Culture
WNBA power rankings: Will the Chicago Sky slip out of playoff contention?
After focusing on the top half of the playoff bracket last week, it’s time to check in on a surprisingly spirited race for the eighth seed. With about two weeks left in the regular season, seven playoff teams are essentially set in stone, though the matchups aren’t yet set.
There is drama at the bottom of the postseason bracket. Chicago has been in a tailspin since the Olympic break, relinquishing what had been a comfortable lead over the lottery teams. The Sky have lost six in a row, suffering from the absence of Chennedy Carter (illness) and already without Marina Mabrey due to the pre-deadline trade. Chicago is still slotted into the No. 8 seed by virtue of a 2-1 head-to-head tiebreaker over Atlanta; however, a Sept. 17 showdown against the Dream looms charge. The Sky don’t have a true incentive to tank out of the playoffs because they don’t own their first-round pick, but they do have a swap with Dallas. If it seems like the Wings also will land outside the top eight, missing the postseason would ensure that Chicago at least gets a lottery pick, even if it’s not the best selection.
The Atlanta Dream (11-21) have now matched the Chicago Sky’s record! 😳 #WNBA pic.twitter.com/ei16oNr1V1
— I talk hoops 🏀 (@trendyhoopstars) September 2, 2024
Atlanta seems to be the betting favorite to make the postseason. The Dream have the fifth-best net rating in the league since the Olympic break and are tied in the standings with the Sky. They also got a gift in the form of Natasha Cloud’s suspension for technical fouls accumulation against the Mercury, improving the possibility of stealing a win in Phoenix to end their West Coast road trip. Atlanta also doesn’t own its first-round pick in the next draft, so it has every incentive to push toward the postseason.
A week ago, it seemed as if only two teams were in contention for this final playoff spot. But recent surges by the Dallas Wings and Washington Mystics added additional intrigue. Dallas had won three in a row — including back-to-back wins over Las Vegas and Minnesota — before succumbing to Indiana on Sunday. Even so, the Wings are only two games out of the final playoff seed spot, and their next three contests are against the Mystics, Dream and Sky, which gives Dallas a chance to make up ground quickly. The Wings also have the most talent among any team chasing the playoffs and the best chance of winning postseason games if they make it there.
Washington also sports a recent three-game winning streak and hasn’t really lost a step since trading away Myisha Hines-Allen. The Mystics have four games remaining against the other three teams in this field, and their recent play suggests they are probably closer to a .500 team than the one that started the season 0-12.
The race for eight isn’t nearly as consequential as how the top seeds shake out, considering most of these teams aren’t really capable of hanging with the New York Liberty in a three-game playoff series, there is always value in seeing how players respond to game pressure and higher stakes. Even if younger squads like the Sky and Mystics don’t advance to the playoffs, merely being in the chase is a useful experience. The games still matter.
Three standout performances
1. White T A’ja Wilson is absolutely terrifying
The two-time MVP and reigning two-time defensive player of the year has become additionally famous for her tunnel fits over the years, dazzling as much off the court as she does on it. But recently, Wilson has taken to a simpler approach, coming to games in a plain white T-shirt and sweats before changing into her Aces uniform. As she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I have to want to put on clothes. Right now, where I am, I don’t feel like I deserve to put on (dressier) clothes.”
No matter what Wilson wears to a game, defenses have no prayer of stopping her. On Sunday against Phoenix — an opponent that boasts Brittney Griner but little other forward depth — Wilson scored 41 points on 16-of-23 shooting, adding 17 rebounds, one block and no turnovers in an 18-point road win. Wilson became the first player in WNBA history to post 40 points and 17 rebounds in a single game, and she tied Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi for the most 40-point games ever. As a reminder, Wilson is only 28.
Through 32 games this season, Wilson has 42 turnovers, which belies comprehension. She had to create more of her offense than usual to start the year without Chelsea Gray and still regularly navigates through double teams. She operates with a live dribble considering how often she faces up to score, instead of with her back to the basket. Turnovers should be the price of doing business for such a high-volume scorer (the highest in league history to date, if her average holds for the rest of the season), and she still leads the WNBA in turnover percentage (5.5), more than two percentage points better than second-place Kayla Thornton.
The Aces were 3-4 since the Olympic break (19-12 overall) when Wilson made that statement. That record may have made Wilson feel that she wasn’t performing to her standard — and why I argued last week that she wasn’t the no-brainer MVP — but it’s still worth acknowledging just how ridiculous her individual performances have been. No less an authority than Taurasi called Wilson’s season “unthinkable.” Already one of the game’s all-time greats, Wilson continues to get better.
“What she’s doing right now is unthinkable. … She’s just unguardable. You guys look at her as a post, I look at her as a guard.”
