A battle of ages – Team USA ended it with a 97-79 win to secure their fifth straight gold medal in the FIBA World Cup. But with the tournament now behind them, attention is already shifting back to the 2026 WNBA season, which was halted to make way for the international stage. And while the conversation has once again turned toward who will win the WNBA championship, there is a darker reality lurking in the shadows that journalist Tyler DeLuca couldn’t help but point out.
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“I feel like I can physically feel the WNBA Playoffs #negativity just waiting in the shadows after the general Team USA positivity of the last couple of weeks,” DeLuca wrote on X.
This WNBA season has been full of discourses that players might not exactly be looking forward to returning to. The FIBA World Cup provided a temporary sanctuary from much of that noise, with players from across the league coming together behind the same jersey and the same goal. Now, as they prepare to return to their respective teams with the season set to resume on September 17, the familiar friction surrounding the league is waiting for them once again. The players who spent the last few weeks standing shoulder-to-shoulder for Team USA will soon be back on opposite sides of the WNBA’s biggest storylines.
Sophie Cunningham’s comments about protecting young girls in locker rooms during an ESPN interview pushed one of the biggest discourses that the league has ever seen. And it only grew louder as former NBA players declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft, WNBA players openly advocated for greater inclusion, and protests were staged outside Indiana Fever games. For weeks, that conversation seemed almost impossible to escape, with one headline after another.
The noise around Caitlin Clark was hardly any quieter. The Fever star kept finding herself at the center of conversations about the physical treatment she receives on the court, with fans frequently questioning whether she is being protected enough and whether the officiating surrounding her is fair. Even the MVP race found itself amidst something unusual.
With A’ja Wilson leading the conversation, while Clark and Olivia Miles remain among the biggest fan favorites, WNBA reporter Khristina Williams, who has a media ballot for the league’s major postseason awards, had to publicly ask former college basketball player John O’Maley to stop emailing her after she received five emails from him in a two-hour span, along with multiple emails the previous month. O’Maley had been sending her a detailed, source-linked case for Caitlin Clark to receive first-place MVP consideration.
So, DeLuca’s fear is not without reason, because one of the league’s most familiar debates has already found its way back into the conversation.
Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are two of the biggest players in the league, and a rivalry narrative has always been painted between them ever since their college days. But in Berlin, they were teammates, learning how to play alongside each other while chasing the same gold medal.
Yet when the Americans celebrated their latest gold medal, a reporter asked Clark whether she and Angel Reese were friends now. It was a question that seemed harmless on the surface, but Clark’s reaction showed just how exhausted she was with the rivalry narrative surrounding the two stars.
“No matter what, there’s always going to be people that create those narratives and say whatever they want to say,” Clark said in an interview with ESPN. “There’s definitely no stopping that, and they’re always going to be there.”
This may be the clearest example of what DeLuca is worried about. The World Cup had briefly stripped away the narratives that usually surround these players, but it took only one question for one of the WNBA’s most persistent debates to resurface.
