Thursday's WNBA schedule offers two games. At 3 p.m. ET, MVP frontrunner Napheesa Collier leads the Minnesota Lynx against Kelsey Plum and the Los Angeles Sparks. Then at 7:30, Brittney Sykes and the Washington Mystics take on the Las Vegas Aces, who may be without star A'ja Wilson. The former MVP injured her wrist on Tuesday and is listed as questionable for Thursday's game.
Interested in WNBA betting? What about WNBA props? Before you make any bets of your own, you need to see what SportsLine's WNBA experts Calvin Wetzel and Aaron Barzilai have to say about Thursday's WNBA games.
Barzilai is a Ph.D. from Stanford who served as Director of Basketball Analytics for the Philadelphia 76ers. Five years ago, he founded HerHoopStats.com -- a groundbreaking website that unlocks insights about the women's game. Wetzel, the site's lead betting writer, incorporates his mathematical background and strong knowledge of women's hoops to turn the site's prediction model into picks. Wetzel and Barzilai went 202-111-2 (+57.9 units) during the 2024 WNBA season and posted a 147-88-1 (+47.1 units) during the 2024-25 NCAA season. In the 2023 WNBA season, they finished 238-185-1 (+29.5 units).
You can find two of Barzilai and Wetzel's picks here, and an extra pick for Lynx vs. Sparks is available to SportsLine subscribers!
Here are Barzilai and Wetzel's top Fever-Valkyries picks for Thursday, July 9:
- Lynx -6
- Mystics -1.5
Lynx -6
There are plenty of red flags on this bet. Minnesota is on a back-to-back with travel in between, and it's their second back-to-back in the span of a week. It's entirely possible some players sit this one out or tired legs take over.
However, the sportsbooks seem to be baking all of that into this line a bit too much. This is the first place team who, in theory, is fully healthy, against the 10th-place team they've already beaten three times by 14+ points this year. Let's not overthink it.
Mystics -1.5
A'ja Wilson is questionable for the Aces after leaving their previous game with an injury. If she plays, this line is pretty close, but still may have a bit of value as I'd have it closer to 2.5. If Wilson sits, this line will look incredible come tip time.
The other factor here is that Las Vegas is on game five of a five-game road trip, and these are the spots that the travel fatigue tends to catch up to teams. Take Washington on the spread getting under a possession, or you can play the money line.
