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      WNBA Stars to Head Overseas Despite Brittney Griner’s Arrest in Russia

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      Playing for international teams can earn top players more than $1 million. But Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia has complicated the choice to go abroad.As the W.N.B.A. star Jonquel Jones looked ahead to the off-season this year, she couldn’t help but think about her friend Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia since February after customs officials arrested her at an airport near Moscow.“Her not being with us, her not being with her team and the W.N.B.A., her family not being able to see her,” Jones said. “Just her being over there and understanding that it could have easily been somebody else on our team and just kind of feeling the weight of that.“When you’re so close to that person it’s a little bit different.”Griner, like Jones, had been in Russia during the W.N.B.A. off-season to supplement her relatively modest salary by playing for some of the highest-paying women’s basketball teams in the world. But for the upcoming off-season, Jones, 28, signed with a Turkish team instead.“What would make me feel comfortable about going back to Russia?” Jones said. “B.G. being home, first and foremost. U.S.A. and Russia relations being better. The war in Ukraine being over with.”Griner, left, during the 2021 EuroLeague semifinal. Her detention has essentially removed Russia as a country W.N.B.A. players are considering for their off-season teams. Erdem Sahin/EPA, via ShutterstockPlaying overseas remains extremely popular for W.N.B.A. players seeking to earn more money or gain more pro experience, but several agents and players told The New York Times that, because of Griner’s ordeal and the war, they did not know of anyone who would be playing in Russia this off-season. The W.N.B.A. said it did not have a complete list of players going abroad because its playoffs are underway.The coronavirus pandemic had already winnowed overseas opportunities for W.N.B.A. players in virus-conscious countries like China and South Korea before the war in Ukraine and Griner’s detention made Russia essentially off limits, too. Players are still opting to go places like Turkey, Israel, Spain, Italy and France.“There’s always going to be some risk involved with being in a foreign country, but there’s risks in your own country as well,” said Jones, who has Bahamian and Bosnian citizenship. “We have a very short or small window to make the type of money that we’re making overseas, so we have to make sure we capitalize on that.”This year’s decision about playing overseas is more fraught because of Griner’s detention, but the personal and financial pressures that have pushed players abroad for years persist. There are political and safety concerns in some parts of the world, but some players need the money, and others would find it hard to pass up a payday that can significantly increase their yearly earnings. For others, going overseas provides extra time to hone one’s craft, and playing time that isn’t available in the W.N.B.A., which has just 144 roster slots across 12 teams and a season that lasts only a few months. Some players simply enjoy being able to work abroad.Griner’s situation has changed the stakes of making that choice.One of the W.N.B.A.’s best-known stars, Griner, 31, was recently convicted of drug possession and smuggling in a Russian court and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony after customs officials said they found hashish oil in her luggage. She is appealing her conviction, and U.S. State Department officials maintain that she was wrongfully detained. American and Russian officials have discussed a prisoner swap to bring Griner home, possibly with other detained Americans.“What would make me feel comfortable about going back to Russia?” Jones said. “B.G. being home, first and foremost.”Zsolt Szigetvary/EPA, via ShutterstockWhen she was arrested, Griner was returning to Russia to join Jones on their team, UMMC Yekaterinburg, for the playoffs. Griner has starred for the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury since 2013 and soon after also joined Yekaterinburg, among a handful of clubs owned by oligarchs who pay top salaries for pride and political reasons. Those clubs are not seen as an option right now because of Griner’s detention and the war in Ukraine.“It’s taken some money off the table for some people,” said Mike Cound, an agent who represents dozens of professional women’s basketball players. “It’s lowered the overall average salaries a little bit, but other countries, especially Turkey, have stepped up, upped their money because they realize they can get players they didn’t previously have access to.”What to Know About the Brittney Griner CaseCard 1 of 4What to Know About the Brittney Griner CaseWhat happened? More

