I feel like I'd have a better shot % on one of these than they did against Italy. WTF

sorry for the low quality I couldn’t find a better one 😭😭

Julie with the almost triple double against Puerto Rico. Wild that her assists are last ;-)

But my god she played 36 minutes today, coach really needed her. And she is tired af, she told the Belgian press she did not recover well from her concussion and her very lengthy season. She got quite emotional telling that.

I really hoped today’s matchup would be giving her some more rest… but let’s beat Australia so she can have 2 days off!

The real MVP of US v Italy.

When Lynx players packed for their Aug. 30 game in Atlanta, their suitcases were a little heavier than a typical road trip.

With only four regular-season games remaining, the WNBA is taking a break. And the Lynx players scattered because of the FIBA World Cup, which began Friday and wraps up Sept. 13 in Berlin.

Napheesa Collier headed straight to Germany to represent Team USA, which won its opener Friday over China and plays Italy on Sunday. Other Lynx teammates will compete for the national teams for Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

But for the Lynx players and staff who remained behind, a rare late-season break provides a chance to reset before a final push into the WNBA playoffs, which start Sept. 27. The Lynx next play Sept. 18 vs. the New York Liberty at Target Center.

The 2030 World Cup will fall in the winter months, but these sorts of breaks aren’t unprecedented in the WNBA. Most recently, the league was put on pause mid-July to mid-August for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Is the break a chance for rest ahead of physically grueling playoffs, or is it a disruption for a team atop the league standings? A good thing, or a bad thing?

“It’s a thing,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said during the last week of August. “It’s whatever the hand is you’re dealt.”

For the first week after a loss in Atlanta, Reeve said, the Lynx would “sort of shut down” so players and staff could “get their cup filled” before reporting back to Minnesota. The offseason’s collective bargaining agreement guaranteed stateside players seven consecutive days of vacation during pauses for international tournaments.

Players are using the time to see family and friends, and, for some, visit home.

Rookie Olivia Miles hasn’t had a true break from basketball since last fall, when her final collegiate season at Texas Christian began. The few weeks between the NCAA tournament and the start of Lynx training camp were “game-plan mode,” said Miles, who packed up her life in Fort Worth, trained and prepared for the draft.

Now, she has a few days to stretch, run and watch film.

“I’m recovering from some ankle stuff,” said Miles, who missed two games in early July after turning her left ankle and twisted it again on Aug. 19. “Just trying to get my body right.”

Kayla McBride was most excited to, first, “just lay down.” At 34, she averages a team-high 32.6 minutes per game. She headed to Charlotte, N.C., to help her sister open the pair’s new coffee shop — a grand opening that teammate and Charlotte native Maya Caldwell dropped by to support. McBride, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, also has her first Vikings game on the schedule.

“Those first couple days is just like turning everything off because [of] that fight or flight, having games all the time and traveling,” McBride said.

Since 2014, Reeve had been on the U.S. coaching staff at every biannual Olympic tournament or FIBA World Cup. The Americans collected four gold medals with Reeve as an assistant and two as head coach.

But this go-around, Reeve was sending off son Oliver to middle school. A trip to the State Fair, and even a trip to New Jersey to see Reeve’s family, were on the table.

Still, Reeve will be thinking about what comes next for the Lynx and tinkering with an expanded playbook for the postseason.

“No doubt I won’t be able to escape pouring some time into what I call ‘lesson planning,’ which [is] basically what a teacher does,” Reeve said. “Where do we have to get better? How do we do it?”

Collier is the Lynx starter who said she didn’t need the time off, estimating that she was still at “80, 85 percent” after returning from double ankle surgery in late July.

“I never pass up an opportunity to [represent Team] USA,” said Collier, a two-time Olympic gold medalist. “But also it’s great timing for me specifically this year. ... I actually need to ramp up to make sure that I’m in my peak performance when playoffs come.”

And playoffs will come quickly, after four games in just eight days.

Reeve said her parting message for her team, after the loss in Atlanta, was that these weeks “mean a lot if you have the right approach.”

“When we get back to work,” she said, “we’ve got things to work on.”

The field of eight playoff teams was set when Dallas clinched the final postseason spot on Aug. 25. Now, teams jockey for position.

The Lynx used a 14-2 run after the 2024 Olympic break to push into the WNBA Finals.

