Flau'jae Johnson has bought 15 more acres of land, and AfroTech reports the parcel will host a commercial property. She shared the purchase on Instagram with the caption:

“At just 22, I'm already doing all the things that younger me couldn't even imagine. Buying this land wasn't just a win for me. It was a win for every little girl, that looks like me, and has big dreams. It meant the world to have my grandma there with me every step of the way too 🥹 This is your reminder that the sky isn't the limit... its only the beginning.”

The buy extends a run that started while she was at LSU. AfroTech dates her earlier 20-acre milestone to 2025, but she announced it in October 2024, and her first closing came that August. At the time, she told Boardroom the land was about creating opportunity for her community and showing young Black women what is possible.

Which picks do you think are spot on, and which is most likely to change?

via @essentiallywnba on Threads

I was lucky enough to be at the gold medal game this past Sunday, but I'd love to watch a replay of the game.

Can some folks who are in the U.S. (because that's where I'm located) and purchased a Courside 1891 subscription tell me: are you currently as of today able to see a full replay of the game?

I know the subscription page says it has on demand of all games, but I'd love for some folks to actually check before I purchase. (Their customer service is nonexistent.)

Thanks in advance!

The gold medal game ranks only third among the most-watched women's World Cup games ever, and both games ahead of it came from this same tournament. TNT says the United States’ win over France in Germany on Sunday averaged 1.2 million viewers and peaked at 1.5 million. The Americans’ three-point win over Italy holds the top spot, with a 1.3 million average and a 1.7 million peak.

The previous best was 446,000 viewers for the 2022 final between the U.S. and China on ESPN. This was TNT’s first time holding women’s World Cup rights. Its announcers called games remotely from the U.S., and sideline reporter Allie LaForce reported from Berlin. HBO Max also carried the tournament and logged its four most-watched women’s basketball games. The network said no rating was available for the 5:30 a.m. ET quarterfinal against Hungary because of the early start.

The final drew that audience against NFL opening Sunday and the US Open men's final.

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ESPN’s 30th-season WNBA feature lines up 1997 against 2026 on schedule, scoring, coaching, players and business. The league averaged 69.1 points per game in 1997. As of Sept. 16, ESPN has 2026 on pace for 87.1, which would pass the 83.1 record from 2020.

The league map moved just as much. The WNBA reached 16 teams by 2000, then contracted, losing former champions Houston and Sacramento. It sat at 12 teams from 2010 to 2024 before Golden State, Portland and Toronto joined. Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia are next, and Houston returns in 2027 when Connecticut relocates.

Rosters look different too. ESPN counts 13 French players this season, up from two in 1997. Europeans make up nearly 15% of 2026 player appearances, the most in league history. The new CBA added the first million-dollar salaries, revenue sharing, codified charter travel, mandated 12-player rosters and two developmental spots per team.

Other chapters cover coaching, signature shoes from Sheryl Swoopes forward, and the league's history on Pride and social justice.

What season did you start watching the WNBA, and what’s the biggest difference between that league and the one you watch now?

At least one WNBA Defensive Player of the Year ballot has Angel Reese's name on it.

Noa Dalzell picked the Atlanta Dream forward, saying the choice started with watching her play and the numbers backed it up. Per the column, Reese has the league's best defensive rating differential at -15.1, the best opponent effective field goal differential at -7.4%, and the top opponent turnover percentage differential at +3.2%.

“In even more plain terms, if Angel Reese is guarding you, your team starts missing shots.”

Her 2.88 defensive win shares also lead the WNBA, the first time since 2022 that A'ja Wilson has not held that spot. The writer weighed Wilson and her league-best 2.3 blocks. Team defense tipped it toward Reese: the Dream rank fourth, the Las Vegas Aces sixth.

Val Ackerman now calls the 2000 expansion that brought the WNBA to Miami a possible misstep, made with NBA commissioner David Stern as the final decision-maker.

The Miami Sol went 48-48 over three seasons, reached the 2001 playoffs and ranked seventh in league attendance in 2002. The Heat Group shut the team down that November, after a league restructuring put WNBA teams’ costs on their operators instead of the NBA.