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      What to Know About the WNBA Playoffs

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      The Chicago Sky will try to defend their championship, but Las Vegas and Connecticut are threats. So is Seattle, with the retiring Sue Bird.The Chicago Sky are set to begin their bid to become the first back-to-back W.N.B.A. champions since the Los Angeles Sparks in 2001 and 2002. But the regular season was close at the top, and several teams could easily lift the trophy this year.Here’s how the W.N.B.A. playoffs shape up.When do the playoffs start?Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, when the second-seeded Sky host the seventh-seeded Liberty. At 10 p.m., the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces host the eighth-seeded Phoenix Mercury.The other two series — No. 3 Connecticut Sun vs. No. 6 Dallas Wings and No. 4 Seattle Storm vs. No. 5 Washington Mystics — start Thursday.How do the playoffs work?The first round is best of three, with the higher-seeded team hosting the first two games. If a third game is necessary, it will be played at the home of the lower-seeded team.The semifinals and finals are best of five, following a traditional 2-2-1 format for home games.Besides the joy of making it to the end, the finals will bring the players another perk. For that round only, the league will pay for teams to fly by chartered plane.Where can I watch the games?ABC and the various ESPN channels will show the playoffs. Games can also be streamed via ESPN.When are the finals?They are scheduled to begin on Sept. 11 and run through Sept. 20 if all five games are needed.Who’s going to win?The big three are Las Vegas, Chicago and Connecticut, who all finished within a game of each other at the top. Seattle and Washington, which finished with identical records of 22-14, are the next tier down.Las Vegas Aces forward A’ja Wilson is a leading candidate for the Most Valuable Player Award. She’s aiming to win her first championship.Rebecca Slezak/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated PressIt is very hard to see any of the bottom three teams winning. Dallas was .500, and the Liberty and Phoenix both lost more than they won in the regular season.For the statistically minded, Las Vegas had the league’s most potent offense, scoring 109.6 points per 100 possessions. Washington had the stingiest defense, allowing just 96 points per 100 possessions.But in net rating, combining offense and defense, it was Connecticut at the top, scoring 9.5 points more than the opposition per 100 possessions. That could make the third-seeded Sun a sneaky favorite.Who are the players to watch?The top-seeded Aces have a powerful one-two punch. Forward A’ja Wilson is a favorite for the Most Valuable Player Award after finishing in the top five in points per game (19.5) and rebounds per game (9.4), and guard Kelsey Plum scored 20.2 points a game while leading the league in 3-pointers made.Seattle has another M.V.P. candidate in forward Breanna Stewart, who led the league in scoring with 21.8 points per game, and few will take their eyes off the legendary Sue Bird, 41, the W.N.B.A. career assists leader, who will retire after the playoffs.And it will be worth watching Sabrina Ionescu of the Liberty, who at this point still has just one career playoff game.What’s the history?Seattle has four W.N.B.A. titles, all of them — yes, even the one back in 2004 — with Bird. Phoenix has won three times; once each for Washington and Chicago. The Dallas Wings won three times when they were known as the Detroit Shock. The other three teams are seeking their first titles. It’s an especially sore point for the Liberty, who have been in the league since its first season in 1997.What teams and players are missing?Seven of the eight teams are the same as in last year’s playoffs. With Washington returning after a year away, the odd team out is the Minnesota Lynx, who finished 14-22 and snapped an 11-season playoff streak.That means no playoff showcase for Sylvia Fowles, who is retiring after a season in which she led the league in rebounds per game.The absence of the Los Angeles Sparks will cost fans a chance to see more of Nneka Ogwumike and the steals leader, Brittney Sykes.The Mercury will be without both the injured Diana Taurasi, the W.N.B.A.’s career leader in scoring, and Skylar Diggins-Smith, who led Phoenix in scoring this season but will miss the playoffs for personal reasons. But the team’s grimmest absence of all is Brittney Griner, who is appealing her conviction on drug-smuggling charges in Russia, where she has been imprisoned since February. More

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      The W.N.B.A.'s Seattle Storm Are Winners. The City Should Fully Embrace Them

