WNBA: Can Alyssa Thomas keep the new-look Mercury revving and roaring?

The second week of the 2025 WNBA season is underway, with five games on tap across Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Las Vegas Aces visit the Connecticut Sun (7 p.m. ET) and the Atlanta Dream face the Indiana Fever (7 p.m. ET, NBA TV). On Wednesday, the Dallas Wings and Minnesota Lynx meet again (8 p.m. ET), the Washington Mystics take on the Golden State Valkyries (10 p.m. ET) and the Los Angeles Sparks play the Phoenix Mercury (10 p.m. ET).

Here’s why to tune into this quintet of matchups:

Buckets on buckets on buckets

On Tuesday, the Aces will look for their first get-right win of the season over the likewise winless Sun, while the Dream will aim to do the same in Indy against a Fever team that was firing on all cylinders in their season opener.

Across the two games, a ton of points will take the court.

Tina Charles, back in Connecticut, remains the WNBA’s second all-time scorer, with 7719 points to her name after dropping a team-high 23 points in the Sun’s loss to the Mystics on Sunday. One the other side will be reigning MVP A’ja Wilson, who scored a record 1021 points last season and opened 2025 with a 31-point performance.

For the Fever, longtime former Sun DeWanna Bonner can add to her career point total after she rose to third on the WNBA’s all-time scoring list on Saturday, surpassing the great Tina Thompson as she netted her 7489th-career point. She’ll be facing off against her former Mercury teammate Brittney Griner, who scored 18 points in her debut for the Dream on Friday. BG currently sits at No. 18 on the league’s all-time scoring leaderboard; in 2019, she led the W in scoring.

Brittney Griner congratulates DeWanna Bonner on becoming third in #WNBA all-time scoring list in league history and surpassing Tina Thompson on her Instagram story. They were teammates on the Phoenix Mercury throughout the 2010s.

— Aya Abdeen (@ayabdeen.bsky.social) 2025-05-17T21:30:41.010Z

So, will TC, A’ja, DB or BG get the most buckets on Tuesday? Or, will Marina Mabrey, Jewell Loyd, Caitlin Clark or Rhyne Howard light up the scoreboard?

Paige vs. Minnesota (Take 2)

Paige Bueckers is being welcomed to the WNBA with a double dose of her homestate team, as the Wings, after a No. 1-vs-No. 2 interlude against the Seattle Storm, travel to Minneapolis to take on the Lynx on Wednesday.

The first round against Minny didn’t go so great for the No. 1 pick and her new team. Monday night was better for Bueckers and the Wings, as she showed significant progress in scoring a team-high 19 points in a more competitive loss to the Storm. What needs to happen for Dallas to get their first positive result of the season?

It looks like defense, again, will be an issue. They were the league’s worst unit on that end of the floor last season, and the 99 points they allowed on Friday night is the most points scored in a single game this season. With new head coach Chris Koclanes already moving away from 6-foot-7 center Teaira McCowan, something we wondered about in preseason, the Wings will need activity, aggressiveness, connectedness and communication to make smaller lineups work defensively. A great example? The Lynx, who were the W’s top defense in 2024 despite lacking traditional size.

Full of new faces, expect Dallas to struggle once again to find the necessary defensive cohesion against a Minnesota team that not only has returned nearly all of their key rotational pieces from last season’s WNBA Finals squad, but also now will be powered by the dulcet tones of Bon Iver.

On Monday, the Lynx and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon announced a gender equity-focused partnership that will prioritize addressing gender inequities that result from domestic and sexual violence, sex trafficking, health care disparities and barriers in education and leadership in Minnesota. Vernon and Napheesa Collier discussed the collaboration on ESPN’s NBA Today:

Be Jaded about the Mystics

In his recap of their season-opening win over the Dream, Beckett Harrison proclaimed that the Mystics “are the best team in the WNBA,” before qualifying with, “Sorry, that really might be my only chance to say that this season.”

Not so fast. Washington, like Minnesota, has a chance to reach a league-leading 3-0 record on Wednesday when they visit Golden State.

Through two games, rookies Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen, along with Brittney Sykes, have stolen the headlines. However, it’s important not to overlook a sneakily crucial piece to the Mystics’ early success: back-up point guard Jade Melbourne.

In her third year in the W at just 22 years old, Melbourne may have turned a corner. In prior seasons, one with Seattle and last season with Washington, Melbourne’s youth showed. She was a bit of a reckless player, with a nearly even assist-to-turnover ratio and inefficient shooting percentages. Through two games, she’s maintained her pace-pushing style, albeit with more sharpness. Melbourne has five assists to just one turnover, while shooting a stellar 64.3 percent from the field and 71.4 percent from 3. The Mystics’ also have outscored their two opponents, the Dream and the Sun, by a team-best 23 points in Melbourne’s 46 total minutes; that’s 11 points better than the second-ranked Mystic.

She looks like an early season Most Improved Player candidate. And if this improvement is real and not simply a brief, early-season hot streak, the Mystics will keep accumulating more wins than expected, beginning Wednesday night in San Francisco.

The Engine is revving in the desert

It only took one game to serve as a reminder: It’s dumb to doubt a team led by Alyssa Thomas.

When news broke on Friday that Kahleah Copper would be out four to six weeks after undergoing a knee procedure, the first instinct was to assume trouble for the Mercury. Outside of star imports Thomas and Satou Sabally, Phoenix’s rotation is filled by a mishmash of mostly unproven players. It was easy to imagine the this new era of Phoenix basketball going up in flames before the season began.

Instead, the Mercury cruised to an 81-59 win over the Storm, powered by a classic 20-point, seven-rebound and six-assist performance from Thomas. Phoenix outscored Seattle by 23 points in the Engine’s 30 minutes. With a similar effort against the visiting Sparks on Wednesday, the X Factor quickly will be falling in love with AT, as well as Sabally, who turned in 27 points in her Valley debut.