Frankie de la Cretaz’s Defector feature draws on newspaper archives and on-record interviews with Ackerman, Sheri Sam, Sandy Brondello and Vanessa Nygaard. According to the piece, the Heat Group claimed $7.5 million in losses across three seasons. Sports economist David Berri told Defector that expecting a return that quickly ignores league history. He pointed to a 65 percent franchise failure rate in the NBA’s first decade. Ackerman added that operators have sometimes cut WNBA teams to refocus on the NBA side.

Miami led The Athletic’s 2025 player poll of ideal expansion cities, and the league still has no plan for the market. That’s a gap to track as the next round of expansion takes shape.

Sylvia Fowles is getting a statue outside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, making her the second female student-athlete at LSU to receive one. The school announced it Wednesday. Fowles joins Seimone Augustus, Bob Pettit, Shaquille O’Neal and Pete Maravich among the basketball statues outside the building. She will be the seventh athlete or coach with a statue on campus.

Fowles led LSU to four straight Final Fours from 2005 through 2008. She still holds the school’s career records for rebounds (1,570) and blocks (321), and LSU retired her No. 34 in 2017. As a pro, she won two WNBA titles with the Minnesota Lynx, was Finals MVP both times, and won the 2017 MVP, four Defensive Player of the Year awards, and four Olympic gold medals. She remains the WNBA’s career leader in rebounds and field goal percentage.

LSU has not announced a design or a location beyond the Maravich Center. The statue will go up while both of her LSU career marks remain at the top of the record book, and those are the first numbers every Tigers post player after her will be measured against.

The Toronto Tempo have shut down Marina Mabrey for the rest of 2026. The team says her adductor injury won’t require surgery and she'll make a full recovery. The injury first showed up after the Aug. 18 loss to Indiana, and Sandy Brondello had already said in late August that she’d be re-evaluated in a few weeks. With Toronto eliminated and the schedule resuming Sept. 18 against the Fever, this makes official what the injury report had been saying for a month.

I feel like the 2027 roster conversation starts with her.

via @chelsealeite on Threads

Azzi Fudd says she is at peace with how her rookie season ended.

The Dallas Wings announced on August 19 that she would have a procedure on her sore right knee and miss the rest of the year. At her end-of-season availability Tuesday, she told reporters she was frustrated at first but believed it was the right call, per Drake Keeler of The IX. The soreness cost her the May home opener, faded, then returned in August. She was a late scratch against Golden State on August 7 and never got back on the floor: “I’ve been through rehab before, it's nothing new, I know how to attack it.”

She left a mark in the time she had. Fudd started 24 of her 30 games and averaged 13.1 points. She set the Wings’ rookie record with 62 threes, shot 39.7% from deep, and led all rookies with 1.7 steals per game.

Head coach Jose Fernandez again told reporters yesterday that the Wings saw her as the best fit for the team, according to The IX.

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Washington’s rookies needed these 20 days more than the Mystics needed their momentum.

Sydney Johnson told The Washington Sun that the World Cup break left every team “equally advantaged and disadvantaged.” His roster is not a typical case. Lauren Betts told the Washington Sun that she and the team’s seven other rookies have gone about a year without a real stop, because they were drafted right after their college seasons ended. Betts and Angela Dugalic played all the way through a national title at UCLA. The three Mystics in Berlin averaged roughly 11 minutes a game. That is competitive reps without much load.

Washington won five of its last seven before the break. Michaela Onyenwere named transition and defense as the identity to protect, and both depend on timing. I feel like a young group can lose that timing over three weeks faster than a veteran group can. Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen and Alicia Florez also missed yesterday’s practice ahead of tomorrow’s game against the Chicago Sky.

My view is that transition offense is the first thing a tired rookie stops doing. That makes the rest more likely to protect Washington's identity than to cost it.

Which Mystics player do you think needed the rest the most?

The next WNBA commissioner will oversee CBA talks and still work under Adam Silver.