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      Inside the arena, Seattle Storm fans bring the passion. Outside, the city has yet to fully embrace a team that has won four W.N.B.A. championships.SEATTLE — What do I have to do around here to buy a cap that reps the best team in women’s basketball?That’s what I was thinking last week as I walked the streets of downtown Seattle, home of the W.N.B.A. champions, the Storm.In sports paraphernalia shops, I hunted for a green-and-gold Storm cap, a T-shirt, or maybe a replica of the team’s new black jerseys, anything that would show off my love for one of the premier teams in sports.What I found were stores filled with Seahawks, Mariners and Washington Huskies swag. I saw eager customers buying caps affixed with the ice blue “S” that represents the Kraken, the new N.H.L. team in town. The Kraken’s first game isn’t until next month.Each time I asked for Storm merchandise, I was met with bewilderment and surprise. One salesperson suggested Storm gear would surely sit untouched because of the demand for Russell Wilson jerseys. Another told me she could sell me a Storm bumper sticker, but she wasn’t sure where it was.Disappointed, I drove to a nearby suburb and found a sporting goods store in a mall. Here my question was answered with this:“Who are the Storm?”A series of championships has still not generated broad support outside core fans.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesIn their 21 years of existence, the Storm have been remarkably consistent. They hold four W.N.B.A. titles. The first came in 2004. The last in 2020. As the league heads into this season’s playoffs, which start this week, they are once again among its top four teams and stand a good chance of repeating as champions.Leading the reigning champions are three athletes of remarkable distinction. Jewell Loyd is an offensive spark plug with a game fashioned after Kobe Bryant, who was one of her mentors. Breanna Stewart, the league M.V.P. in 2018, is possibly the best player in the women’s game. Sue Bird, one of her sport’s few breakout stars, has spent her entire professional career in Seattle.These three women helped the United States win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. At the opening ceremony, Bird carried the American flag in the parade of athletes.That’s who the Storm are.And yet in the stores I visited last week and on the streets of a city that touts itself as deeply progressive, I saw nothing to indicate that Seattle has a W.N.B.A. team, let alone passion for one.Merchandise is a metaphor, a signpost of something else: cultural capital. They don’t call all those hats, shirts, jerseys and sweatshirts “swag” for nothing, and the prevalence of it — or, in this case, the lack of it — speaks to something profound.The signal sent when gear is so hard to find and so rarely seen? Women remain an afterthought, which hits especially hard for a team sport played predominantly by Black women.The players notice.“You don’t see us repped as much as we should be,” Loyd told me, still sweating after a hard practice last week. “It is almost impossible to find a jersey. We are like a hidden gem. To put all of this work into something and we are not seen, what else do we have to do? We’ve won championships here and brought value to our city, and yet you can’t find a jersey?”Storm guard Jewell Loyd is one of the team’s stars.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThere is nuance to this story, though. True, in its 25th year, the W.N.B.A continues to struggle for hearts and minds. But after last season, when the league burnished its reputation for excellence and solidified itself as a leader in the fight for social justice, it is also making inroads.While viewership for most sports is declining in an era of cable television cord-cutting, the W.N.B.A.’s national broadcast ratings are on the rise. Player salaries are climbing, too, and several of the league’s stars feature in national advertising campaigns for large corporations. Eight players signed deals recently to represent Nike’s Jordan Brand, a number once unthinkable. In a first, one enduring star, the Chicago Sky’s Candace Parker, fronts the popular NBA 2K video game.The league has also successfully courted backing from companies such as Google, Facebook, AT&T, Nike and Deloitte, the professional services firm helmed by Cathy Engelbert before she moved to the W.N.B.A. in 2019 to serve as its commissioner.When I interviewed her last week, Engelbert spoke of the need to change and amplify the league’s narrative. She hailed the devoted, diverse, youthful and socially progressive fan base. She wants the W.N.B.A. valued in new ways that go beyond old metrics like Nielsen ratings.When I mentioned I rarely saw Storm gear in Seattle, my hometown, she hardly seemed surprised.