Diana Taurasi to @AlecCipollini about the Aces’ A’ja Wilson against the Mercury (41 points, 17 rebound) and her dominance in the WNBA this season. pic.twitter.com/6dshfeXf1F
— DANA (@iam_DanaScott) September 1, 2024
2. Satou Sabally’s 3-pointer is a difference-maker
The first thing that stood out when Sabally returned to the German national team was how comfortably she stepped into pull-up 3-pointers. The long ball has historically been the differentiator between good and great seasons for Sabally. When she shoots above 30 percent (which isn’t even league-average) from distance, she’s an All-Star.
Sabally is currently canning 48.8 percent of her triples, including nine during the Wings’ recent three-game winning streak. Dallas forces Sabally to the perimeter on offense more so than European teams because of the glut of frontcourt players on the Wings, but Sabally is making that a winning proposition. Even though she’s taken nearly as many midranger jumpers (23) as shots in the restricted area (24), her efficiency hasn’t wavered. Her effective field-goal percentage is a career-best 55.6 (though seven games, admittedly), and Dallas is back from the dead after a horrific start to the season.
Satou Sabally stuffed the stat sheet to lead the @DallasWings to victory!
🔥 28 PTS (10-14 FGM)
🔥 7 REB
🔥 5 AST
🔥 4 3PM
🔥 2 STLS pic.twitter.com/YBA6tH9e3I— NBA (@NBA) August 28, 2024
If anything, Sabally might be better served shifting more of her shot attempts beyond the arc. In the loss to Indiana, she made 4-of-9 3-pointers but only 2-of-7 2-pointers, as she shared the court the entire game with two other bigs. The Wings’ defense has still been terrible even though they have strung together a few wins, so they need to continue to put up high point totals. More 3s from Sabally, especially if she is shooting the ball this well, could be part of the recipe. It would also save the oft-injured star from taking a beating in the paint, since Dallas needs her on the court as much as possible to close out the regular season.
3. The best backcourt in the league?
The superlatives keep coming for Caitlin Clark, but her backcourt mate Kelsey Mitchell has been no less impressive during Indiana’s surge. Since the Olympic break, Mitchell is the WNBA’s second-leading scorer (she’s ninth for the full season), while shooting 50 percent overall, 40 percent on 3-pointers and 90 percent on free throws. Leave her for a second, as Sabally did when she and Arike Ogunbowale miscommunicated on a switch Sunday, and Mitchell will rise up with no hesitation. She and Clark have an easy chemistry on backdoor cuts as Mitchell is one of the fastest guards in the game, especially when her defender turns her head for a beat. Indiana’s transition attack has been effective with Mitchell running the floor and Clark hitting her with outlet passes.
THE FEVER ARE THE MOST FUN TEAM IN BASKETBALLpic.twitter.com/cRefDPsh4w
— whitney medworth (@its_whitney) September 1, 2024
Against Dallas, the pair combined for 64 points and 15 assists. To be fair, the Wings’ defense creates some inflated offensive totals, but the ease with which Mitchell and Clark created offense was something to behold.
It begs the question of whether the Fever already have the best backcourt in the WNBA. Neither Clark nor Mitchell is an ace defender, but that isn’t exactly necessary when they’re scoring at this rate. Perimeter players for New York and Las Vegas will have their say in the postseason, but for now, the fact that Clark and Mitchell already entered the discussion is a win for Indiana.
(As an aside, between Wilson and Mitchell, it’s been quite a moment for the 2018 draft class. Even beyond those top two picks, Gabby Williams, Jordin Canada, Hines-Allen, Ariel Atkins and Monique Billings could all play meaningful roles in the stretch run of the 2024 season).
Rookie of the week
Kamilla Cardoso, Chicago Sky
Cardoso had a bit of a lull, taking four shot attempts in each of the Sky’s losses against Washington and Indiana last week. She responded with the best game of her young career against Minnesota (albeit another loss). Part of the change was how she was used in the offense. The Sky generally throw the ball directly to Cardoso in the post; considering she’s 6-foot-7, runs the floor well, and works hard to seal her defender, it’s the most efficient way of getting Cardoso involved. However, it’s also predictable and allows defenses to bring help. Even a team like the Lynx that isn’t particularly tall inside can send a second defender to bother Cardoso at the rim.
What was fun about Cardoso’s performance against Minnesota was that she ran some pick-and-rolls with Lindsey Allen, and Allen delivered a couple of pinpoint pocket passes that gave Cardoso open looks inside. Chicago’s spacing isn’t always good enough to enable clean entry passes into the paint, but if Cardoso evacuates the lane to set a screen, that creates some daylight inside. Cardoso isn’t the most versatile big offensively, but she can definitely do more than catch lobs over the top. The Sky should be using these opportunities to expand her scoring skill set, especially with a roster that doesn’t have a ton of offensive pop.
