How to pick a favorite team for the 2021 WNBA season

The WNBA season is fast approaching and you’re curious, ready to dive in and find out what all the hype is about. The first step is to find your team and here is everything you need to know to pick your favorite.

Welcome, new WNBA fan. You’ve picked the perfect time to start following the most competitive women’s basketball league in the world, but if you think choosing a WNBA team to root for will be easy, you’re in for a tough couple of paragraphs.

With just 12 teams and 144 maximum roster spots, each franchise is stacked with elite talent. You’re going to watch the best of the best every night. Consider this: despite the same number of college basketball teams as the men’s side, women’s college basketball players and international pros have less than one-third the available roster spots in the WNBA than the NBA has.

Competitiveness aside, with only a dozen teams, it’s also tough for some new fans to find a team to root for based on geography alone. There are no teams in Canada or Mexico, and there’s a sizable gap in flyover states with most teams hugging the coasts.

I’m here to help, though. Let’s run down what you should know about each franchise, and why you should pick them to root for this year.

What you need to know about the Atlanta Dream

Best players: Chennedy Carter, Tiffany Hayes, Courtney Williams, Elizabeth Williams
Record last year: 7-15 (10th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Have Carter play a full healthy season after suffering an ankle injury in 2020, make an All-Star team, and lead Atlanta to one of the final playoff spots
Team colors: Dark blue and red
Being a Dream fan will: Be a wild, chaotic ride. To put it simply: the team fired its president and general manager six days after he made the No. 3 pick in the draft (Aari McDonald), then two weeks later, head coach Nicki Collen left the franchise to coach the Baylor Bears women’s team. Regardless of the front office chaos, this team has unending swagger with debatably the most entertaining backcourt in the league. It won’t always be fun, but when everyone is clicking, it’s going to be electric.

What you need to know about the Chicago Sky

Best players: Diamond DeShields, Candace Parker, Allie Quigley, Courtney Vandersloot
Record last year: 12-10 (6th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Win the championship. An already talented team from last year added one of the best basketball players of all time in Parker. This is the year!
Team colors: Light blue and yellow
Being a Sky fan will: Be so much fun. The Sky were once known as the team that couldn’t hold on to its superstars, losing both Elena Delle Donne and Sylvia Fowles to forced trades. Now they have a pair of homegrown stars, one of the league’s best-ever shooters, and a championship-experienced legend coming off a season in which she won Defensive Player of the Year honors.

What you need to know about the Connecticut Sun

Best players: DeWanna Bonner, Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas (torn Achilles, out for the year), Jasmine Thomas
Record last year: 10-12 (7th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Compete in the playoffs. Had Thomas not been injured playing overseas, this team would have been a championship favorite
Team colors: Dark blue and orange
Being a Sun fan will: Be filled with hope. It’s a bummer that this will be the second year in a row we’re talking about what could have been. Last season, Jones sat out of the bubble and the team took the Las Vegas Aces to a full, five-game semifinals series but fell short. The Sun are still dangerous, though, and no team will want to see them in the playoffs.

What you need to know about the Dallas Wings

Best players: Allisha Gray, Arike Ogunbowale, Satou Sabally
Record last year: 8-14 (9th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Develop the team’s young talent and compete for the final playoff spot
Team colors: Dark blue and green
Being a Wings fan will: Not be easy, but Ogunbowale will make it worth your while. The Wings have drafted six first-round picks in the last two years including the top-two in this year’s draft (Charli Collier and Awak Kuier). The franchise’s future is bright, but it’ll take time to get everyone up to speed. Having the WNBA’s leading scorer guide the way is the most exciting way to fight through the early stages of a rebuild, though.

What you need to know about the Indiana Fever

Best players: Teaira McCowan, Kelsey Mitchell
Record last year: 6-16 (11th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Find an identity
Team colors: Dark blue and yellow
Being a Fever fan will: Be a struggle. The Fever are a pace behind the rest of the league in figuring out what they want to be. Kelsey Mitchell is an excellent scorer, and Teaira McCowan is a 6-foot-7 defensive presence, but Indiana has struggled to stay relevant since Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings’ retirement in 2016. Maybe no. 4 pick Kysre Gondrezick will be the start of something special.

