How returns of Collier, Clark, more could impact WNBA playoffs

The 2025 WNBA season has been riddled with injuries.

According to The IX Basketball’s injury tracker, 117 players have missed a combined 868 games so far, including some of the league’s highest-profile players: Breanna Stewart, Caitlin Clark, Napheesa Collier, Jonquel Jones, Jordin Canada and Rhyne Howard have each missed double-digit contests. A’ja Wilson and Alyssa Thomas have missed a handful, too.

Courtney Vandersloot, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, Kayla Thornton, Katie Lou Samuelson, Georgia Amoore and some Fever players — Sophie Cunningham, Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson — won’t return this season. But some of the biggest stars have already returned, and more are expected back as the postseason approaches.

Which playoff teams or postseason hopefuls will see the biggest boosts as a result?

We looked at franchises with the top-six chances to win the championship, according to the Elo-based forecast model — the Lynx, Dream, Aces, Liberty, Mercury and Fever — to compare their title chances and Simple Rating System (SRS) ratings with what both marks should be going forward after adjusting ratings for key players’ missed games. We also estimated how much each team stands to gain with the players they have welcomed — or are expected to welcome back before or during the playoffs — using Estimated RAPTOR ratings to calculate how many points their presence is worth to a game’s point differential.

Napheesa Collier

The Lynx haven’t had many injuries during this charmed season as league front-runners, with Karlie Samuelson — who had season-ending foot surgery in July — being the only other notable contributor to miss a significant number of games. But when one of the few injuries is to the player who had a clear lead in the race for WNBA MVP before she was sidelined, it can make a difference.

The Lynx lost back-to-back games for the first (and only) time this season without Collier. Considering they still went 7-3, though, it’s amazing that they could be better than their regular-season metrics suggest when the playoffs begin. When we update Collier’s preseason projected RAPTOR impact with her regular-season stats, it indicates her absence cost Minnesota about 4.5 points for each game she missed (compared with a replacement-level player) — a significant impact that can add up, even in a relatively small sample of games.

Look for the Lynx to be as potent as ever with Collier back and picking up where she left off.

Jordin Canada

Rhyne Howard

Though neither Canada nor Howard is in the same tier as Collier or Stewart, the duo is very good, with projections indicating each is worth nearly 2 points per game relative to a replacement-level player in the contests each has missed.

The Dream have been without both in only one game — a three-point win over the Wings on July 30 — but have had both available in 13 of 38 games. If Canada returns to join Howard for the playoffs, though, Atlanta should see a boost.

A’ja Wilson

Perhaps even more than Collier, Wilson’s absence illustrates a superstar’s impact on a team’s season-long stats. Wilson missed four games earlier this season (three because of a concussion in June, then one because of a right wrist sprain in July). Those project to have cost Las Vegas nearly 20 points of total scoring margin this season because Wilson adds a league-high 5 Net Points per game over replacement when she plays.

The Aces still have to play above their regular-season résumé in the playoffs — and more like their form in 2023, when they were arguably the WNBA’s GOAT team — even after accounting for Wilson’s brief absences. But she is proof that you can’t count out a team that has MVP-level talent.

Breanna Stewart

Jonquel Jones

Stewart represents the single-most costly statistical absence of the WNBA season: 48.5 total Net Points of projected scoring margin versus replacement in the 13 games she missed, starting in late July. Not coincidentally, the Liberty went into a slump right after Stewart’s injury, and they are still trying to recover.

New York is 6-9 with a minus-2.1 PPG differential since July 26, and its title chances have taken a stunning decline from 33% to 2%. And yet, with Stewart back and Jones healthy after the hamstring and ankle injuries from earlier in the year, no team should improve on its regular-season stats more than the Liberty. It’s just a question of whether their midseason struggles set them on too difficult a path to defend their crown.

Alyssa Thomas

Natasha Mack

Like Wilson and Collier, Thomas is a perennial WNBA MVP candidate — she’s third in ESPN BET odds and is consistently at the periphery of the Wilson versus Collier conversation. It’s not surprising that the five games Thomas missed in May and June are projected to cost Phoenix 15.8 points of total scoring margin this year.

Then there’s Mack, who is having an unbelievable defensive season for the Mercury, with a 7.8% block rate, 2.7% steal rate, 23.3% defensive rebound rate and a 2.7-point improvement in team defensive rating when she’s on the court. And though it might seem strange to include a player who scores 4.4 points among the significant injuries of a season, when we combine Mack’s defensive contributions with Thomas’ all-around performance, the Mercury will be a better team in the playoffs with both healthy than the overall regular-season metrics suggest.

Caitlin Clark

The highest-profile injury absence of the season, Clark has missed five times as many games in 2025 as she had during her high school or college careers. As usual, the advanced metrics undersell the impact of her injuries to Indiana’s bottom line, but the Fever are 7.5 Net Points better when she’s on the court and have an 8-5 record in games she has played.