During WNBA Rivals Week, the true rivalries are few and far between: ‘I don't think we're there yet'

Yahoo

5 hours ago

Chicago versus Connecticut? How about Golden State vs. Washington?
Or, wait … New York vs. Las Vegas.
Ah. There it is, the rivalry we've been looking for within another mishmash night of WNBA games under the guise of 'Rivals Week.' The inaugural venture, launched on Saturday (running through Sunday), was bound to have duds and head-scratching selections with 25 games played over a nine-day span.
The heavy-handed scheduling approach isn't sitting well with everyone. Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve, in her first trip back to Barclays since losing Game 5 of the Finals, dryly dismissed any notion her team had extra motivation facing New York on Sunday.
'I get it,' Reeve said. 'It's rivalry week. That's what the league told us.'
The effort is a valiant one by the WNBA as it tries to infuse additional juice into targeted matchups, in hopes that they flourish of their own accord outside of forced labels. Rivals Week came by way of the Changemaker Collective, which is championed by WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and has funnelled sponsorship money into the league since Engelbert's arrival. Ally signed on in April as a Changemaker and Rivals Week presenting partner.
It's a strong plan not yet discovered in its full and best form. The WNBA and Ally tempered its promotion by making clear these games were both 'classic and emerging rivalries,' and matchups of 'some of the league's best superstars' going head-to-head. They are, by the rivalry definition, 'games of consequence,' a mainstay phrase of Engelbert's, though still missing necessary kindling for the fire.
The event mirrors other major professional sports leagues and their TV partners, brightening dead spots in the calendar with regional rivalries. The NBA, which launched its version in 2022, delivered a trim 10-game slate over five days in January. MLB celebrated its first 'Rivalry Weekend' with a slate of 15 matchups in May. A shortened timeframe and regionality boosted the focus.
But the WNBA can lean into that only so much. The brutally condensed schedule makes targeted matchups difficult. Its 13 teams are spread out, often without touching any team's state boundary, let alone sharing a city. The NBA highlighted New York's Nets and Knicks, while MLB scheduled the Subway Series between the Yankees and Mets.
Divisive? That's the point. The WNBA is still working on that type of healthy heat between fan bases.
A mass infusion of new fans views the Chicago-Indiana series as a rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, but its roots run deeper through decades of back-and-forth results sending the other team home along I-65. Indiana won another lopsided one, 92-70, on Saturday. The expansion Golden State Valkyries have no history to base a rivalry on, but since their franchise announcement, one with the in-state Los Angeles Sparks bubbled. The Valkyries won that matchup, 72-59, on Saturday in an important result for playoff positioning.
The unfortunate reality is that historical significance, a key element to a rivalry, is trickier to find in the 29-year-old WNBA. When franchises folded en masse in the 2000s, the best rivalries immediately ceased. The Sparks and Sacramento Monarchs traded postseason success against each other before Sacramento, an original team, folded in 2009. The New York Liberty met the Houston Comets in three of the first four WNBA Finals, igniting flares between the two conference standouts. The four-time champion Comets folded in 2008. The Liberty made it back to the Finals once in 2002 against the Sparks before their 2023 berth.
The WNBA website's promotion of the week's best games reads more as fun matchups of consequence than rivalries. And if the schedule makers are to be believed, New York is now a rival of a quarter of the league. They play three different teams over four games, all of which headline the league's approach.
Wednesday night's clash in Las Vegas makes complete sense as the Rivals Week fulcrum. The 2023 'superteams' (sans leotards, sorry A'ja) sped to a meeting in the WNBA Finals. Las Vegas won it in four, celebrating in a silenced Barclays Center arena. They clawed through must-watch regular season games in 2024 and served up a Finals-worthy semifinal in 2024. New York won it in four, ending the Aces' bid for a three-peat on their own floor. Minor grievances littered off the court, from Kelsey Plum's post-Finals clincher comments to a pair of Sabrina Ionescu's shoes gone missing in Vegas.
That they're heading in different directions doesn't lighten the intensity.
The Liberty first played on Tuesday in Los Angeles, a contrived rivalry built more on disdain between the locals of two coastal cities than any team history. Pitting the largest two TV markets against each other is big business for broadcasters. These two played the first-ever WNBA regular season game on June 21, 1997. Rivals is a stretch.
Even a week of matchups with the Lynx is taking liberties in the rivalry department. True rivals are not made in one two-week span, even if it is in October. (The Commissioner's Cup final should also count.) And the league bobbled its placement, keeping the first rematch on the back burner until two weeks after All-Star and slamming two Lynx-Liberty games into an already bloated Rivals Week.
If the point is elite, intense competition, the WNBA missed the mark entirely. A vital element to rivalries is allowing them room to breathe. A full week of antics leads up to the Friday night football game against the county rival. Even in the everyday baseball environment, schedulers aren't packing multiple rivals into a week like sardines. No air, and it's quite possible the fire simply dies.
The short-handed Liberty, clearly the star of Rivals Week, will be happy to head home at midnight. By Thursday, they will have played three rivals in four days with a cross-country flight shoved in there while Minnesota kicks back at home. And they'll still have another 'rivalry' game with the Lynx before it's over.
Reeve said on Sunday she was tired of talking about the schedule, which for the Lynx features three consecutive games against the Liberty. She didn't bite on a single rivalry inquiry.
Then one she sought appeared. Because absent this week is the obvious rivalry the Lynx and Sparks built in the late 2010s, an era warped by time surging forward too fast amid the league's growth. Los Angeles, led then by future Hall of Famer Candace Parker, upset the Lynx dynasty led by Maya Moore and company in the deciding 2016 Game 5 with an iconic second-chance bucket by Nneka Ogwumike in the final seconds.
Every meeting in 2017 bore that weight. The star power of Ogwumike, Parker, Chelsea Gray, Moore, Sylvia Fowles, Rebekkah Brunson, Seimone Augustus and Lindsay Whalen made every matchup compelling. They played another five-game Finals series, which the Lynx won.
Maybe that heat died without those players. The Lynx have won 14 of their last 16 meetings dating to 2020. Or maybe it's lost in the unused appendix of history. Reeve acquiesced that, depending on what happens down the stretch of the 2025 regular season and postseason, the Lynx could repeat the rivalry development with New York.
'I don't think we're there yet,' Reeve said. 'But the league says we are.'
The WNBA will take whichever ones it can build.