Hello, hoopheads! Friday night’s marquee matchup between the Indiana Fever (22-12) and the Dallas Wings (20-15) didn’t quite deliver the thriller that was their showdown on the season’s first Saturday, as Indiana dominated the fourth quarter by a 35-21 margin to pull away for a 98-87 win and even the series at 1-1. If you’re here, you shouldn’t be surprised when I describe my overall feelings about Fever superstar Catilin Clark as mixed, nor should you call me a liar when I tell you that one thing I’ve never doubted is that she’s a hell of a basketball player, and that part of the overall package that is Caitlin Clark was on full display last night, as she was the clear-cut best player on the court. Clark finished with 29 points and 10 assists while going 11-for-18 (61.1%) from the field while committing just 1 turnover. The Fever also got 23 points from Kelsey Mitchell, although she went 9-for-21 (42.9%) from the field and needed at least one of the two back-to-back layups she made off of Clark dimes with 1:43 and 1:21 to play in order to extend her WNBA-record 20-point scoring streak to 18 games in a row. As for Clark, she recorded the 20th 20-point/10-assist game of her WNBA career, which is eight more than Courtney Vandersloot in second place if you include the two Sloot had in the playoffs (and, as always, I think you should, because I see no good reason not to). It was also Clark’s 10th 20/10 game with assists this season, two more than the previous single-season WNBA record she set in 2024 and equaling the number anyone else (Sloot, duh) has had in a regular-season career. Finally, it was Clark’s third such game in a row, which ties the WNBA record that Sloot set nine years ago this month — August 2017 was a much better month for Sloot than me — and which Clark previously tied in 2024. Personal misgivings about her aside, it is increasingly becoming a crackpot position to say that Clark isn’t a phenomenal hooper. You just better believe that I’ll be wearing a Liberty-colored “trans rights are human rights” shirt to see Clark and that awful bench player of the Fever’s in person for the first time next Saturday.
The Wings’ 10th loss in their last 11 games against playoff teams dropped them a full game behind my beloved New York Liberty (21-14) and, perhaps crucially over the coming weeks, behind the Liberty in the loss column. The Liberty are thus assured that if they can match the Wings’ record the rest of the way and don’t lose more games than the Washington Mystics (19-14), they can be no worse than the No. 6 seed in the the playoffs, as they’ll dodge the tiebreaker the Wings hold and at worst be the beneficiaries of the tiebreaker they have over the Mystics. With all due respect to whoever ends up as the No. 3 seed, I am willing to bet it won’t be the Minnesota Lynx, even if they happen to fall from their perch atop the WNBA standings, and that is who I want the Liberty to avoid in the best-of-three first round of the playoffs by locking down no worse than the 6-seed. They can put an extra half-game between themselves and the teams on their heels by taking care of business this afternoon when they visit the Connecticut Sun (8-24) (1:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass) for the final meeting in 24 seasons as geographic rivals since the Orlando Miracle became the Sun in 2003. They haven’t always mirrored each other’s on-court quality, but it’s as fitting as can be that the Liberty-Sun portion of the series specifically is tied at 45-45 in the regular season heading into this final showdown, while the Sun lead the Liberty 51-50 including 11 playoff games. New York has won four straight meetings and 15 of 18 since the start of the 2023 season, including a 3-1 win in that year’s WNBA semifinals. There is no doubt that the Sun will forever be my least favorite WNBA team, both as a Liberty fan and for personal reasons, but I will miss Liberty-Sun games that the Liberty win because the Sun suck.
Tonight’s marquee matchup has the potential to shape the final weeks of the season at the top of the playoff bracket, as the Minnesota Lynx (28-7) visit the Las Vegas Aces (24-11) (8:00 ET, CBS/Skydance+) for the third and final meeting between the teams in the regular season. The head-to-head tiebreaker will be at stake, with each team having won its previous home game in the series, but more importantly, the Aces will have almost no chance of catching up to the Lynx with a loss. Being on the wrong end of the tiebreaker obviously wouldn’t help, but being five games back with eight to play kinda renders the tiebreaker moot anyway. A Las Vegas win, on the other hand, would leave it three games back of Minnesota (and Golden State 2.5 games back), and with Vegas in possession of the tiebreaker in this scenario, as well as the one against Golden State, suddenly the top three spots all look up for grabs.
