New Zealand basketballer Charlisse Leger-Walker (L) in an WNBA pre season match against Toronto, April 29 2026.
Photo: BAILEY MCLEAN
Basketball’s WNBA’s 30th season is all set for tip off, with most fans’ eyes are on things like expansion teams, a new collective bargaining agreement, and a title race led by the New York Liberty.
But in Aotearoa, it’s whether Charlisse Leger-Walker can make a splash in her rookie season.
It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for Leger-Walker, after becoming the first Kiwi woman drafted to women’s basketball’s premier league, just a week after winning the NCAA title, with UCLA.
Leger-Walker, 24, is with the Connecticut Sun, who play the Liberty in their opening game of the season on Saturday morning (11.30am NZT).
Whether the Waikato-raised point guard gets on court remains to be seen, but she has featured in both of the Sun’s pre-season games.
She had just under 24 minutes in a 83-78 win over Toronto late last month, scoring eight points at 75 percent, while grabbing two rebounds and four assists.
Then, this week, she enjoyed a stint of just under 14 minutes, in a 79-67 defeat to the Liberty.
And while that might be a good sign ahead of tomorrow’s opener, things can change quickly in the upper echelons of American sport, and so it has with the Sun.
Just yesterday, they signed another point guard, Paris Olympic Games bronze medalist, albeit in the 3×3 format, Hailey Van Lith, who had been waived by the Chicago Sky.
The Sun are also awaiting the arrival of another guard, who is finishing off her season in Europe, France’s Leila Lacan, who won silver with the French team at Paris 2024.
Both players could impact Leger-Walker’s opportunities with the Sun, but the good news is that she has travelled to New York for the opening match against the Liberty, which will not be easy.
The Liberty are favourites for the title along with the Las Vegas Aces, who won their third title in four seasons last year, with MVP A’ja Wilson, set to lead the way again.
There’ll also be a lot of interest, once again, on American star Caitlan Clark, who enters her third season at the Indiana Fever, and on the new teams in Toronto and Portland, which has seen the league expand to 15 teams and a 44-game regular season.
The expansion push comes alongside a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement running from 2026 through 2032, removing the labour uncertainty that hovered over the offseason and giving the league a more stable platform as interest in women’s basketball grows.
-Reuters with additional reporting from RNZ