“We need to do better” at marketing and telling the league’s story, she said. If that happens, sales of merchandise will rise, along with overall popularity. “I mean, everyone should know who Sue Bird is,” she said. “She happens to be one of our household names, but we don’t have enough of them.”The commissioner also singled out the importance of selling the game by highlighting individual stars and the intense rivalries among players and teams, akin to how the N.B.A. grew when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came to that league.The Storm’s Sue Bird is one of the sport’s best-known celebrities.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesOne such rivalry, between the Storm and the Phoenix Mercury, was on full display on Friday night.It was Seattle’s final regular-season game. Both teams had qualified for the playoffs, but much was on the line, including bragging rights between two organizations that have a history of epic clashes. More important, the winner would also get to skip the postseason’s first round.At that game — played 30 miles north of Seattle because the team’s typical arena is being renovated — I finally found rabid fans wearing their Storm swag. Caps, T-shirts, socks, face masks, sweatbands. A few fans donned green-and-gold shoes with player autographs. Some wore the uniforms of Bird, Loyd and Stewart from the Olympic team.Before 6,000 spectators instead of the 2,000 typically at the Storm’s temporary home, the teams put on a showcase of flowing, fast-paced basketball. Despite being without Stewart, who is nursing a foot injury, Seattle came out firing. Loyd hit a barrage of midrange jump shots and deep 3-pointers. On her way to a career-high 37 points, she scored 22 in the first quarter.The Storm won, 94-85, delighting a boisterous, fun-loving crowd. It was easy to feel the team’s intensity and to see how its firm base of loyal and diverse fans powered the W.N.B.A.But outside of such fans, away from its arenas, the league mirrors society and its inequities. All you need to do is walk the streets of Seattle and shop for a Storm cap to see that. More

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      Breanna Stewart’s Golden Journey to Motherhood

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      “I went from one emotion to the next,” the W.N.B.A. star said. “From winning a gold medal to realizing, OK, I’m going home, and my daughter is going to be born in less than 24 hours.”Breanna Stewart is ready to tell her secret.She kept it for months: During the first half of the current W.N.B.A. season, as captain of the Seattle Storm; in Tokyo this month, as she led the United States to Olympic gold in women’s basketball.Only a few close friends, which included a pair of teammates, knew of her and her wife’s private joy.“We just wanted to share this with a very close circle,” she told me last week, referring to herself and her wife, Marta Xargay. “Just to have this special time in life to ourselves for a while.”Many consider Stewart the greatest female basketball player of this era. Now they can also call her a mom.Stewart and Xargay’s gestational surrogate carried an embryo that had been seeded in one of Stewart’s eggs. Four days after winning a gold medal and most valuable player honors at the Tokyo Games women’s basketball tournament, Stewart experienced a moment that she said could compare with nothing else: the birth of her first child. “It took my breath away,” she said. “The most important moment of my life.”The no-fanfare birth of Ruby Mae Stewart Xargay is a story of love and family in the modern age — without limits. It shows how female sports stars are pushing past tradition and finding a level of power that extends to every aspect of their lives.“This is about controlling my own destiny,” Stewart told me. “It’s about making decisions that fit me, fit my family and where we want to go, where we want to be, and not waiting.”Though still rare, having children and returning to competition is not new for the best female athletes. In recent years, a small number of mothers, about 10 or so, have played in the W.N.B.A. each season.But Stewart, 26, and in her prime, is helping chart a new course. Having missed the entire W.N.B.A. season in 2019 because of an Achilles’ rupture, using a surrogate afforded her the chance to keep her career going without another interruption.She is now the most prominent player to become a mother since the Women’s National Basketball Players Association championed a trailblazing labor agreement that set a new template for how sports leagues should treat women. Formalized in 2020, that labor deal did not just increase leaguewide salaries. It also ensured full pay for maternity leave, boosted access to child care and provided significant financial support for child adoption, surrogacy and egg freezing so that players can have children when the time is right.Stewart during the gold medal game of the Tokyo Games against Japan.Doug Mills/The New York Times“I’ve always known I wanted