and Kelsey Plum. Meanwhile in the Eastern Conference, the New York Liberty brought in Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, and Courtney Vandersloot to complement Sabrina Ionescu. The investments seem to have paid off for both teams, as they’ve secured the top two seeds in the postseason and are in prime position to win it all, despite a season-ending knee injury to Parker for Las Vegas. Don’t sleep on the rest of the field, though. The Atlanta Dream are making their first playoff appearance in five years, led by top draft pick Aliyah Boston. The Minnesota Lynx, Dallas Wings, Washington Mystics, Connecticut Sun, and Chicago Sky are all in the mix this year. So today, ESPN’s LaChina Robinson joins us to break down everything you need to know about this year’s WNBA postseason…and reflect on the most important player who isn’t in it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	LeChina, the WNBA playoffs begin tonight. And of course, the focus has been all season
0:05.6	on two teams. Now I'm not talking about the defending champion Las Vegas Aces, New
0:09.9	York Liberty. Just kidding. Yes. Of course, I am. They are the super teams of the WNBA.
0:16.2	So LeChina, when was this impending collision born?
0:20.4	Well, it was born in the offseason.
0:28.2	And this season has come up Aces, the city of Las Vegas as its first nature professional
0:37.8	title. The Las Vegas Aces, your 2022 WNBA champions.
0:48.3	After the Las Vegas Aces won the 2022 championship, everyone looked around and said,
0:54.7	if you plan on beating this team, you have got to stack your talent. The Aces have, you
1:01.5	know, number one picks across the board. Plum, Jackie Young, Asia Wilson. And then they
1:08.6	went and added another number one pick in Candace Parker. So if anything, every other player
1:14.6	in the league, every other GM and coach was looking like, okay, if anyone's going to beat
1:19.8	them, we've got to make some moves. It just so happened that this all came together during
1:25.6	a free agency period in the WNBA that was very active. Brianna Stewart was a free agent.
1:32.8	Courtney Vanderslute, obviously, I mean, a number of players were coming to an end in their
1:37.5	contracts where they were. And so there was talent up for grabs. And the New York Liberty
1:43.8	did an amazing job in going out and securing two former MVPs and Stewart and John Cole Jones
1:49.9	and bringing in WNBA's assist leader and Courtney Vanderslute. And so that is when the
1:56.8	super team conversation started.
2:03.2	When the dust settled, these two teams, the Aces and the Liberty did finish as the top two
2:07.9	seeds in the playoffs. So LeChina, did they pretty much live up to the offseason hype?
2:13.8	They did and they did in Michelle. So the Aces definitely lived up to the billing and were
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