May 19, 2023 

Locked on Women’s Basketball: Breaking down The Next’s preseason awards

Inside The Next staff's preseason predictions

The WNBA season starts today! To prepare, WNBA and college basketball writer at The Next, Em Adler, joins host Natalie Heavren to chat about The Next staff’s predictions, including everything from title and lottery favorites to what on-court trend will define the season and more.

First, Natalie asks Em how the staff at The Next voted in their championship team preseason predictions for the upcoming season. Unsurprisingly, staff overwhelmingly predicted the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty as the preseason favorities.

“We have two super teams coming into [the season] and as everyone is definitely aware by now, between Vegas in New York…Literally everyone at The Next included at least one of those two as one of their title favorites,” Em said.

“I think it’s really helpful to be able to sort of visually represent for people that one team might be the title favorite as we have with Vegas here…[I’m] pretty comfortable [that the] majority of us picked Vegas as our title favorite above New York. But it also serves [to demonstrate that] these two teams are a cut above the rest and there’s some contenders along the way.”


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Em and Natalie also discuss lottery favorites, league trends, the most impactful free agency additions and MVP favorites. You won’t want to miss this episode as you prepare for another exciting season of WNBA basketball. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to keep learning about the 2023 WNBA season, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more!


Add Locked on Women’s Basketball to your daily routine

Here at The Next, in addition to the 24/7/365 written content our staff provides, we also host the daily Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast. Join us Monday through Saturday each week as we discuss all things WNBA, collegiate basketball, basketball history and much more. Listen wherever you find podcasts or watch on YouTube.


Written by The Next

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