WNBA -Power ranking: Kelsey Plum shines for La -Sparks, fever ascending after a strong start

With all the surprises and new players who appear on the opening weekend, the best part of the 2025 debut of the WNBA was that the best teams and players accepted expectations and set a high standard for the new campaign. The competitors of the 2025 championship watched the role early with returning MVP candidates, which were supported by newcomers in New York, Minnesota and Indiana.

Freedom dominated its size, protected the color with its length and used switches against smalls. Her front place with 6-foot 4-Breanna Stewart (which undertook all eight shooting attempts in the limited area) and 6-6 Jonquel Jones remains a match-up album, especially against teams with a limited depth. The addition of the Natasha cloud of the Perimeter Stopper, which also delivers marginal pressure, was the separation factor against Las Vegas.

The fever dealt with their defensive deficiencies in the low season and kept their offensive as much as always. The two-player campaign between Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston achieves the results almost every time, with Clark making every possible pass against Chicago, and Boston has an impaired defense from the pick-and-roll and Dewanna Bonner and Natasha Howard, who end the right pass on the second page and end the Easy baskets.

In the meantime, the lynx was sent twice to the street and found a formula similar to the victory in every matchup: move and protect the offensive and trust that the system will wear out the opponents.

Nobody illustrates this better than Napheesa Collier, who had 34 points at the start and on the 23rd Sunday against the sparks. Minnesota increased his defense pressure after half -time both victories and put together determined third quarters to get a clinical progress.

All of this happens without all-star-Kayla McBride, but the luch

The mystics and mercury collected impressive victories at the weekend, but these teams are in various phases of dispute. Freedom, the fever and the lynx are expected to occur at a certain level, and they have probably exceeded expectations. It will be an entertaining season if these three competitors continue to maintain this quality of the game and improve them when they build chemistry with their new players.

Three outstanding services

1. Phoenix includes the room

When the Mercury announced Kahleah Copper’s knee procedures hours before her opener, it did not sent the best mood for the new era in Phoenix. However, these concerns were short -lived. As one of the few teams that did not bring in a new coach in 2025, the Mercury still had a new identity against Seattle: spreading the soil, the pace pushed forward, occupied the defense with off-ball actions and Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sably to defy position conferences.

At the first possession, Sabally brought up the ball and existed Sami Whitcomb. She entered the ball on the elbow in Thomas and cut through the color between Thomas and Monique Akoa Makani, which led to an Akoa Makani screen for Thomas, while led Sabal the baseline and pulled into the wing to keep her defender Nneka Ogwumike out of color. It led to a wide-open track in which Thomas achieved her first basket in a Mercury uniform.

Share two defenders. pic.twitter.com/gzttsaa3bw

– Phoenix Mercury (@Phoenixmercury) May 18, 2025

After the game, Sabally said that the training camp from the condition of the conditioning was difficult because they had not stopped running and that the obligation to move to both ends of the soil was immediately recognizable. There was no offensive orchestrator; Rather, the collective ability of everyone to read the soil and manipulate the defense was to open even against a team of talented individual defenders.

Sabally was the boxing score star, who made a Phoenix record with 27 points in her debut, but the way coach Nate Tibbetts Thomas developed was more apparent. It seemed as if Thomas had played in a telephone booth in Connecticut for 10 years when you consider how much space she had to use.

The Mercury service plan is full of players who are new in the WNBA. Rather, it was her placement on the ground that created the room for Thomas and Sabally to attack their individual matchups. After the first game is on tape, it remains to be seen whether the defense will adapt, but at least Phoenix has an operating principle.

2. Kelsey Plum does everything

When Plum arrived in Los Angeles, it was one of her explained goals to show more of your game and to end the season among the top 5 in assists. She had pulled the ball next to Chelsea Gray, but she had the feeling that she had more in the tank about the hits. In two games she is on the right track, fourth in the WNBA with five templates per game.

The Las Vegas coach, Becky Hammon, always said that Plum will collapse opponents and then read the defense. She stretched out the aces when she climbed into the color and sprayed the ball out or put it on a big one. While this is also a trademark of the offensive of coach Lynne Roberts, Plum was more versatile as a creator in the first two games of the Sparks. Several templates came from a highlight when she was able to skip the Ball Cross-Court to a shooter. She weighed the defense to sleep with her dribble and then put a passport into the color.

Plum did all of this, while he set a WNBA record for points in a season start with 37 against the Valkyries – you can find that Plum’s sweater works when she starts jumping with the recording. She had more struggles against the lynx’s pressure pressure, but still ended with 18 attempts to shoot with 18 points. LA had nothing that resembled this dynamic dynamics a year ago, and it is a welcome change because the Sparks angle returns to the off -season.

3. Brittney Sykes lives in the line

The biggest surprise of the opening weekend was the 2-0 start in Washington. The mystics made no other additions outside the draft, lost four perimeter players to business, expansion or freelance agency and seemed to position themselves for a high design. Instead, Washington scored two victories in the Crunch Time, thanks to the leading goal scorer, Brittney Sykes.

Sykes was impossible to prevent her from reaching the edge, albeit against two teams that did not have the best point for defense lawyers, especially with Jordin Canada, which was injured in Atlanta. She made 10 shots in the limited area in two games and deserved 25 free throwing attempts.

What a sequence of Brittney Sykes!

(Picture or one bed)

– DIME (@dimeuproxx.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 8:53 p.m.

As a lonely veteran guard for the mystics, Sykes shows some tricks. She sealed the victory against Atlanta with a trip to the bucket and theft on the following inbounds. Then she helped Jacy Sheldon against Connecticut and drew three fouls against the security guard in the second year, who was the only sun player who was able to score efficiently.

The volume of the fouls gets a little out of control. Sixty fouls were mentioned in Washington’s victory against Connecticut, and the games of the two mystics lasted an average of 20 minutes longer than the other six games this weekend. Sykes does what is necessary to win, but it has cost.

Rookie of the week

Sonia Citron, Washington Mystics

While I tried to choose between Citron and Mystics Rookie Kiki Irafen, I asked a friend a question: Was it impressive to blow from Rhyne Howard for a score or to be in the mail? My friend reminded me that Citron had switched to Griner and successfully expressed the 6-8 center to get a defensive stop.

Sonia Citron switched to BG pic.twitter.com/sbezpbkjkt

– Correlation (@nosyone4) May 17, 2025

In the pre-draft process, the general managers shone in their assessment of Citron, even if they didn’t believe that they had a superstar potential. It could be too early to put a blanket on Citron if you consider what she did in her first two WNBA games. If you force an all-star into sales at sales, you blow another all-star on the way to the cup, do you hit a runner with playing jacks? Check, check, check.

She achieved 11 of 17 Field Goals, handled 10 out of 12 free throws and any defensive assignment. After keeping your own against Juju Watkins and Paige Bueckers last season, it should not be surprising that Citron is already a defensive capital as a rookie. She is an overall package player.

Sonia Citron plays in the clutch

(Picture or one bed)

– Talkingwbb.bsky.social (@talkingwbb.bsky.social) May 18, 2025 at 2:22 pm

Game to see

New York in Indiana, 1 p.m. (et) Saturday, CBS

Is that an early WNBA final preview? The two deepest start -ups in the league are available. New York’s length is tested with Clark on the backcourt and Bonner on the wing, although Boston has to fight around the edge with Jones. Both crimes push the pace and shoot 3s with a high volume, and both defendments try to disturb this river. We know that freedom is titled, but this is Indiana’s first matchup against an elite opponent.

(Photo by Kelsey Plum: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)