What you need to know about the Las Vegas Aces

Best players: Liz Cambage, Chelsea Gray, Dearica Hamby, Angel McCoughtry, Kelsey Plum, A’ja Wilson
Record last year: 18-4 (1st out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Win a championship
Team colors: Black and red
Being an Aces fan will: Make you feel invincible. A team that made the Finals last season with MVP Wilson and Sixth Woman of the Year Dearica Hamby will add an All-Star guard in Gray, and return 2017 No. 1 pick Plum (torn Achilles) and All-Star 6-foot-8 center Cambage (bubble opt-out). The team’s biggest question mark may be how to balance all this firepower, but for now, enjoy the ride. (Note: new fans should follow Cambage’s social media accounts ASAP to not miss out on her roasts of any and all haters.)

What you need to know about the Los Angeles Sparks

Best players: Nneka Ogwumike, Kristi Toliver
Record last year: 15-7 (3rd out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Find a way to win without Chelsea Gray and Candace Parker
Team colors: Purple and yellow
Being a Sparks fan will: Be a new experience. Parker left the team in free agency after leading the Sparks for 13 seasons, and Gray walked after playing point guard for six. It’ll be up to former MVP Ogwumike and Toliver, in her first season back with the team after playing in D.C. for three seasons, to lead the rebuild.

What you need to know about the Minnesota Lynx

Best players: Napheesa Collier, Crystal Dangerfield, Sylvia Fowles, Kayla McBride, Aerial Powers
Record last year: 14-8 (4th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Win a championship
Team colors: Dark blue and grey
Being a Lynx fan will: Be fun as hell. The franchise with a former MVP (Fowles) and the last two Rookie of the Year winners (Collier and Dangerfield) added a pair of two-way wings in McBride and Powers in the offseason. For the first time without the legendary core of Maya Moore, Rebekkah Brunson, Seimone Augustus and Lindsay Whalen, the Lynx are on a title hunt.

What you need to know about the New York Liberty

Best players: Natasha Howard, Sabrina Ionescu, Betnijah Laney
Record last year: 2-20 (12th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Make the playoffs
Team colors: Black and teal
Being a Liberty fan will: Put you on one of the WNBA’s biggest bandwagons. Oregon sensation Ionescu hopes to play a full season after missing all but three games of her rookie campaign to an ankle sprain, but if her first two games were any proof, she’s going to be a WNBA star. The team also added two new stars, Howard and Laney, to make a postseason push in the franchise’s debut season at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

What you need to know about the Phoenix Mercury

Best players: Brittney Griner, Bria Hartley, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Diana Taurasi
Record last year: 13-9 (5th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Win a championship
Team colors: Orange and purple
Being a Mercury fan will: Have you cheering on two of the best guards in the world while swearing at every referee in sight in the name of technical foul-getter Taurasi. The Mercury have a fast-paced, dynamic offense that’s must-watch every night, but it’s worth noting their defense has held them back. Is this the year they out-bucket their competition?

What you need to know about the Seattle Storm

Best players: Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd, Breanna Stewart
Record last year: 18-4 (2nd out of 12 teams due to tie-breaker rules)
Team goal: Win another championship
Team colors: Green and yellow
Being a Storm fan will: Have you ready for the playoffs after the first game. Seattle’s loaded again with one of the WNBA’s G.O.A.T.s in Sue Bird, one of the league’s best guards in Loyd, and the player most addicted to winning in Stewart. (Since tearing her Achilles last year, Stewart’s won championships in the WNBA, EuroLeague, and Russian Premier League and an MVP award in each.) This year won’t be as easy as their 2018 and 2020 championship runs though, with Alysha Clark and Natasha Howard, two starters from last season, off to other teams.

What you need to know about the Washington Mystics

Best players: Tina Charles, Natasha Cloud, Elena Delle Donne, Emma Meesseman (not with the team to start the year)
Record last year: 9-13 (8th out of 12 teams)
Team goal: Win a championship
Team colors: Dark blue and red
Being a Mystics fan will: Give you a front-row seat to watch one of the most talented scorers of all time in Delle Donne. The team is (kind of) running it back for the first time since their 2019 championship win since Cloud, Delle Donne and Charles all sat out last season. The Mystics will be without one of their biggest offseason pickups, Alysha Clark, due to a Lisfranc injury to her right foot, and 2019 Finals MVP Emma Meesseman won’t play until at least the All-Star break. Still, they have the talent to compete with the best.