The Lynx have, of course, grabbed about as many wins as a basketball team can over their first 35 games this season, but it is fair to say that they are only now finally getting into the teeth of their schedule. That’s not to take anything away from what they’ve done thus far, but Minnesota will play eight games against playoff teams out of its final nine beginning tonight, while six of the nine games are also on the road. Those eight games against playoff teams represent more than a third of the Lynx’s total inventory for the season, as they’re 11-4 (.733) against their postseason peers so far. That’s obviously a great record, but playing them eight out of nine games (89% of the time) surely must make it tougher to sustain that kind of success than playing them 15 out of the previous 35 games (43% of the time). Among the eight games are two against the Golden State Valkyries (24-9), who will be looking to make their own move on the Lynx in the standings, get some revenge for last year’s first-round playoff elimination, and finally beat the Lynx for the first time in franchise history. The Lynx will also play their final two games of the regular season against the Fever, who pushed them pretty hard in a 108-100 Lynx home win in their only meeting so far. Even Minnesota’s home game against the Liberty to open the post-FIBA portion of the season would look more appealing for Minnesota if it came in the next two weeks. I think it’s a lot more likely that Leonie Fiebich, whose defense made a massive impact when Liberty beat the Lynx in early July, will be back on the floor for New York once we’re on the other side of the World Cup. None of this is meant to say that the Lynx are due to stumble. You will not catch me betting against the WNBA’s GOAT head coach and four-time champion Cheryl Reeve, a two-time MVP runner-up in Napheesa Collier who’s probably the freshest player in the league (certainly the freshest superstar), the recently crowned single-game 3-point queen Kayla McBride and Rookie of the Year Olivia Miles unless it requires picking against A’ja Wilson and co., and I’m not even promising I’ll pick against the Lynx then. I’m not picking anyone tonight except the viewers, who automatically win for watching this game. Minnesota just has real work left to do if it’s going to complete the job of securing the No. 1 seed.
Speaking of A’ja Wilson and the trio of Hall of Famers surrounding her at the core of the Aces dynasty (Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young and coach Becky Hammon, of course), the Aces are looking to win three straight games for the first time since their 15-5 start to the season, after beating the Mystics twice in a row earlier this week. Las Vegas was 7-6 during a 13-game span covering a little over a month before those back-to-back wins over Washington, including consecutive losses at Minnesota (by 11 points last Saturday) and New York (by 40 while sitting all of the Hall of Famers the following day) to close that run of middling results. The reigning champs were much closer to their best against Washington, however, holding the Mystics to identical and meager offensive ratings of 97.4 points per 100 possessions both times according to Her Hoop Stats while putting up marks of 114.7 and 105.1 themselves against a team among the top three in the league in defensive rating. They weren’t dominant wins, and the latter saw Wilson and Gray have a rare simultaneous off night while Young (32 points, 10-for-14 from the field, 5 assists) did the heavy lifting, but they were the kind of professional, grind-it-out wins that have been the Aces’ bread and butter on the way to three titles in the last four seasons. In stark contrast to Minnesota, Las Vegas is nearly finished coming against playoff teams until the tournament actually gets underway. They face the Atlanta Dream on Tuesday for their final regular-season game against a team headed to the postseason, with the seven games after that coming against Connecticut, Toronto (twice), Seattle (twice), Los Angeles and Phoenix. The Aces schedule is, of course, yet another reason that the race for the top three spots has the potential to look very, very different depending on what happens in this game.
A half an hour before the Lynx-Aces tip, the Los Angeles Sparks (12-21) visit the Washington Mystics (19-14) (7:30 ET, local affiliates/League Pass), who are unsurprisingly looking to avoid a third straight loss in their return home from a trip to Sin City that probably didn’t feel a whole lot better than waking up next to a tiger. You’re goddamn right I just made a Hangover joke in August 2026! Washington will be looking to either remain a game behind the Liberty or to pull back into a virtual tie with them in the standings, although the latter scenario would put the Mystics back in the favorable position since they’d be back ahead in the loss column with two games in hand. They will, however, need help from the Liberty at some point after falling into their current loss-column tie. The Sparks have lost three in a row after winning two of their previous three, but to their credit, they seem to be playing more confidently and consistently since the trade which finally forced them to stop waiting for Kelsey Plum to come back and turn it all around. They’ve also played a fairly remarkable nine straight games decided by not just single digits, but by no fewer than four points but also no more than eight. The streak of single-digit margins is tied with a Sparks streak last season for the longest of its kind leaguewide since 2022. If it reaches 10, it’ll be tied for the ninth-longest streak of single-digit games in WNBA regular-season history (17 streaks have gotten to at least 10 so far).