If you include the preseason, the 2013 WNBA campaign is about a month old.
There's a whole lot of women's hoops left this summer, but early evidence suggests the Minnesota Lynx are one of the teams to beat in the organization's 15th year of existence. Their biggest conundrum so far was a poor initial road contest, but the defending Western Conference champs take a two-game away winning streak into Friday's matchup at Los Angeles and have defeated their last three opponents by at least nine points.
While the league's influx of stellar rookies grabbed most of the preseason headlines, it's now Minnesota's overall dominance that's starting to emerge as a central theme.
But there are nine other teams that, no matter how dire their situations, have enough time to jump back in the mix. Here's an early glance around the WNBA and the Lynx's current state of success.
The top: Minnesota and the Atlanta Dream top their conference's standings as the league's only remaining one-loss teams. Both squads rely on a primary go-to scorer but are balanced enough behind her to attack defenses in a number of different ways. For the Lynx, it's MVP candidate Maya Moore, whose 20.8 points per game rank second in the league through six games. She's still developing into the every-night closer coach Cheryl Reeve wants her to be, as evidenced by a 4-for-12 shooting performance in a win against Tulsa last Friday.
But thanks to her fellow starters and a bench that easily goes three deep, Moore isn't working alone.
Nine-year veteran point guard Lindsay Whalen hasn't shown any signs of aging, still operating as the assist-wielding master she's been since she arrived in Minneapolis in 2010. Power forward Rebekkah Brunson is the league's third-leading rebounder at 10.3 per game. Seimone Augustus hasn’t had much trouble scoring at will (17.7 points per game). Center Janel McCarville's performed well despite a long layoff, and reserves Monica Wright, Amber Harris and Devereaux Peters all are chipping in at least 12 minutes per game.
Atop the Eastern Conference, wing Angel McCoughtry leads a highly efficient Atlanta bunch with 19.4 points per game. She and her companions have been ever better defensively; McCoughtry's 3.57 steals per game rank second in the WNBA, and the Dream's scoring defense (69.43 points allowed per game) is the league's best.
Minnesota and Atlanta don't meet for another couple weeks, a July 9 clash in Atlanta that ESPN2 is slated to televise. If both teams continue their impressive opening runs, that'll be one of the most anticipated games during the season's first half.
The bottom: The WNBA's most floundering team is also perhaps the most surprising.After a 3-1 stomping of Minnesota in last year's championship finals, the Indiana Fever enter the weekend with the league's worst record (1-5) and a host of tough questions to answer. Led by Shavonte Zellous, three Fever players are scoring 16.8 points per game or better, but a severe dropoff in production behind them has Indiana on a five-game losing streak since winning their opener.
Injuries are a key culprit.
Sharpshooting guard Jeanette Pohlen continues to recover from a torn ACL suffered during Game 2 of last season's WNBA Finals, and backcourt mate Katie Douglas is expected to miss several weeks with a bulging disc in her lower back.
Good points: The league's early scoring race took center stage Wednesday evening in Phoenix. Mercury guard Diana Taurasi outscored Moore 28-26 to remain the WNBA's top scorer at 23.7 points per game. Moore's not far behind at 20.8.
It's unlikely she minds having fellow starters Whalen and Augustus at her side, chewing up some of Minnesota's scoring production.
The best sign for the Lynx is Moore's efficiency; she's shooting 45.7 percent from the field and has made 16 of 31 3-pointers (51.6 percent).
Rookies growing: Brittney Griner, Skylar Diggins and Elena Delle Donne all have had the immediate impacts everyone expected.
But their marks haven't been to a league-altering extent just yet.
Of the three first-year phenoms, only Delle Donne's Chicago Sky has a winning record (4-3). She's also emerged as the trio's most prolific scorer, averaging 20.3 points per game -- one of only three players scoring 20-per or better.
Griner's attracted national attention for her impressive dunks and league-leading shot-blocking ability (2.67 per game), but still has some room to grow. Her Phoenix Mercury are off to a 3-4 start, in part because she's still working to adapt to the more wide-open professional game, in particular the pick-and-roll.
Diggins, too, is adjusting -- to the WNBA and to losing in general. Notre Dame's all-time leading scorer averages 10.8 points per game for a Tulsa Shock team that picked up just its second victory Thursday, against Delle Donne and the Sky, no less.
Looking ahead: Friday's 10 p.m. game at Los Angeles wraps up a three-game road swing for Minnesota. Four of the Lynx's next six games are at home, and three of them are against the Sparks, who at 3-2 sit 1 ½ games back of first-place Minnesota in the Western Conference standings.
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