“When we get back, [we have to be] ramping up,” McBride said. “That way, when Phee does get back, and we’re back in the swing of things, we’re hitting the ground running.”

https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-lynx-wnba-playoffs-2026-fiba-womens-basketball-world-cup-team-usa-roster-napheesa-collier/601883844

USA (1-0) vs Italy (1-0)

Location: Berlin, Germany

2:45 PM ET/11:45 AM PT

Meet the Portland Fire owners, whose family’s swimwear company and short-lived NFL venture laid the groundwork for a $380 million WNBA franchise

Alex Bhathal and his sister Lisa Bhathal Merage have some rules they follow ahead of each Portland Fire game they attend. For Alex, it means wearing a lucky red shirt—a switch from his usual black attire, which was correlated with two team losses. And for Lisa, she sits in seat 11 of her designated row.

The pre-game rituals of the owners of the first-year WNBA franchise are a product of their father, a businessman and sports investor who emigrated from India to the U.S. in 1960.

Lisa remembers one of the superstitions their father would espouse: “If your left eye twitches, it means that money is coming your way.”

The siblings have certainly seen recent success through their family investment firm RAJ Sports. After buying the Portland Thorns in the growing NWSL in early 2024 for a reported $63 million, the siblings are expanding their roots in the city. In September of that year, RAJ Sports purchased the Portland Fire for $125 million to secure control of the newly announced expansion franchise, which began play in the 2026 season.

The team now has a valuation of $380 million and has the fourth-highest attendance of the WNBA’s 15 franchises, averaging about 14,500 fans per game in its inaugural season. Last month, RAJ Sports opened the Kaiser Permanente Performance Center, the $150 million joint training facility for the Thorns and the Fire.

“We know that things are going to take time. But we also knew that we were going to surprise some people, and I think we’ve done that,” Alex told Fortune. “We’re really grateful and appreciative of being able to do this in a city like Portland, where it is the global epicenter of women’s sports.”

A family affair

The influence of the siblings’ parents runs deeper than just game-day superstitions. Shortly after the siblings’ father Raj Bhathal immigrated to the U.S., he and their mother, Martha Bhathal, started swimwear company Raj Manufacturing in Southern California.

It meant the siblings grew up in Los Angeles with a sports team to follow for about every season: Rams in the fall, Lakers in the winter, and Angels in the spring and summer.

In addition to being a sports fan, Martha was an athlete. While growing up in California, she lettered in about seven sports growing up and played golf at UCLA.

Raj took a liking to American sports too, even beyond fandom and swimwear. In the late 1980s, he learned about the NFL’s efforts to expand internationally from an article in the Los Angeles Times, and called up the league office through a mutual contact, and ended up becoming the first franchise winner of the World League of American Football, what was then the first transatlantic pro sports league.

“We grew up with our parents as examples to us for how you show up in the world, not only in business but within a community,” Lisa told Fortune.

Raj’s time with the circuit was cut short; the domestic teams ultimately folded as the league transformed into NFL Europe, but by then, the kids had caught the bug.

They took over their family’s swimwear manufacturing business in 2006 as part of a succession plan, transforming it less than a decade later into RAJ Sports with the purchase of a minority stake in the Sacramento Kings NBA team in 2013.

“It was tremendously impactful in terms of getting a little bit of understanding and knowledge and relationships in the business side of sports,” Alex said. “That’s what led to ultimately us pursuing sports team ownership more holistically later in life.”

Portland’s women’s sporting epicenter

Lisa believes her family’s years in the fashion industry gave her and her brother a premonition about the rise of women’s sports years before the NWSL and WNBA would take off in earnest. Years ago, after the purchase of the Sacramento Kings—where Raj and Alex sit on the board, and where Raj is an alternate governor and vice chair—the family saw opportunities for women’s sports cross their desk. At the time, some called it a fad.

“Some people at that time were calling it a ‘moment,’ and I absolutely disagree with that. It’s about the rise and the future of women’s sports,” she said.

Portland, in some ways, was a natural fit. The city is home to Adidas North America and neighboring Beaverton is home to Nike’s world headquarters, creating another connection between the family and the sports lifestyle industry.

Lisa watched the Thorns play at Providence Park, and Alex began working on a business plan to purchase the NWSL team. Around the same time, ZoomInfo co-founder Kirk Brown’s bid for Portland’s WNBA expansion franchise fell through, and the siblings pounced on the opportunity.

“The stars just aligned for us, and it was meant to be,” Lisa said. “Portland is an amazing city, and Portland shows up for its sports.”

Last month, RAJ Sports, partnering with Nike, held its second annual Epicenter Sports Week, a summit to promote women’s sports. It’s a display of confidence in the future as well as an admission that the structure of women’s leagues still has some uncertainty surrounding them.

Besides each league navigating issues around growth and sustainability, there’s questions around increasing pay to match leagues’ success, infrastructure to accommodate training and games, as well as politics, most recently in the WNBA having to address the eligibility of transgender athletes.

That’s an advantage to having two growing teams in Portland sports, Alex said. There’s twice the stakeholders, athletes, and fanbases from which to learn.

