Team Heat Check: Las Vegas Aces Run Hot, TBD Run Cold (WNBA)

Every WNBA season has a week when the temperature map redraws itself, and this feels like one of them. Las Vegas Aces have become the team nobody wants to see next on the schedule, while TBD are hunting for anything that resembles a good night.

Burning up

Nobody is playing better than Las Vegas Aces right now. The record says 9-1 over their last 10; the points column says even more, a +243 margin that works out to 96.9 scored and 72.6 allowed a night.

Right behind them sit Golden State Valkyries, 9-1 over the same kind of stretch and +225 on points margin, quieter, but pointed the same direction.

And do not sleep on Atlanta Dream, quietly 9-1 across their last 10.

Some context helps: across every club in the sample, scoring sits at 81.5 points per game right now. Las Vegas Aces are beating the league's own pace by 15.4 a game.

The cold end

At the bottom of the temperature map sit TBD: 0-8 in their last 8, -706 on points margin. That is about 88.2 a game in the wrong direction, and no lineup shuffle fixes it overnight.

They have company at the cold end: Toronto Tempo, 1-9 over the same window.

The middle of the table is where the real congestion lives: Minnesota Lynx (5-5) and Phoenix Mercury (4-6) are separated by almost nothing, and one good weekend reshuffles the whole neighborhood.

By the numbers

The top of the ledger, at a glance:

One more thing

As always, watch where record and points margin tell different stories about the same club. The margin tends to know first.