to have a family, always wanted to be a younger mom,” Stewart said. “It will not be easy, but why can’t I be the best player, a mom and have a child in the way we have done?”Stewart pulled this off in what for her is typical fashion — carefully and tactically.In 2017, her second year as a pro, she revealed in an essay that she is a survivor of sexual abuse endured in her childhood, using the public disclosure to advocate on behalf of other survivors. As an emerging star in a predominantly Black sport, Stewart had not spoken out much on matters of race. But starting last summer, after listening to her peers and getting involved in protests in the Seattle area, she began speaking loudly for Black justice.For a long time she was quiet, too, about her relationship with Xargay, a now-retired Spanish basketball player with whom she had fallen in love while the two played on a Russian Euroleague team in 2019. But in May, Stewart posted to social media a picture of their engagement. The couple married on July 6 in a small ceremony atop their downtown Seattle condominium, details Stewart had not made public until now.Stewart and Xargay decided they wanted a child in the summer and fall of 2020, as they huddled together through a W.N.B.A. season played in a bubble in Bradenton, Fla.When the season finished, they interviewed surrogates and searched for the right sperm donor. Using an egg frozen during Stewart’s 2019 rehab, the pregnancy took hold. Then there were months of Zoom check-ins with the surrogate and her Idaho doctors.All the while, Stewart had to keep her focus on basketball, which proved particularly challenging in Tokyo. So long as the baby didn’t come early, birth would be induced just after the Games.Stewart said she had to compartmentalize as never before. “When it was game time at the Olympics, I focused fully on the game,” she said. “When I was off the court, I could think of Marta and the baby.”In keeping with her private nature, Stewart was quiet about Ruby to her fellow members of the U.S. national team. She told me that only her Storm teammates and close friends, Jewell Loyd and Sue Bird, knew what was going on behind the scenes. Bird is a founder of TOGETHXR, the media company for which Stewart filmed a documentary about her surrogacy journey.“I went from one emotion to the next,” Stewart said. “From winning a gold medal to realizing, OK, I’m going home, and my daughter is going to be born in less than 24 hours.”What a week she would experience. The gold medal mission accomplished, Stewart flew home with the team, arriving in Los Angeles on Aug. 8, a Sunday. From there she boarded a private plane to Boise, where Xargay and the surrogate waited. Last Monday afternoon, at the Birkeland Maternity Center, in Nampa, Idaho, Stewart and Xargay watched Ruby slip easily into the world.The brown-haired girl’s wailing shrieks filled the room. She weighed 9 pounds 4 ounces. “I was in shock, seeing a baby being born in front of me,” said Stewart, who stands an angular, broad-shouldered 6 feet 4 inches. “I felt like crying. I also just felt the love that was in the air.”Stewart cut the umbilical cord. Soon, she and Xargay held Ruby for the first time. They laid their baby on a bed. They placed the freshly won gold medal at Ruby’s side.On Thursday, Stewart was back to basketball. She flew alone to Phoenix, where the Storm played the championship game of the W.N.B.A.’s inaugural Commissioner’s Cup, a midseason tournament featuring the teams with the best records from the league’s two conferences. Stewart scored 17 points, missing just two field-goal attempts, and the Storm defeated the Connecticut Sun, 79-57.When the game was done, she pulled her team around her in the locker room.“I just wanted you guys to know that Marta and I had a baby,” she remembered saying to a sea of stunned faces. “It was like, ‘Wait, neither one of you are pregnant, so how can that happen?’”As she explained, her teammates showered her with hugs.Stewart told me she would miss only two Storm games to bond with Ruby and to rest. When the Storm play the Liberty for the second time this week on Friday night, she will be there.There is no slowing down in professional women’s basketball. The top players go from battling through W.N.B.A. seasons in America to months spent overseas, seeking to maximize their earnings while still in their prime.It is a grinding treadmill Stewart has been on since she left UConn in 2016. She will not stop. Only now she will have baby Ruby along for the ride, and no more secrets. More

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      W.N.B.A. Preview: Don’t Bet Against the Aces in the West

