November with no games on the schedule is its own kind of Tuesday. The ball's in the rafters, the nets are empty, and the only scoreboard running right now is the coaching carousel. That's fine by me. This is when the smart money starts doing its homework, quietly, before the futures board firms up for real.

Two jobs just opened at once, and one of them belongs to a defending contender. The Liberty are moving on from their head coach after a single season, a semifinal exit ending the DeMarco era before it really got going. Los Angeles has an opening too. Two marquee chairs empty on the same morning doesn't happen often in this league, and it's going to ripple into futures prices long before a ball goes up.

What I'm Eyeing

  1. Liberty 2027 futures, post-hire. New York won the franchise's first championship in 2024 and still has a roster built to contend. The number on them right now reflects uncertainty, not talent. A respected hire narrows that gap fast. I want to see who walks in before I trust any price on this team.
  2. The early order atop the 2027 board. The reporting has the Lynx and Aces out front, with the Dream and Valkyries a step behind. That's a reasonable starting point this early, Minnesota and Vegas have been the league's floor for two straight seasons. Worth tracking whether that gap holds once rosters actually move.
  3. Valkyries, second-year number. An expansion team with no major subtractions reported yet is exactly the kind of team whose futures price can get soft if the market assumes they stay where they were. I'm not touching it without more roster clarity, but I'm watching.
  4. Los Angeles's hire, and what it does to a sleeper number. A new voice can reset expectations on a roster that's underperformed its name recognition. That's a futures story, not a tonight story, but it's exactly the kind of thing that moves a price two months before anyone notices.

The one I lean on

If I had to point at the single thing I'm circling hardest, it's the Liberty. Championship pedigree, a roster core still mostly intact, and a futures number that's currently pricing in chaos that a strong hire could erase overnight. That's a lean, not a play. Nothing clears until there's a name in that chair and a price that reacts to it.

There's no clean number to grab this morning, and I'm not going to dress one up to look like there is. The math says pass until the board tells me something real. Come find me when it does, you know where my desk is.