The New York Liberty won their first WNBA Championship with a thrilling 67-62 win over the Minnesota Lynx to finish a 2024 WNBA season that catapulted the league into the nation’s spotlight.
In June 1997, a new basketball league tipped off in Inglewood, California. Over 14,000 fans piled into the Great Western Forum to watch the debut game of the Women’s National Basketball Association — a 67-57 victory for the New York Liberty over the Los Angeles Sparks.
Twenty-seven years later, the Liberty finally captured their first WNBA championship on their home floor, defeating 4-time champion Minnesota Lynx 67-62 to plant their championship flag on the WNBA mountain. With the win, New York became the last of the original franchises still playing today to win a championship.
The game came down to the wire, an overtime thriller to end one of the most consequential seasons for the WNBA. New York and Minnesota battled for five games, four of which came down to the final seconds, to deliver an all-time classic series to cap off a season that thrust the league into the national spotlight. On the sidelines, Satou Sabally watched as her sister, Nyara, became a WNBA champion.
Satou has spent the entirety of her career with the Dallas Wings, but faces a big decision this offseason as she’s set to become a free agent and teams are expected to offer her big money, putting more pressure on the Dallas Wings to figure out where things went wrong this season as the organization starts a new chapter.
The team announced last week it was parting ways with head coach Latricia Trammell and would begin searching for a general manager to run basketball operations. At a time of exponential growth and exposure for the league, Dallas is trying to find the best path forward.
In July, the league, in a dual-contract with the NBA, announced a new media rights deal that more than tripled its valuation from $60 million annually to over $200 million a year. The WNBA has its own media rights deal that it will negotiate after the 2025 season that is expected to surpass another $60 million annually, as reported by The Athletic. The league announced before the season it would commit $50 million over the next two seasons to introduce a full charter system for league flights, a move praised by players and union leaders alike.
Monday, the WNBPA announced it had opted out of its Collective Bargaining Agreement, leaving the league and players union a little over a year to negotiate a new deal before the current one expires in October 2025.
With more money pouring into the league comes more viewers. Game 3 of the WNBA Finals between the Lynx and Liberty peaked at over two millions viewers, the league’s highest-ever viewed Finals game on cable. An exceptional rookie class headlined by former Iowa star Caitlin Clark and former LSU star Angel Reese helped build a coalition of college and professional women’s basketball fans that helped give the league some of the respect it’s been demanding for years. As the league grows, Clark’s impact on viewership cannot be denied. In the regular season, 23 WNBA games had over one million viewers, with Clark’s Fever playing in 20 of those games.
However, once Clark and the Fever were eliminated from the playoffs, the boosted viewership stayed to watch the next two rounds as New York and Minnesota displayed what makes the league so special. It was an influential season that will serve as a stepping stone for the years to come as the league barrels towards expansion.
With more teams entering the league, it gives Dallas the chance to build on the success it saw in the 2023 season. The Wings advanced to the WNBA semifinals and played the two-time defending champion Las Vegas Aces close in Game 3 before ultimately being swept. But this offseason will prove to be a make or break offseason for the Wings at a time where they need to capitalize.
Dallas will have the best odds to gain the No. 1 overall pick in next year’s draft, a pick that will likely turn into University of Connecticut phenom Paige Bueckers. With Bueckers and All-WNBA guard Arike Ogunbowale potentially leading the backcourt, it gives Dallas a strong foundation. If the team can resign Sabally, that will give the team one of the league’s most exciting cores with two of the three under long term contracts.
But the team needs to move fast.
The league will host an expansion draft Dec. 6 to allow its newest team, the Golden State Valkyries, to select players for its roster. Each of the 12 current WNBA teams will be able to save six of its players with all other players being eligible to be drafted by Golden State. The league will expand to 15 ahead of the 2026 season when Toronto and Portland field their new teams and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the goal is 16 teams by 2028.
Ideally, Dallas will have a GM and coach chosen by this draft and can move forward with free agency with a united front. With the league moving full speed ahead and Dallas set to move to its new arena in downtown Dallas next season, the next few months and the 2025 season will serve as an opportunity for Dallas to find its groove or get lost in the momentum of the league.
It’s important to remember that the WNBA is still very young, as far as sports leagues go. The NBA’s Finals were on tape delay in the mid-1970’s during its 30th season and MLB had 16 teams just like the WNBA does now. The WNBA will have media rights at over a quarter billion dollars annually and a booming expansion that looks to build on the momentum seized by an energetic 2024 campaign that saw record numbers of attendance, merchandise sold, TV viewers, and social media engagement.
The future is bright for the WNBA and more and more people are jumping onto the bandwagon to watch its meteoric rise. It’s time for the Dallas Wings to be a part of that rise and help bring the excitement of women’s basketball to the DFW Metroplex.