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      The return of Liz Cambage and Kelsey Plum makes Las Vegas even more formidable. Did we mention it still has A’ja Wilson, the reigning M.V.P.?The W.N.B.A. begins its 25th season on Friday with the returns of some big-name veterans and the debuts of promising rookies.“Rosters are stacked with incredibly talented veterans, and the last few rookie classes are bringing a whole new element to the fierce competition within the league,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times.Below, our reporters tell you what to expect this season in the Western Conference. (And here’s what to expect in the East.)Las Vegas AcesA’ja Wilson of the Aces won the Most Valuable Player Award in 2020 and led them to the finals.Mike Carlson/Associated PressA medical exemption (Liz Cambage) and torn Achilles’ tendon (Kelsey Plum) kept two of Las Vegas’s key players out for the 2020 season. In their absences, A’ja Wilson (Most Valuable Player Award) and Dearica Hamby (Sixth Woman of the Year Award) notched award-winning seasons. Angel McCoughtry, in her first season with the franchise, added playmaking and veteran poise, and the Aces made it to the finals.Cambage and Plum are back, along with JiSu Park, but little else is familiar.Kayla McBride, a fan favorite, signed with the Minnesota Lynx in free agency, and Las Vegas brought in the former Los Angeles Sparks’ guards Chelsea Gray, as a starter, and Riquna Williams, in reserve.Plum will come off the bench.Gray, who had been playing overseas, joined the Aces just 36 hours before the Aces’ preseason game against her former team, so there’s an acute need to develop chemistry. Coach Bill Laimbeer set forth simple goals heading into their regular-season start on Saturday: Get to know one another better, stay healthy and improve conditioning.Simple goals, but not easy ones.McCoughtry tore an anterior cruciate ligament on Saturday, and is expected to miss the season. McCoughtry’s absence will slow the chemistry-building process, as will Plum’s: A member of the U.S.A. Basketball 3×3 team, she will miss a week at the end of May while competing in an Olympic qualifying tournament.Dallas WingsDallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale was the league’s leading scorer last year, averaging 22.8 points per game.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressAs the first W.N.B.A. team ever to have the top two picks in the draft, the Dallas Wings had a unique opportunity to fortify an already young, developing group.They added Charli Collier of Texas, who was the consensus No. 1 pick, and Awak Kuier, a 6-foot-4 center from Finland. One of Dallas’s biggest weaknesses last season was interior offense. Wings Coach Vickie Johnson told reporters last week that Collier’s scoring in the paint had stood out, and that should earn her playing time.She will be a good scoring punch alongside forward Satou Sabally, last year’s No. 2 overall draft pick, and guard Arike Ogunbowale, who almost led Dallas to the playoffs last season as the league’s leading scorer, averaging 22.8 points per game.Moriah Jefferson played just nine games a year ago but will be a part of the regular rotation this season now that she’s healthy, and Tyasha Harris earned valuable experience overseas and is expected to contribute more than her 6.9 points per game from last season.Then there’s the fifth-year veteran Allisha Gray, who may be the glue for the roster of third- and second-year players.Los Angeles SparksWith the departures of Candace Parker and Chelsea Gray, Nneka Ogwumike, right, is expected to fill a leadership role.Mike Carlson/Associated PressFor the first time since 2007, the Los Angeles Sparks will be playing without Candace Parker, who led the team to their third championship in 2016. Parker, a free agent, signed with her hometown Chicago Sky in the off-season, but the Sparks have a fair amount of star power on deck to attempt the unenviable task of replacing her. The sisters Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike will be joined by the free agency acquisitions Amanda Zahui B — whose job will be to help fill the Parker-size hole in the paint — Erica Wheeler and Kristi Toliver, both veteran guards.Beyond that, the Sparks will look to make the most of what seems like a transition season. Young guards like Te’a Cooper and the second-round draft pick Arella Guirantes will undoubtedly find strong mentorship in Toliver, a W.N.B.A. champion and recent N.B.A. assistant coach. Nneka Ogwumike will be compelled to step into a leadership role with the departure of not only Parker but the Sparks’ 2020 second-leading scorer, Chelsea Gray, and fourth-leading scorer, Riquna Williams. Guard Brittney Sykes will also be returning to the team as one of just a few familiar faces to help ease the transition, but Ogwumike is the centerpiece of the new-look Sparks.Third-year Sparks Coach Derek Fisher hasn’t been able to capitalize on his team’s impressive regular-season records in the postseason. With so much change on this year’s roster, it seems unlikely that Los Angeles will make a deep run in 2021. But