🥱 Layup Lines: Trade deadline comes and goes

Happy Thursday and welcome back to Layup Lines, your quick recap of what’s going on in the WNBA.

• In last night’s only game, Las Vegas got 27 points from A’ja Wilson to beat Golden State on the road. The Aces have now won seven of their last 10 and could finally be rounding into form after a rough first half of the season.

This 464 word newsletter should take about 2 minutes to read.

🤝 Trade deadline

We’re sending today’s newsletter later than usual to account for the trade deadline, which ended at 3pm ET. It was supposed to be explosive — a reminder of why via Her Hoop Stats’ Richard Cohen — and it was instead a bit sleepy.

• The big Dijonai Carrington to Minnesota trade happened Sunday followed by Brittney Sykes to Seattle on Tuesday. Today, all we got was Washington trading Aaliyah Edwards to Connecticut for Jacy Sheldon and a late pick swap next year.

  • It’s a killer trade for the Sun, who flip a solid but unspectacular guard now on her third team in two seasons for a promising young power forward who is under club control until 2028. I love their core of the future and think Boston is going to get a fun young team.

• I might be lower on Sheldon than others, but thought the Mystics could’ve gotten more for Edwards. They have officially punted on 2025.

But that was it! One measly trade.

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📺 Today’s games

🥶 We’re 70-76 this season and have just $294 of our initial $1,000 budget remaining to wager. It’s getting bleak out there, folks.

• There are three games today — and this slate looked a lot better when it included Rhyne Howard, Brittney Griner, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, who are all injured.

• Without Griner, the 6-foot-7 Cardoso has at least four inches on every member of the Dream (who are still favored by 11 even shorthanded).

  • Bet: Kamilla Cardoso to record a double-double, $50 to win $45.

• This is a lot of points and I don’t think accounts for the impact Cam Brink is making on defense.

  • Bet: Connecticut / L.A. under 175 total points scored, $50 to win $46.

• Indiana beat the Mercury in a crazy game last week and it’s hard to do that twice in a short span, especially with the Mercury at home.

  • Bet: Phoenix -4, $50 to win $43.

🎓 Pic to go

It’s always fun when the college player gets to come back to play for the local pro team.

Layup Lines is written 100% by a human being with visual assistance from AI tools. I very much appreciate you reading and will see you back here tomorrow.

— Everett Cook, Founder & Editor