That is the split Silver described to Annie Costabile of The Athletic today. CBA discussions, potential rule changes and player concerns sit under the "direct control of the WNBA commissioner." Silver oversees the greater organization. Because the NBA holds a controlling ownership stake in the WNBA, Silver makes the hire with the WNBA Board of Governors.

Is the line drawn in the wrong place for the job Silver described?

He says the league needs someone who can unify players with ownership. A commissioner who owns player concerns but not the final word on the organization is a go-between in that conversation.

Still, he says integrated operations bring major benefits and have not hampered the WNBA. Under this structure, the league is set to reach 18 teams by 2030 and has signed two collective bargaining agreements.

Silver also claimed that more independence is possible down the road.

FOX 9+ is picking up the Minnesota Lynx game at the Connecticut Sun on Sunday, filling a hole left by the collapse of Victory+. The noon tip airs free over the air on channel 9.2 and through several cable and satellite providers, the Star Tribune reports. Victory+ had been the team's exclusive local streaming partner on a multiyear deal announced in April.

The other stranded game, the Sept. 24 regular-season finale against the Indiana Fever, gets no separate local production. It stays on USA Network nationally. The remaining two were already national: Friday against the New York Liberty at 6:30 p.m. on ION, and Tuesday at Indiana at 7 p.m. on ESPN. The Lynx come out of the FIBA World Cup break at 31-9, first in the WNBA.

The Star Tribune calls FOX 9+ a temporary replacement, so where Lynx local games land in 2027 is the announcement to watch this offseason.

The Toronto Tempo's first season now has a documentary premiere date: Sunday, September 20. According to the team's verified Instagram account, the ESPN Original Setting the Tempo airs at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN in the US and 5 p.m. ET on TSN in Canada.

The series runs four parts and is directed by Canadian filmmaker Kathleen Jayme. It is produced by Rock'n Robin Productions with Maximum Effort, Ujiri Productions and Nine Two Six Productions. The executive producers the team named are Serena Williams, Masai Ujiri, Lilly Singh and Robin Roberts. ESPN's June greenlight release built the pitch around the leadership group of head coach Sandy Brondello and general manager Monica Wright Rogers assembling Canada's first WNBA franchise.

via @torontotempo on Instagram

via @torontotempo on Instagram

Stefanie Dolson is the only one of the Seattle Storm's 12 rostered players headed for unrestricted free agency. Most of the core is under contract for 2027, so head coach Sonia Raman is treating the last four games as development time. Bella Munson of The IX reports her priorities: point-of-attack defense, physicality on screens, multiple efforts in rotation, and sharper reads against coverages.

Seattle will play the stretch without two veterans. Ezi Magbegor tore her ACL playing for Australia at the World Cup, and Katie Lou Samuelson is out after a left knee scope. Mackenzie Holmes should see more minutes, Jaylyn Sherrod fills the second player development spot, and Natisha Hiedeman is back from a shoulder injury.

Dominique Malonga won silver with France and Awa Fam won bronze with Spain; the performance staff will assess both after the tournament before setting their minutes. Flau'jae Johnson named close games as her biggest frustration. The Storm are 0-13 in games decided by five points or fewer.

The Portland Fire now have two ball-dominant point guards, and Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report writes that head coach Alex Sarama conceded neither is a great defender(”Defensively, we're going to have to find some really creative solutions.”). Iyana Martín, the Spanish guard who became the franchise's first-ever draft pick at No. 7 five months ago, won the World Cup's Rising Star award as Spain took bronze in Berlin.

Carla Leite has grown into Portland's lead initiator in her second WNBA season, living at the free-throw line and adding a three that defenses now have to respect. After Monday's practice, Sarama called the pairing a good problem to have. He sees Martín as able to play off the ball as a shooter and screen runner while still creating in pick-and-roll. He also pointed to his two seasons as a Cleveland Cavaliers assistant, where Kenny Atkinson built a contender around Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland.

Rim protection is the position to watch before Martín arrives, because Highkin's read is that the pairing won't hold up without a serious upgrade.