Kamilla Cardoso continues to improve with each game ✅
The rookie posted a career-high 22 points and 9 rebounds in today’s loss vs. the Lynx!#WelcomeToTheW pic.twitter.com/e14joh3OQx
— WNBA (@WNBA) September 1, 2024
Game to circle
Las Vegas Aces at New York Liberty, 4 p.m. (ET) Sunday
This is the last regular-season meeting between the 2023 WNBA finalists, and thus the last chance for the Aces to prove that the Liberty haven’t passed them by. Getting swept during the regular season doesn’t mean Las Vegas can’t flip the script during the playoffs — for instance, in 2020, the Storm lost both regular-season games to the Aces but swept them in the finals. But another loss certainly wouldn’t be a good omen, especially with Las Vegas now at full strength.
(Photo of Angel Reese: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
Maybe you woke up this morning haunted by the first four lines of W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — or tickled by its tongue-in-cheek handling of existential dread. (Not ringing any bells? Click here to begin the Poetry Challenge).
This is a love poem. Perhaps that seems like an obvious thing to say about a poem with “Loving” in its title, but there isn’t much romance in the opening stanza.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Ada Limón, poet
Nonetheless, the poem soon makes clear that love is very much on its mind.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
David Sedaris, writer
The polished informality gives the impression of a decidedly cerebral speaker — someone who’s looking at love philosophically, thinking about how it works and what it means.
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet
Musing this way — arguing in this fashion — he stands in a long line of playful, thoughtful poetic lovers going back at least to the 16th century. He sounds a bit like Christopher Marlowe’s passionate shepherd:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
Auden’s poem, like Marlowe’s, is written in four-beat lines:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Josh Radnor, actor
And it features strong end rhymes:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Samantha Harvey, writer
These tetrameter couplets represent a long-established poetic love language. Not too serious or sappy, but with room for both earnestness and whimsy. And even for professions of the opposite of love, as in this nursery rhyme, adapted from a 17th-century epigram:
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this I know and know full well
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.
There is some of this anti-love spirit in Auden’s poem too, but it mainly follows a general rule of love poetry: The person speaking is usually the more loving one.
This makes sense. To write a poem requires effort, art, inspiration. To speak in verse is to tease, to cajole, to seduce, all actions that suggest an excess of desire. That’s why it’s conventional to refer to the “I” in a poem like this as the Lover and the “you” as the Beloved. The line “Let the more loving one be me” could summarize a lot of the love poetry of the last few thousand years.
But who, in this case, is the beloved? This isn’t a poem to the stars, but about them. Or maybe a poem that uses the stars as a conceit and our complicated feelings about them as a screen for other difficult emotions.
What the stars have to do with love is a tricky question. The answer may just be that the poem assumes a relationship and then plays with the implications of its assumption.
This kind of play also has a long history. Since love is both abstract and susceptible to cliché, poets are eager to liken it to everything else under the sun: birds, bees, planets, stars, the movement of the tides and the cycle of the seasons. Andrew Marvell’s “Definition of Love,” from the 1600s, wraps its ardor in math:
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
The literary term for this is wit. The formidable 18th-century English wordsmith Samuel Johnson defined a type of wit as “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.” “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together,” he wrote; that kind of conceptual discord defines “The More Loving One.”
The second stanza is, when you think about it, a perfect non sequitur. A hypothetical, general question is asked:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Mary Roach, writer
The answer is a personal declaration that is moving because it doesn’t seem to apply only or primarily to stars:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tim Egan, writer
Does this disjunction make it easier or harder to remember? Either way, these couplets start to reveal just how curious this poem is. We might find ourselves curious about who wrote them, and whom he might have loved. Tomorrow we’ll get to know Auden and his work a little better.
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your task today: Learn the second stanza!
Let’s start with the first couplet in this stanza. Fill in the rhyming words.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
Literature
Oedipa Maas from ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
“The unforgettable, cartoonish protagonist of this unusually short novel is a California housewife accidentally turned private investigator and literary interpreter, and the mystery she’s attempting to solve — or, more specifically, the conspiracy she stumbles upon — is nothing less than capitalism itself,” says Ngai, 54. “As Oedipa traces connections between various crackpots, the novel highlights the peculiarly asocial sociality of postwar U.S. society, which gets figured as a network of alienations.”
Sula Peace from ‘Sula’ (1973) by Toni Morrison
“Sula arguably begins to disappear as soon as she’s introduced — despite the fact that the novel bears her name. Other characters die quickly, or are noticeably flat. This raises the politically charged question of who gets to ‘develop’ or be a protagonist in American novels and who doesn’t. The novel’s unusual character system is part of its meditation on anti-Black racism and historical violence.”
