thelesterlee
The 2025 WNBA Draft is Monday night. I always forget how quickly the WNBA season starts moments after these women played a full year of college ball. The only thing that saved Caitlin Clark from a strange, disappointing rookie campaign was the Paris Olympics—granting Caitlin a few weeks off to just chill for a sec.
Let’s run through some random thoughts heading into the 2025 WNBA Draft that I will contentify with numbers and bold words.
1. Paige Bueckers makes Dallas an instant playoff contender
Coming into the year, Paige Bueckers was already sitting cozy as the No. 1 pick of the 2025 WNBA Draft. But it was Paige’s legendary performance throughout March Madness that let me know she is a sicko—capable of turning her play up to another untapped level when the games matter most.
Paige helped lead UConn to their first National Championship since 2016—setting the Huskies record for points in an NCAA tournament game with her 40-burger on Oklahoma. Bueckers averaged 24.8 points, cashing in 54.5% of his 2-point attempts and shooting 48.3% from 3 with a 2.0 assist-to-turnover ratio throughout the tourny.
Dallas won 9 games last season. They sucked. They earned the No. 1 pick in the draft.
Paige has some heavy lifting to do. Dallas’s second-leading scorer last season, Satou Sabally, was traded to Phoenix. Natasha Howard is Caitlin Clark’s new enforcer in Indiana. Monique Billings got snatched up by the Golden State Valkyries in the expansion draft.
It’ll be Paige Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale vs. everybody and everybody are the underdogs.
But speaking of the expansion draft, let’s talk Valks.
2. Who will be the Golden State Valkyries first-ever draft pick?
The last expansion team to join the WNBA was the Atlanta Dream in 2008. They selected Tamara Young out of James Madison. She had a decent 12-year career but not quite the franchise-altering talent you’d like to build a brand-new organization around.
Golden State has the No. 5 pick. Here are 3 names I like as culture-establishing talents—hopefully capable of bigger impacts than my girl Tamara.
1. Aneesah Morrow: Your 2025 Katrina McClain Power Forward of the Year Award winner, Aneesah Morrow. She led the country with 485 total rebounds—almost 100 more than the woman with the 2nd most. I don’t think it’s a coincidence the team that won the 2024 WNBA Title—the New York Liberty—led the league in rebounds. You control the glass, you control the game. Having the ball is good.
2. Georgia Amoore: Despite a heartbreaking elimination off a shanked wide-open floater, Georgia Amoore is still the best playmaker in the draft. Amoore averaged 19.6 points this season at Kentucky and her 6.9 assists ranked 3rd in the country.
GEORGIA AMOORE TODAY 🔥
• 43 POINTS
• 8 ASSISTS
• 7/12 3PM
• 15/22 FG— Women’s Hoops Network (@WomensHoops_USA) February 2, 2025
Shout out to Oklahoma women’s basketball. Their defense loves watching people score 40 on them. They’re just big fans of the game over there.
3. Hailey Van Lith: [Stephen A. Smith voice] YOU HAVE TO CARE ABOUT MARKETING IF YOU WANT THE GAME TO GROW.
Unlike the loudest, egocentric voices, constantly telling WNBA fans how important it is to attract them, non-WNBA fans—I think teams should try to win games instead of TV ratings.
HOWEVER, Hailey Van Lith is already sort of a celebrity—posing for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue—an honor I didn’t realize still existed considering Sports Illustrated is just Chat GPT, computer-generated dogshit now—but the point is, this brand new franchise, in the same city as Steph Curry, may want to draft a popular player who is somewhat of a household name already.
At the end of the day, not a ton of stars this year. Not the ideal season for Washington to own a million picks. Makes a little more sense to rack up picks for the next draft
3. The 2026 rookie class
Next spring, we have some real game-changers coming into the league.
Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles was easily the second-best player in the 2025 WNBA Draft before announcing she was transferring to TCU for another shot at a college championship. And real quick because I won’t be writing a full article about it. Olivia Miles is a loser for this. I know Notre Dame had an odd locker room and TCU helped rehabilitate Hailey Van Lith’s image but TCU eliminated Notre Dame from the Sweet 16. This is Kevin Durant joining the Warriors after Golden State beat the OKC Thunder. Nasty work.
Azzi Fudd may be the most talented player in college and she’s elected to defend the title with UConn next season.
And then there’s Lauren Betts.
LAUREN BETTS TONIGHT 🔥
• 31 POINTS
• 10 REBOUNDS
• 3 BLOCKS
• 15/16 FG— Women’s Hoops Network (@WomensHoops_USA) March 29, 2025
Dump the ball down low to Betts, and casually backpedal to the other side of the court knowing your team has an automatic 2 points on the board.
But the 2025 draft class isn’t void of talent. Some potential gems are joining the Big Leagues.
4. The Best of the Rest
Let’s briefly talk about some of the women at top of draft boards who aren’t named Paige Bueckers.
- Dominique Malonga: The 6-foot-6 center from France averaged 15.4 points and 10.3 rebounds for ASVEL Lyon last season. No idea what they’re putting in the water over there but Trump needs to increase the tariffs on French basketball exports so American players can get their jobs back.
1 minute of Dominique Malonga doing freakish stuff creating for herself as a driver pic.twitter.com/E5hVbDWA35
— Hunter Cruse (@HunterCruse14) April 8, 2025
- Sonia Cintron: NEW YORK STAAAND UP. (JK she’s from Scarsdale which is one of the richest suburbs on the coast.) But despite being from the wealthy burbs, Cintron is a dog, a perimeter defender capable of making it a loooong day at work for whichever women is cursed to be guarded by her.
Sonia Citron thats how you feeling ??? pic.twitter.com/4Fh885dsEG
— Shabazz 💫 (@ShowCaseShabazz) March 29, 2025
5. Caitlin Clark
The Indiana Fever don’t have a first-round pick.
I’m only mentioning Caitlin Clark for SEO reasons.
Last year, you were not allowed to discuss the WNBA without mentioning Caitlin Clark’s name, otherwise, you were a hater—refusing to acknowledge her impact on TV ratings—and you were somehow perpetuating some manufactured reverse racism against white people.
So to all the Clark Dorks, here you go. Please don’t doxx me or send SWAT teams to my home. Caitlin Clark is really good. Leave my family alone.
If you enjoyed what you read, head over to our Substack. We’ve got more content making fun of the ridiculous world we live in, sent directly to your email inbox daily.
Follow us over on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings