The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Good Follow - Breanna Stewart Injured, Alyssa Thomas For MVP? + Sparks Heating Up, Cam Brink Returns & More

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

This Week on Good Follow: Ros & Logan react to Breanna Stewart’s injury and how it impacts the Liberty on and off the court, decide if Alyssa Thomas has a case for MVP, discuss LA’s five-game win streak, and how Cam Brink’s return elevates the Sparks. Finally, Logan shares her NWSL pick of the week presented by DraftKings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at NoFrills.ca. You're listening to DraftKings Network. What's up everybody? Welcome to Good Follow presented by DraftKings. I'm Roz Gold on what a that is my co-host Logan Hackett. Some commotion, some commotion. Logan, how are you?

I'm a little tired, but other than that doing amazing. How are you? You know what? I could never tell because you are just radiant and we are going to bring the energy even with we all make up for that. And I'm doing well. I've actually become a Domino's girly. I'm in my Domino's era. Oh my God.

Yes. So I off of Amazon, I have now are they a pink? Off of a shipping website, a popular shipping website. I ordered travel mini Domino's set. Oh my God, they're pink. And it's really really cute and so I'm just looking for a challenger Show me my opponent I should join a club. I felt like I have a joint. Do I need more time to give out? I don't have enough time on my hands, But anyway, I am a new Domino's player and I'm really excited about it.

But beyond that, we've got a big show. We've got a full lineup. Let me take you through what we're talking about today. Our girl, Brianna Stewart, she is out with injury. How much will the Liberty miss her? Alyssa Thomas's MVP case cannot be ignored and it certainly won't be on this show. We'll be talking about the hottest team in the league

at the time of taping. The Sparks, are they playoff bound? And don't forget, y'all can catch new episodes not once, but twice a week. One on Tuesday and one on Thursday. And as always, thank y'all so much for all of the love that you give us. Subscribing, commenting, liking, telling your friends, reposting us literally every single part. We appreciate it so much. But Roz, are you ready to get into it? I'm so ready. Let's go, Logan.

Let's do it. Well, we'll start with your Liberty. They've battling injuries all season long and it felt like they got a nice stretch where they had full strength but now they're back to being down a key member of their team. Stewie did avoid a major injury on Saturday but she has to take the time that she needs to make a full recovery and after last night's loss to the wings which granted shout out to the wings because they really did their big one including Arikay with 14 assists. Okay, pop off. But what do you think the Liberty will be missing without her

both on and off the court throughout these next few games? Oh man time. I'm telling you like it's super unfortunate that Stewie got hurt because coming into that game. It was the second day of a back-to-back coach Bundel. I actually came into the pregame media and said look We're gonna go to our depth early often We trust them they're battle tested and she called out Stewie and said I want to in the second half of the season

Be more careful with Stewie's minutes and lower them because she's already doing so much for the team and then bang in Less than four minutes into the game Stewie goes down with an injury and I was like, oh, they were planning to save you anyway. But they are asking Stewie to do a lot. They ask Stewie to score. They ask her to defend. They ask her to rebound. They ask her to block shots. They ask her to get to the free throw line.

Girl, at times they got Stewie running the point guard position. They say, bring the ball to court, facilitate the offense offense anchor our defense Like she's doing everything Stewie was playing 31 minutes per game Top 15 in the league in minutes. Don't forget. She had a minor knee injury not minor knee surgery After unrivaled it was around March and I'm personally I don't really know if she's really caught her footing since then And I'm personally, I don't really know if she's really caught her footing since then.

She's shooting a career low 20% from three, which is crazy for anyone. But I do think like what's interesting is if you look at her three point attempts over the course of her career, it almost, she's only shooting about 2.8. That's way down from what she usually shoots. It's almost like a concerted effort

and a realization by her that, hey, the three ball is just not Wes making my money this year. Maybe I'm not, you know, fully able to hit the three the way I want to. But she's shifting her attention to other ways to make impact on the game. Stewie is the Liberty's workhorse and so even though she is on the four game road trip with the Liberty right now, I think it makes sense to just kind of let her rest. She also leads this team in so many other ways. The Liberty aren't just missing a leader on the court. They are missing one of their bona fide leaders off of it.

This Liberty team, I'm the team analyst, I'm around them. They really like each other. They're close knit, they're super cool. And Stewie has a lot to do with that. And it's impressive to me because a lot of times, in my coverage of NBA and WNBA, when a player has a family, Stewie's a mother of two. Oftentimes, once practice and the games end,

they are using what little time they have to be with their family, and teams often kind of get separate naturally into like the veteran old, you know, veteran parents and family people, into like the veteran old, you know, veteran parents and family people and like the younger or single players kind of stick together. And no, Stewie's gone beyond that. A couple of examples. Recently Stewie set up the pottery day, she set up pottery classes for the Liberty. So they all got to have this like cathartic break where they could

use their hands and be creative and just bond with one another and express themselves. And like Stewie sets that up. Remember the viral Labooboos that were Liberty branded with the Liberty hat and shirt? Guess who set that up? Stewie. Like Stewie's not just doing it for the players.

Like she has a ongoing wordle game that she does with staff members. And I know Kennedy Burke is a part of that too, but like she's also doing this with staff. So I just see a player that gives so much of herself to be whatever the Liberty need. And as much as we said, Oh my God, the Liberty miss Jonquell Jones so much when she was out, we're about to see and feel like how much the Liberty will miss

Brianna Stewart. Not gonna lie. I got my Labooboo because of Stewie. Oh, you got the New York Liberty one? No, not the New York Liberty one, but I just got one in general because Stewie has been really popping off with her Labooboo's and as someone, I think she's a millennial, no hate to millennials by the way, but just seeing her pop up on my timeline, I was like, damn, Stewie has one. I need to get one. How much was your little boo boo? Oh my God. I think I got scammed. It was 160 Canadian. I heard there were I heard people are spending like thousands of dollars on the boo boo. Oh, OK. Well, I didn't know if they were expensive or not. But the

guy said it and I just tapped my card and then it was like, wait, I don't know if this is right. 160 Canadian. What's that like in American? Is that the Euro? Probably 140 maybe, but another factor to go with that as well is Yara Saboli is out and so is Kendi Burke. Kendi Burke is more so day to day, but it is interesting to see how they go down this stretch. I'm pretty sure they play Minnesota on Wednesday, if I'm not mistaken. That's their first time meeting, which is so unfortunate because I want to see both these teams go at it at full strength. Well, well, even so, Izzy Harrison has been crushing it.

This is going to be more time for Isabel to step up. She already did that in the John Quayle Jones missing games time, really found a role on this team as an energetic, you know, producing big around the rim. So I'm looking at her, you know, look, the Liberty are deep, but they are banged up. We don't know exactly when Emma Measaman joins the team, but I think that's going to take some pressure off of all of them because of her versatility and just high skill and you know, how great of a player she is, but visa issues, like she not going to be here before the Lynx game.

And it's so crazy that the Lynx Liberty game has taken all this time to happen. I'm like, oh, finally. And of course, Stewie's out. So that's annoying. But yeah, no, you know, it's going to be next woman up mentality. Yeah. And this morning, it was either this morning, last night, I opened my feed and it said that the Liberty were 40 and change minutes late to their post game press conference because they had a big team meeting after the loss to Dallas. How concerned are you about this?

I'm concerned if the Liberty are concerned and clearly the players and the staff were to hold them for 40 minutes before media. And, you know, this is a reoccurring issue. This didn't just happen because the Dallas wings beat on that. That wasn't so knee-jerk reaction. This has been something that's been happening all season, that the Liberty have started games with a lack of urgency that have often had to play from behind.

They've often had success coming back furiously and beating a team down double digits. And that's a talking point. Like I talk with the players and they'll often say like, hey, when we're down, like we're never panicked. The huddle's not panicked. We're very confident. We know we can turn it around.

They are very talented. They are the defending champs. But sometimes that can be a bad habit to start to create. And I think they're holding themselves accountable here. You know, like they have come back down 17 and 19. They did come back behind from the Sparks, but this time they weren't able to do it against the Sparks and now they just got completely blasted by Dallas and so I like that they held themselves accountable that

they were not willing to blame coach Brundello that was something that came up and the players like no it's on us that there's some really low-hanging excuses they could have had like personally, I think they seem fatigued. That was their third game in four days. I think that the schedule is scheduling and that they're tired, but they wouldn't raise their hand and say that. And they're also down bodies. So these are all things to consider, but I think the meeting was important. Yeah, it's saying a lot that they're currently sitting in second place. I mean, they have been good. It's been them and Minnesota at the top of the conversation the whole season.

And after these two losses, they still go back to the drawing board and they have to figure things out in the moment. I love that. And I think that's going to set them up for success down the road whenever maybe it's when people come back, maybe not, but we're definitely going to see it all play out. But with that, we are halfway through the season and I want to do a check in on our Good Follow MVP board. So last time we did this, we had Fee, Kaitlyn Clark, Asia Wilson, Brianna Stewart and Kelsey

Plum. But this time we are going to take out Kelsey Plum and put in Alyssa Thomas. Damn, that's really crazy work. Like our initial, the first one didn't even have AT in it. Jeez. Yeah, she has been on an absolute tear lately, which has earned her spot on our board. She's been being on a tear, but lately it's been so good. She's averaging close to 16 points, eight rebounds, nine and a half assists.

Mind you, she just broke into the top time all time. Sorry. Top 10 all time assist as a forward and currently leads the league in assists as a forward. This is crazy work right here. But Roz, Fia is still at the top of the conversation. What can A.T. do to win MVP? Oh, Logan. Look, can we bring the picture up here?

We have a graphic to show you because this is an age-old question when we discuss Alyssa Thomas. Oh, A.T., my girl. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. First of all, this graphic, this picture is crazy. Like, not only do they have her looking at all the MVPs and how many times they've been MVP over her.

Look at Asia with three. Oh my gosh, Alyssa, my heart. You know, many a woman can attest to being the bridesmaid, never the bride, but listen, you've been in the MVP conversation, you haven't won it yet, but if they don't see your value queen, you keep your head up.

Never forget who you are. My good sis. And don't forget, as this picture will show you, this is not the first conversation of MVP that AT has been in where it's like, ooh, the case is hot. But, you know, there are other, you know, darlings or favorites ahead of her. Don't forget in 2023, Brianna Stewart won the MVP, but it was a highly,

highly competitive race between A.T., Asia Wilson and Brianna Stewart. It was very controversial this year. It's kind of the same kind of energy for me. It's with Nafisa Collier and Alyssa Thomas. And I do think Nafisa is the favorite, but I do think A.T. has a very, very, very strong case and is breathing down her neck. Allow me to say a few little bullet points here, if you will. First of all, if you will.

First of all, AT is having a statistically significant season. As you mentioned, she is leading the league in assists and she's doing it as a forward, but also keep in mind, it's really not even close. Like the second leader in assists after that is Caitlin Clark, who's only played half the games this year. And then after that, it's a complete drop-off.

We are not talking same category of assists. Mind you, this is a player who after 11 years and one team in Connecticut just joined a new franchise and is dominating in this way. And at this chapter of her career, she's averaging a career high in assists, averaging a career high in field goal percentage. And guess what? The narrative works. Her team is high achieving, sitting in third in the leagues, third place in the standings. And an impressive achievement given how much they've dealt with injuries to key star players. So you've got injury time, significant injury time missed

to significant key players, which means that AT has been doing all of this with a roster that's been made up of a lot of young or lesser experienced players in the WNBA, players who are new to the league. And she's been helping to make them better. She is their defensive quarterback. She is their offensive quarterback. You name me a player whose team takes on the personality of their star more than the Phoenix Mercury and Alyssa Thomas because she is physical and tough and therefore I see the Phoenix Mercury being physical and tough. She's tripled double watch every game.

Points, rebounds, assists. They are squeezing everything possible out of her and they need every single thing that she is giving them, especially again with all of the injury and adversary and change ups that they've had. So yeah, AT's MVP case should not be ignored, cannot be ignored, will not be ignored, and certainly not on the Good Follow Show. Well, you know, she is a fiance. So maybe we're inching closer. I feel like it's coming. I mean, she'll be someone getting a ring. Wait, what are you saying? She's a fiance. Is she not? Yes. Yes.

So are you saying somebody getting a ring either way? Whether? Oh, yes. Keep that. That is the bar that was trying to come out of my mouth. Absolutely. Also, she's going to graduate from bridesmaid. She's not going to be looking at all them hopefully one day. But I need to just talk about the Sparks because they have been

looking so good. After beating Liberty on Sunday, they're on a five-game win streak and have won six of their past seven games. Hello, where did you come from? They are one of the hottest teams in the league right now. And it's crazy considering that they're on this run right now and still four back from playoff contention. I think you could kind of tell how the beginning of their season went. But do you think they're capable of making the playoffs right now? Yes, I do think that the LA Sparks are capable of making the playoffs. In fact, I do think they will be a playoff team and it's largely come from within. It's come from them. They had come to Jesus meetings and conversations, especially

outside of the All-Star break where they I spoke with Azrae Stevens actually recently and she told me like they asked themselves, who do we want to be? And if it's a playoff team, then it's got to start right now, you know, coming out of this All-Star break. And that's what they've done. And I was on the call for the Liberty Sparks game and you to be there in person watching them celebrate the game winner. Like that wasn't like, you know, I'm a too cool for school type reaction. That wasn't we've been here before reaction. Like that was unbridled joy, excitement, relief, validation, all the things at once. And I loved it because they were on that four game winning streak coming into

streak coming into that. And it was against, you know, the Connecticut suns, the Washington and I loved it because they were on that four game winning streak coming into that. And it was against, you know, the Connecticut Suns, the Washington Mystics of the league. And to get one against the defending champs at Barclays Center was major. I mean, it was just like a litmus test that showed them they can play with anyone. And pretty recently they had just played the Liberty and they were in a similar situation at Barclays Center where they had a lead and the Liberty came back and won so here they were with the lead and the Liberty were on just

breathing down their necks coming like making a ferocious comeback and they kept having responses and they got it done and they got the win and so I think that was a very meaningful win for them. And I think overall in this five game winning streak that they have right now, they're playing better defense. You've got a career year coming out of Azaray Stevens. Nobody works harder than Kelsey Plumb. Also in the work hard, outwork you school of thought

is D'Erica Hamby. And Rekia Jackson as of, has been so much more consistent and aggressive on both sides of the ball. So I think that you're seeing a Sparks team that is surging and that there are other teams that are fizzling right now. You've got the Golden State Valkyries. It's going to be really hard to overcome the Kayla Thornton season ending injury. You've got the Washington Mystics

that was leaning really hard on rookies and young players. Maybe they're starting to lose some steam. So I think there is an entry point for the Sparks to come in and like grab one of those lower entry points into the playoffs. Another fun stat is that since Rhybrel made her comeback, the Sparks have been six and two with their only losses coming to the Lynx and the Liberty,

but someone else is making their comeback and that's Cam Brink. This is going to be huge. She missed 13 months due to an ACL injury, but how does her return elevate the Sparks? Yeah, and 13 months is a long rehab time for this injury. So like, I know as someone who's torn in ACL, it's usually that second season where where back from the injury where they really

shine and show themselves, but she can make immediate impact for this team on the defensive end. That's where she made immediate impact as a rookie. She's got size, she changes shots, she block shots, she rebounds, and they need the help on the defensive end. If you don't count this win streak, they've struggled. They've been a team that gives up a lot of opponent's points per game so like they could use her defensive force.

And don't forget they also added coach Latricia Trammell to the coaching staff. Formally of the Sparks also was the head coach of the Dallas Wings and she's known as a defensive wizard in mind. And so I think all of that in combination will be a nice influx of energy for this LA Sparks team as they try to make a run to the playoffs. I'm so excited to see Kim come back. But y'all coming up, I make my DraftKings pick of the week. We'll be right back. Nothing says summer like long days, clutch plays and firing off a few bets on the game. All with DraftKings Sportsbook. Never been on baseball before? It's easy.

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It is now time for the DraftKings Pick of the Week presented by DraftKings. The NWSL is finally back and this weekend I have my eyes on Seattle Reign vs. Angel City. This is an important weekend for Seattles, they're currently 6th in the league but only 4 points back from 2nd. Their dynamic between young players and veterans is so fun to watch, but after going through June undefeated, they made a huge move acquiring MIAfficial from Chelsea. Mia is an incredibly talented forward, was the first foreign player to win the Golden Brew in Liga MX and has made waves for the US Women's National Team and Chelsea. She is finally back after tearing her ACL in February of 2024, and I cannot wait to see how she performs.

As for Angel City, their season hasn't gone as planned, boasting incredible talent, but currently sitting in 11th place. With that said, Riley Ternan has been incredibly impressive this season, starting all 13 games, scoring 7 goals, and is coming out of the break third in the Golden Boot race. Although Angel City loves to keep games close and won the first matchup between the two, I'm going with Seattle to get the win at home. This segment is presented by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. It's yours! It's like the prom. We share it.

I'm hyperactive over here, but yeah. No, I went to the prom. Oh, you do it, Logan. Join me. There we go. All right, Logan, it's that time of the show. Quick hits, headlines. What you got for us?

What's happening in women's sport? Yeah. So it was a super fun weekend with the Euro going on and England won back to back titles. Chloe Kelly came clutch for the second Euro in a row, pretty much sealing the deal for them. And Lucy Bronze played on a fractured tibia. She played the whole tournament.

I'm pretty sure almost every single minute. Yeah, like absolutely insane. But congrats to England. Their celebration was huge today as well. Amazing clips online. But the next is that Naomi Osaka split with her coach Patrick Mortoglu, who was famous for being with Serena, I believe. And he's just a famous coach in tennis, but keen to see what

she does there. Sometimes you need a shakeup. You need a new chapter, a new era of fresh slate. You know, you never know. Absolutely. Especially for Naomi, who's trying to get back into the ranks and up at the top again. But there was some unexpected news that came out with South Carolina's Ashlyn Watkins announcing that she's sitting out for this upcoming season. So hope everything's okay there.

Yeah. And along with that USC got a number and a number another number one pick with Sinaya Hall committing it's their third number one recruit not pick in three years and the latest being at 2023 Juju Watkins so they are stacking it up. Yeah for anyone who thought like that program was done after Juju Watkins injury no siree. Think again And the last one we have is that boxer Clarissa Shields moves to 17 and 0 with three KOs. Gosh dang, I don't want to be left alone in a room with her. She retained her undisputed

women's heavyweight championship on Saturday after a dominant win over Lonnie Daniels. Love her. She is a beast. Yeah, no, she's doing her big one for sure. Ski and we have done our big one here. We are done with the show. So, Logan, it's so nice to hang out with you. Yes, you as well. And so nice to hang out with you guys who are listening, who are watching. We thank you. Please make sure you

tap in with us because we drop on Tuesdays, but we also drop on Thursdays. And we've got a lot more coming your way this week and for the rest of the summer on so come check out come kick it with your girls. This show is presented by DraftKings and we will see you next time. Bye y'all. So So So Bye!