The Commissioner’s Cup is over. Or, is it?
Tuesday’s Cup final was a rematch of the 2023 Cup championship, and on both occasions, the New York Liberty defeated the Las Vegas Aces.
On Friday night, the Liberty get to re-live the 2024 Cup championship game—even if they’d rather not, as they lost to the Minnesota Lynx. After taking a few days to celebrate their triumph, New York welcomes league-best Minnesota to Barclays Center (7:30 p.m. ET,
ION).
The Aces, meanwhile, have a chance to call back to their 2022 Cup victory, when they defeated the Chicago Sky in the championship game. Before making the trek to Brooklyn for the Cup title game, the Aces stopped in Chicago, where they grabbed a win over the Sky. Now, they can bookend their Cup loss to the Liberty with a home win over the Sky (10 p.m. ET, ION).
If the Cup patterns continue to hold, that means the Lynx will best the Liberty, while the Aces will, again, get the win over the Sky.
So, how might those results become reality? Here’s what I see as pivotal in both games. In the comments, give us your thoughts.
Can the Lynx lock up a win over the Liberty?
While Napheesa Collier has returned to team activities, the 2024 Commissioner’s Cup MVP will not compete in this Cup rematch, with the Lynx yet to provide a timeline for her season debut.
Still, the first-place Lynx, who now claim the services of 2025 Cup MVP Natasha Howard, should enter their first matchup with the Liberty of the 2026 season with plenty of confidence.
Foremost, Minnesota, despite not only missing Phee but also empowering a rookie point guard in Olivia Miles, has been a paragon of consistency. They execute at near-elite level on both ends of the floor night after night. The two-player All-Star tandem of Miles and the aforementioned Howard provides a high offensive floor that is then elevated by the shooting of an experienced supporting cast, including a sneaky top-five shooter in Nia Coffey.
Coffey also epitomizes the Lynx’s defensive identity, as she has blossomed into the best version of her defensive self—a disruptive defensive playmaker who also can lock down her mark—in this Minnesota system.
The Liberty, in contrast, have been defined by inconsistency that, only partly, can be excused by the team’s availability issues. New York ranks in the top five in the league in both offensive and defensive ratings, yet the team can experience significant struggles on one side of the ball or the other, struggles that should be rarer than they have been due to the level of talent—arguably the highest-concentration of talent in the league—that this team possesses.
The Liberty’s 2026 track record suggest a post-Cup letdown is in store.
However, maybe Tuesday’s Cup final was the Sabrina Ionescu breakout game. She looked like the old Sab, striking fear as she ambitiously fired away from 3. Ionescu got up a season-high 13 3-point attempts, making five, on her way to a season-best 26 points.
If Sabrina can re-establish herself as a legit, high-volume 3-point shooting threat, the Liberty offense can begin to reach the high level befitting of the team’s talent.
Will Jackie Young light up the Sky, again?
At this point, it’s expected that Chelsea Gray will be at her very best when a trophy is on the line.
When the Aces routed the Sky to win the 2022 Commissioner’s Cup, Gray claimed the MVP, a prelude to her WNBA Finals MVP later that season.
Except, in Tuesday’s most-recent Cup final, Chelsea was unable to activate peak Point Gawd mode, thrown off her game after getting hit in the nose about 90 seconds into the contest. The off-night doesn’t diminish Gray’s big-game cred, and it will be no surprise when she reminds everyone of it next time the Aces face a high-stakes matchup.
The defending champs likely don’t consider a game against the Sky to have such stakes. While the Aces failed to fully shut the door on the Sky last Sunday, Vegas never was truly threatened by Chicago’s persistence.
But with A’ja Wilson’s status uncertain due to the ankle injury that kept her out of the Cup championship, the Aces are going to need an extra effort from someone to ensure a win. Will it be Gray?
Or, will Jackie Young remain on one?
Last Sunday, Young treated the Sky to an all-round display of excellence, scoring 28 points, hitting four 3s, tossing eight assists and grabbing five boards.
She then almost single-handedly drug the Aces to the Cup, powering her way to a game-high 31 points as she also dished eight assists.
After a slow start to her 2026 season, Young has ignited into an unstoppable force, dictating the defense as she drains pull-up 3s, works her way into an automatic midranger, unleashes the best slow step in the game or finds a teammate for a bucket.
On the other side, only one member of the Sky remains from the 2022 squad that lost the Cup to the Aces: Courtney Vandersloot.
Sloot, of course, subsequently spent a few seasons in New York, winning the Cup over the Aces in 2023, before returning to Chicago ahead of last season. A torn ACL derailed her feel-good and full-circle end-of-career opportunity.
Friday night will mark just her third game since her return. As would be expected, the results have been mixed. In her first game back, when Chicago enjoyed a record-setting offensive outburst against the Portland Fire, Sloot turned in a vintage performance, not missing a shot as she scored 10 points and distributed seven assists.
In the previous loss to the Aces, the passing was still there, with Vandersloot tallying eight assists, but the scoring was absent, as she did not scratch from the field and scored all five of her points from the free throw line.
