Special Edition: Here comes the sun

The GIST: This season has been the ultimate glow-up for Phantom, who finished dead last in the league last year with just four wins. Now, the Ghost Gang is championship-bound thanks to a combination of grit, tenacity, and a dash of Kelsey Plum heroics. Boo-yeah.

📍 How they got here: Phantom are the league’s hottest team. They haven’t lost since January, tallying eight straight wins en route to the final. And their most recent dub was the most impressive: Monday’s aforementioned 83–75 semis win over Vinyl was a defensive masterclass — even with Defensive Player of the Year Aliyah Boston sidelined with a season-ending injury.

😅 Life without Aliyah Boston: Losing a player of Boston’s caliber leaves huge sneakers to fill, but Phantom has taken it in stride with everyone stepping up in her absence. Natasha Cloud was a defensive savant on Monday, making multiple momentum-changing plays, while Tiffany Hayes knocked down three three-pointers in a 19-point outing, her highest total since the season opener.

• What’s more, rookie Kiki Iriafen was stellar under the bright lights, logging a season-high 15.7 minutes in the semifinal and putting up 17 points and 11 rebounds for her second career Unrivaled double-double. Turns out the moment actually met her.

✅ Why they’ll win: Just like the semis, Phantom will be undersized in the title tilt, but this squad has proven they can overcome a height discrepancy: They only turned the ball over twice against a bigger Vinyl team. Add in a little Plum magic (the 31-year-old dropped a whopping 31 points and a smooth game winner on Monday), and Phantom just might cap off their glow-up with a trophy.

The GIST: Not to be outdone, the Mist are enjoying a glow-up of their own as the only other team to miss the postseason in 2025. This high-scoring squad has turned those rainy days into a sunny new reality.

📍 How they got here: It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Just ask Mist, whose resilience was on full display in Monday’s come-from-behind 73–69 win over Breeze BC. Down by 10 in the final frame (and as many as 16 in the first half), Mist took their first lead of the game moments before Arike Ogunbowale knocked down the epic game winner. Talk about a birthday to remember.

👏 The next-woman-up mentality: Mist’s biggest strength is their depth. Leading scorer Allisha Gray — who’s averaging 21.8 points per game and earned a spot on the All-Unrivaled Second Team — managed just 12 points in Monday’s win. But you know who was dropping buckets? Almost everyone else, mitigating Gray’s uncharacteristically quiet night.

• Whether it was Ogunbowale’s stellar shooting (she knocked down five three-pointers), Breanna Stewart’s 23-point outing featuring a penchant for under-the-rim magic, or Alanna Smith’s timely buckets, Mist were a full-team wrecking crew down the stretch.

✅ Why they’ll win: Mist can straight-up score, averaging a league-best 77.7 points per game. Why are they so difficult to defend? Any player can dominate the box score on any given night. Plus, they spread the ball exceptionally well, averaging 13.7 assists per game, second only to Phantom’s 14.6. Sharing is always caring.

Everyone remembers that game — the one that had you pacing, cheering and still grinning days later. Unrivaled delivered that exact feeling in 2026: relentless energy, iconic vibes, and no off nights. From tipoff to the Playoffs sponsored by Samsung, this season lived up to the hype, whether it was:

👻 Phantom BC’s haunting chemistry

🌧️ Mist BC’s late-game heroics

🌬️ Breeze BC’s affinity for throwing it down

🏆 Eight straight weeks of the best of women’s basketball, and now it’s time for the championship showdown between Phantom and Mist. How lucky are we?

Before tonight’s championship showdown tips off, let’s look back at two of the biggest moments in Unrivaled history: the league’s first-ever tour stop in Philadelphia and Monday’s electric Barclays Center takeover.

• Unrivaled typically hosts games at Sephora Arena in Miami, an intimate venue that holds just 1K people (up from 850 in 2025), but this season, the league wanted to broaden its reach and give even more fans the opportunity to enjoy the best of women’s basketball.

🔔 January’s trip to Philly saw 21,490 fans pack Xfinity Mobile Arena, setting the record for the most-attended regular-season women’s basketball game ever. Philadelphia’s a city with a known appetite for hoops and women’s sports, making it the perfect inaugural tour stop — oh, and the cheesesteaks were good too.

🍎 They call it the Big Apple for a reason: Monday’s semifinal showdowns in Brooklyn lived up to the hype. The basketball was absolutely electric, and so was the sellout crowd of 18,261. A bona fide hoops hub, NYC showed up, from the celeb cameos to pure fan joy.

💸 And these road trips are money makers: Before the semifinal games tipped off, Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell shared that the two tilts had already generated $1M in revenue, while Philly is Unrivaled drew $2M when all was said and done. Cha-ching, indeed.

👀 What’s next? Almost certainly more tour stops: The league’s reportedly planning up to eight road trips in 2027, with aspiring women’s basketball cities like Nashville and Kansas City topping the list of potential locations.

• The league’s ever-growing popularity can be attributed to two things: darn good basketball and athlete authenticity that’s uniquely integrated into every aspect of Unrivaled’s physical and digital environments. Buckets on buckets.

🔮 As the 2026 season wraps, it’s still only the beginning for Unrivaled. So, what’s next on the league’s agenda? TBD, but here’s what’s topping our wishlist as we look ahead to year three:

• More tour stops and more of our favorite hoopers doing what they do best. No matter what Unrivaled has up their sleeve, one thing’s for sure: There are plenty of buckets to come.