The speaker of ‘Lunch Poems’ (1964) by Frank O’Hara
“Lyric poems are fundamentally different from narrative fiction in part because they have speakers as opposed to narrators. Perhaps it’s a stretch to nominate the speaker of ‘Lunch Poems’ as a main character, but this book changed things by highlighting the centrality of queer counterpublics to U.S. culture as a whole, and by exploring the joys and risks of everyday intimacy with strangers therein.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
More in Literature
See the rest of the issue
Let’s memorize a poem! Not because it’s good for us or because we think we should, but because it’s fun, a mental challenge with a solid aesthetic reward. You can amuse yourself, impress your friends and maybe discover that your way of thinking about the world — or even, as you’ll see, the universe — has shifted a bit.
Over the next five days, we’ll look closely at a great poem by one of our favorite poets, and we’ll have games, readings and lots of encouragement to help you learn it by heart. Some of you know how this works: Last year more Times readers than we could count memorized a jaunty 18-line recap of an all-night ferry ride. (If you missed that adventure, it’s not too late to embark. The ticket is still valid.)
This time, we’re training our telescopes on W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — a clever, compact meditation on love, disappointment and the night sky.
Here’s the first of its four stanzas, read for us by Matthew McConaughey:
The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Matthew McConaughey, actor and poet
In four short lines we get a brisk, cynical tour of the universe: hell and the heavens, people and animals, coldness and cruelty. Commonplace observations — that the stars are distant; that life can be dangerous — are wound into a charming, provocative insight. The tone is conversational, mixing decorum and mild profanity in a manner that makes it a pleasure to keep reading.
Here’s Tracy K. Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate, with the second stanza:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tracy K. Smith, poet
These lines abruptly shift the focus from astronomy to love, from the universal to the personal. Imagine how it would feel if the stars had massive, unrequited crushes on us! The speaker, couching his skepticism in a coy, hypothetical question, seems certain that we wouldn’t like this at all.
This certainty leads him to a remarkable confession, a moment of startling vulnerability. The poem’s title, “The More Loving One,” is restated with sweet, disarming frankness. Our friend is wearing his heart on his well-tailored sleeve.
The poem could end right there: two stanzas, point and counterpoint, about how we appreciate the stars in spite of their indifference because we would rather love than be loved.
But the third stanza takes it all back. Here’s Alison Bechdel reading it:
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Alison Bechdel, graphic novelist
The speaker downgrades his foolish devotion to qualified admiration. No sooner has he established himself as “the more loving one” than he gives us — and perhaps himself — reason to doubt his ardor. He likes the stars fine, he guesses, but not so much as to think about them when they aren’t around.
The fourth and final stanza, read by Yiyun Li, takes this disenchantment even further:
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Yiyun Li, author
Wounded defiance gives way to a more rueful, resigned state of mind. If the universe were to snuff out its lights entirely, the speaker reckons he would find beauty in the void. A starless sky would make him just as happy.
Though perhaps, like so many spurned lovers before and after, he protests a little too much. Every fan of popular music knows that a song about how you don’t care that your baby left you is usually saying the opposite.
The last line puts a brave face on heartbreak.
So there you have it. In just 16 lines, this poem manages to be somber and funny, transparent and elusive. But there’s more to it than that. There is, for one thing, a voice — a thinking, feeling person behind those lines.
When he wrote “The More Loving One,” in the 1950s, Wystan Hugh Auden was among the most beloved writers in the English-speaking world. Before this week is over there will be more to say about Auden, but like most poets he would have preferred that we give our primary attention to the poem.
Its structure is straightforward and ingenious. Each of the four stanzas is virtually a poem unto itself — a complete thought expressed in one or two sentences tied up in a neat pair of couplets. Every quatrain is a concise, witty observation: what literary scholars call an epigram.
This makes the work of memorization seem less daunting. We can take “The More Loving One” one epigram at a time, marvelling at how the four add up to something stranger, deeper and more complex than might first appear.
So let’s go back to the beginning and try to memorize that insouciant, knowing first stanza. Below you’ll find a game we made to get you started. Give it a shot, and come back tomorrow for more!
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your first task: Learn the first four lines!
Let’s start with the first couplet. Fill in the rhyming words.
Monday
Love, the cosmos and everything in between, all in 16 lines.
Tuesday (Available tomorrow)
What’s love got to do with it?
Wednesday (Available April 22)
How to write about love? Be a little heartsick (and the best poet of your time).
Thursday (Available April 23)
Are we alone in the universe? Does it matter?
Friday (Available April 24)
You did it! You’re a star.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
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