With just four days left to wait before the Golden State Valkyries are able to select their first player for their inaugural 2025 team, the WNBA has decided to add even more excitement to the first week of December with the reveal of the 2025 WNBA schedule. May 16 marks the return of the league for its 28th year – making this 1996-born writer feel very old.
Key matchups that fans will want to see, including games between the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty and Chicago Sky versus the Indiana Fever, are immediately atop the schedule, and the Valkyries also get the honor of an opening night matchup with their new California state rival Los Angeles Sparks. That game will be at Chase Center in San Francisco, the first home game for the brand new franchise.
An interesting venue change is also featured in the drop. The Connecticut Sun’s July 15 game against the Indiana Fever will be at TD Garden, marking the second trip to Boston for the Sun in a row.
The first Commissioner’s Cup game night of the year will be on Sunday, June 1. That slate of games includes a great matchup between the Connecticut Sun and New York Liberty, as well as the Minnesota Lynx’s first game trying to get back to back Cup titles against the Valkyries in San Francisco.
The regular Commissioner’s Cup games will stop play on Tuesday, June 17, with July 1 set as the date for a championship game. Hopefully, the league is prepared for another scheduling snafu like last season where the Liberty had to host the Lynx at UBS Arena in Elmont, NY, instead of Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. While UBS Arena was a wonderful venue, the feeling of high-octane basketball being played in New York was lost in how hard it was to actually get to the arena itself.
A new add-on to the format for the in-season tourney includes each player on the winning team receiving $5,000 in crypto, as the Commissioner’s Cup’s sponsor – Coinbase – has dedicated $120,00 in cryptocurrency to the championship pot.
The Commissioner’s Cup is gonna run from June 1-17 and the title game will be on July 1.
But here’s the big news: each player on the winning team will get $5000 in crypto. Coinbase, which sponsors the Commissioner’s Cup, committed $120,000 in cryptocurrency to the prize pool.
— Mike Vorkunov (@mikevorkunov.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 7:12 PM
The first matchup of the regular season between last year’s Finals teams will be on Wednesday, July 30, when the Liberty travel to Target Center to face off with the Lynx. Their next matchup after that will be in Brooklyn on Saturday, Aug. 10. Then, the Liberty will go on the road again for their third game against the Lynx on Saturday, Aug. 16. The regular-season series between the two clubs ends on Tuesday, Aug. 19 at Barclays Center.
Any games between these two teams – especially with how the series itself ended – are sure to be must-see contests.
The regular season ends on Thursday, Sept. 11 with a four-game slate. This season will have 44 games played, the most the league has had since its inception. This will help to accommodate the 13th team in the league, Golden State, get enough action. We will likely continue to see steps towards increasing regular season games with the addition of the Portland and Toronto franchises in the next few years.
Some teams, like the Las Vegas Aces and Chicago Sky, immediately got some jokes off related to the schedule drop. The Aces went with a classic Key and Peele sketch:
𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐄 🤝#ALLINLV pic.twitter.com/4p9slE6drX
— Las Vegas Aces (@LVAces) December 2, 2024
While the Chicago Sky opted for a TikTok trend to deliver their schedule to their fans online:
Suspect’s schedule just released and hopes we can all take a joke 😂 Can’t wait to see you in 2025! #Skytown pic.twitter.com/Dh7aPtpD3M
— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) December 2, 2024
There are plenty of games to circle on this schedule, and with four extra games added to the calendar for all 13 franchises, it will be interesting to see how teams manage their workload and veteran players during this unprecedented length of a season.