“In the business of sports, there’s always something crazy that happens almost every day,” he said. “It’s important to backstop that against a clear direction on what we’re trying to build.”

https://fortune.com/2026/09/06/portland-fire-wnba-owners-alex-lisa-bhathal-merage-raj-sports/

Group A:

Spain and Germany win: 1 Spain-2 Germany-3 Japan-4 Mali

Spain and Mali win: 1 Mali-2 Spain- 3 Germany- 4 Japan

Japan and Germany win: 1 Germany- 2 Japan- 3 Mali- 4 Spain

Japan and Mali win: 1 Japan- 2 Mali- 3 Spain- 4 Germany

Every team can finish in every position. 

Group B:

Hungary win: 1 France-2 Hungary-3 Korea-4 Nigeria

Korea win: 1 France-2 Korea-3 Hungary-4 Nigeria

France-Nigeria game can't change anything in the group, regardless of the result. France is first, Nigeria is last and out, Korea and Hungary are fighting for the 2nd and 3rd spot.

Group C:

Australia and Puerto Rico win: 1 Australia-2 Belgium-3 Puerto Rico-4 Türkiye

Australia and Türkiye win: 1 Australia-2 Belgium- 3 Türkiye- 4 Puerto Rico

Belgium and Puerto Rico win: 1 Belgium- 2 Australia- 3 Puerto Rico- 4 Türkiye

Belgium and Türkiye win: 1 Belgium- 2 Australia- 3 Türkiye- 4 Puerto Rico

Whoever wins between Australia and Belgium is first and through to the quarterfinals, whoever loses needs to play an additional match. Whoever wins between Türkiye and Puerto Rico is 3rd and stays in the competition, and whoever loses is 4th and out.

Group D:

Italy win: 1 USA-2 Italy-3 China-4 Czechia

China win: 1 USA-2 China-3 Italy-4 Czechia

Exactly the same situation as in group B, USA is France, Italy and China are Hungary and Korea and Czechia is Nigeria.

Quarterfinals:

USA will face the winner of a match between the"3rd in group A, whoever that may be" and "winner of Hungary-Korea"

France will play winner of a match between "Italy and China" and "winner of Türkiye-Puerto Rico"

I think Hungary-Korea could be interesting as it is perhaps more beneficial for you to lose that game, as you avoid facing USA in the quarterfinals. Similarly, Italy-China loser would avoid France.

Get in here fellow degens that are up at 5am for hoops.

During the first USA 2026 FIBA game, commentators kept talking about the physicality of the game. Can anyone show how it is more physical?

At 2 AM, the hotel of the Belgian cats got evacuated. Yikes.

They play Puerto Rico at 6 PM today and Australia at 11.30 AM tomorrow.

So far for Delaere who mentioned in her interview that she would want to catch up on some sleep last night.

Ps: there was no game thread ready for today yet, but I thought it was worth mentioning it, since we might see some more rust in Cats basketball.

Edit: apparently all teams except USA stay in this hotel

This is an updated list with coaches named. The table at bottom nicely lists all 70 players and their.respective teams.

*An earlier similar post was not up to date and the information was not presented as clearly.

Regardless of what happens in the last round, France will be 1st and Nigeria will be last. Congrats to France, and tough luck Nigeria.

Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn) offered herself up to replace retiring WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, who recently announced her retirement amid the league’s growing popularity and recent controversies.

“Hey, @WNBA, I’m a free agent in January,” Rep. Craig wrote on social platform X Friday.

Craig lost to Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in the Democratic primary for retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s (D-Minn.) seat, in what was considered a win for progressives over moderates within the party.

She has been an avid supporter of her state’s WNBA team, the Minnesota Lynx, and even wagered with Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) about the outcome of the 2024 finals between the Lynx and the New York Liberty, but did not follow through on the bet in protest of a controversial call in the game.

Her post responded to Engelbert’s retirement announcement after seven seasons leading the league. Under Engelbert’s tenure, the WNBA has grown from 12 teams to 15, with plans to expand to 18 by 2030, with recent seasons smashing viewership and attendance records.

However, Engelbert has also been criticized for discussions regarding transgender athletes, an issue which has become a major one for Republican lawmakers. She called it a complex and nuanced issue, saying in a memo that the league would continue discussions on the topic.

This is so cute! And Karl, questioning why Sika doesn’t get any minutes

Mali and Spain both are 1-1

I love a good tidbit. It can be on or off the court.

I'll start: Arike was on Dancing with the Stars in 2018

OOO looks like we're covering my all time favorite point guard... but Chelsea Gray is giving her a run for her money; not gonna lie.

What ya'll think of the Queen of Assist??

🙄🙄🙄 at this idjit. Someone gag him already!

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