What’s going on with the Phoenix Mercury?
It’s something many WNBA fans are wondering as last year’s runners-up continue to struggle in 2026. A near-blowout loss to the New York Liberty on Wednesday dropped the Mercury’s record to 2-6, and they’re currently No. 14 in the standings—just a game and a half ahead of the hapless Connecticut Sun.
This is far from an ideal situation, and it’s safe to say that the Mercury won’t be sneaking up on anyone like they did in 2025. But we’re not even three weeks
into the regular season, and for a team that expects to return to the playoffs—and possibly even the Finals—that’s far too early to throw in the towel.
They still have Alyssa Thomas
There are a handful of players in the WNBA who you never want to count out, and Alyssa Thomas is definitely one of them. The multi-talented forward has been one of the league’s most productive players for well over a decade, and over the years she’s starred on many regular-season powerhouses with a wide variety of supporting casts.
Thomas is once again pulling her weight and then some.
In her first season in Phoenix, the Mercury used Thomas’ talents as a rebounder and passer to feature her as the hub of a “positionless” offense, and the results were terrific: Thomas led the WNBA in assists per game (9.2) while breaking her own record for triple-doubles in a season (eight), finishing No. 3 in MVP voting and earning first-team All-WNBA and All-Defense honors.
Things have been more or less the same for Thomas in 2026, and don’t expect that to change. In fact, she’s been even better in some ways, posting the most prolific scoring numbers (16.9 points per game on 53.4 percent shooting) of her career, and she’s taking advantage of an increase in foul calls league-wide, leveraging her tremendous physicality to shoot 7.3 free throws per game.
The statistical brilliance speaks for itself, yet what’s most important about Thomas’ consistency in this context is that it significantly raises the floor of her team. Dating back to 2017, Thomas has never missed the playoffs, and her penchant for playing at a near-superhuman level in the biggest games should be reassurance that she won’t let the Mercury falter for much longer. Thomas may be 34 years old, but she hasn’t slowed down one bit, and that’s the single most important factor in Phoenix returning to form.
Kahleah Copper hasn’t gotten going yet
It should go without saying that if a team is going to play at their best, their highest-volume offensive player needs to shoot the ball well.
For Kahleah Copper and the Mercury, that hasn’t often been the case.
When Copper was traded from Chicago to Phoenix in 2024, she was at the height of her powers, leading the Mercury in scoring (21.1 points per game) in the final year of the Diana Taurasi/Brittney Griner era. There was a lot to like about the superbly athletic wing carrying the mantle of Mercury stardom into the future, especially when Phoenix complemented her with Thomas and Satou Sabally the following offseason.
Fast forward to 2026, and with Sabally now in New York, Copper has gone back to her usual workload on offense, posting a usage rate above 30 percent for the second time in her career (Basketball Reference). The problem is that she’s not hitting shots she normally makes, and it’s taking a toll on the Mercury’s offense; Copper is shooting 34.3 percent from the field and a woeful 16.7 percent on 3-pointers—both by far career-lows—and when considering how much Phoenix relies on her offensively, all those missed shots are starting to add up.
The good news is twofold.
For one, these numbers are clear statistical outliers; Copper’s 3-point shot has waxed and waned throughout her career, so while she probably won’t match the 40.4 percent accuracy she shot in 2023, it would be overly pessimistic to think she’s going to continue to shoot the ball as poorly as she has thus far in 2026.
Copper is still getting to the rim with ease, too. According to Basketball Reference, she’s taking roughly the same percent of shots (21.4 percent) from 0-3 feet from the basket as she did in her first two seasons in Phoenix, and her efficiency on those shots (63.3 percent) is actually slightly higher than her career average. Like Thomas, Copper has also been taking full advantage of the more frequent whistles, averaging 7.0 free throw attempts per game, and it doesn’t take a basketball genius to figure out why; she’s still arguably the most explosive wing in the WNBA, and the fact that she’s getting to the rim at her usual rate while drawing heaps of fouls is a great sign.
Once Copper’s jumpers start falling—and they will—the Mercury will be much better off.
They’ve been better than their record suggests
Please, save your eye-rolls until the end.
According to the metrics, the Mercury haven’t been that bad.
Though they’re in the basement in terms of wins and losses, their net rating of -0.2 is much more favorable. That efficiency differential is higher than that of the Chicago Sky, Portland Fire, Toronto Tempo, Seattle Storm, Washington Mystics and Los Angeles Sparks, each of whom have a better record than the Mercury do.
Delving deeper into the statistics, it’s hard to find any one culprit for the Mercury’s struggles.
They actually rank in the top four in several of the four factors (free throw rate, turnover rate, opponents’ free throw rate and opponents’ offensive rebounding rate), and none of the other metrics on the WNBA’s advanced stats page are particularly alarming, save maybe for Phoenix’s relatively poor defense (107.6 points allowed per 100 possessions; No. 12 in the WNBA).
Granted, this is all in 14 total minutes, and any percentage and rate statistics with such a miniscule sample size must be taken with a large dollop of salt. The difference between a clutch win and a clutch loss can very well be a single made or missed shot, and those simply haven’t gone the Mercury’s way yet. While “luck” may be too simplistic of an explanation, the fact that so many of Phoenix’s games are coming down to last-minute plays suggests that a quick turnaround may not be as far-fetched as it seems.