the Sparks have the talent — both veteran and up-and-coming — to challenge any team in the league.Minnesota LynxSylvia Fowles is returning to the Lynx lineup this season after being sidelined by a calf injury last year.Chris O’Meara/Associated Press“She just looks like a coach that knows how to win,” forward Rennia Davis said of Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve. That assessment will be put to the test right away, though Reeve is used to challenges early in the season.Jessica Shepard, picked 16th overall in 2019, was clicking beautifully with Napheesa Collier, that year’s sixth overall pick, when Shepard went down with a knee injury six games into her pro career. Now Davis, the ninth overall pick in this year’s draft, is out indefinitely with a foot injury.But after missing the rest of the 2019 season and all of 2020, Shepard is back.Sylvia Fowles is back, too.After setting the career rebounding record in 2020, Fowles was sidelined by a calf injury that forced her to miss most of the season. Yet the Lynx persevered, nearly upsetting the Seattle Storm in Game 1 of the semifinals before losing the series in a sweep. Reeve said she will restrict Fowles to roughly 24 minutes per game and diversify offensive schemes so that her title-winning veteran doesn’t have to carry the load.But with Collier and Kayla McBride, who signed on as a free agent, arriving late from playing overseas, Reeve will have to improvise once again. So far, forward Natalie Achonwa, who joined in free agency, has made herself irreplaceable to a team seeking to shore up its defense beyond Fowles. Aerial Powers, who won a championship with the Washington Mystics in 2019 and averaged 4.9 rebounds per game last season, is expected to help that effort.Seattle StormBreanna Stewart is hoping to lead the Seattle Storm back to the W.N.B.A. finalsChris O’Meara/Associated PressThe reigning champions had a surprisingly eventful off-season, headlined by their decision to trade their starting center Natasha Howard to the Liberty for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 draft. They then flipped that pick to the Dallas Wings in exchange for the third-year forward Katie Lou Samuelson and a 2022 second-round pick. They also lost starting guard Alysha Clark, who, along with Howard, was key to Seattle’s success on defense during their 2018 and 2020 title runs. Clark signed with the Mystics in free agency.But the finals M.V.P. Breanna Stewart, the star shooter Jewell Loyd and perhaps most impressively Sue Bird have all returned to the Storm to compete for the W.N.B.A.’s first back-to-back titles since the Sparks won in 2001 and 2002. Bird will be in her 18th season, a feat of longevity unmatched by any of her peers currently competing — although Candice Dupree, who signed with the Storm in the off-season, also has double-digit seasons under her belt.With Stewart, the Storm don’t need to find another once-in-a-generation player among their young talent. They do, however, need to figure out who in that pool will best recreate the alchemy of their title teams, positioning Jordin Canada as the point guard of the future and finding a go-to center in either Mercedes Russell or Ezi Magbegor. If they can do that and keep Stewart, Loyd and Bird healthy, the Storm have a better chance than most teams to make history as the only five-time W.N.B.A. champions by the end of this season.Phoenix MercuryThe Phoenix Mercury have the triple threat of, from left, Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressBrittney Griner’s back. Skylar Diggins-Smith is back. And Diana Taurasi, often referred to as the GOAT, is too.Sprinkle in teammates like Brianna Turner and Bria Hartley, and newcomers like Kia Nurse and Megan Walker, and the Phoenix Mercury are focused on returning to their championship-winning ways.“You just see all these pieces,” Taurasi said, adding, “And if we can all get on the same track and on working toward the same goal, I think we can do some special things this summer. But that’s just all nonsense if we don’t come in and put the work in every day.”The Mercury finished with a 13-9 record last season, losing to the Minnesota Lynx in the second round of the playoffs. With an eye toward a deeper playoff run, they acquired guard Nurse and Walker in an off-season trade with the Liberty. Hartley, an eighth-year guard, is working her way back after a knee injury, and more offense could come from Turner.But the biggest impact is likely to come from the Big 3 — Griner, Diggins-Smith and Taurasi — who accounted for much of the Mercury’s scoring last season. Taurasi averaged 18.7 points and 4.5 assists per game; Diggins-Smith averaged 17.7 and 4.2; and B.G. averaged 17.7 points and 7.5 rebounds in 12 games.“We have pretty good chemistry,” Coach Sandy Brondello said. “We grew a lot together as a team last year. Hopefully we can continue to build on that.” More