Hello, hoopheads! The race for the top spot in the WNBA playoffs is realistically down to two teams after the Minnesota Lynx (29-7) took control of last night’s 92-87 win at Las Vegas (24-12) to push the third-place Aces five games back with eight to play while also clinching the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Golden State Valkyries (24-9) remain 3.5 games back of the Lynx, but even they will most likely need to sweep the two games they have left against Minnesota — the first of which is coming up on Wednesday at Ballhalla — in order to have a realistic chance of stealing the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. Rookie of the Year Olivia Miles continued to make me question whether I have been underselling her by using that moniker since mid-June as opposed to “MVP Olivia Miles,” leading the victorious Lynx effort with 23 points on 8-for-15 (53.3%) from the field while adding 4 rebounds, 8 assists and a steal, although she did have five turnovers to muddle the assist-to-turnover ratio a bit. The only reason I probably still wouldn’t put Miles atop my MVP ballot, if I had one, which I don’t, is because A’ja Wilson still exists, and she was basically the only reason it didn’t become a blowout with a game-high 32 points on 10-for-15 (66.7%) from the field and 11-for-12 at the line. The rest of the Aces made just 38.9% from the field, with Jackie Young (8 points, 3-for-11) and Chelsea Gray (12 points. 5-for-15) combining for 20 points on 8-for-26 (30.8%) from the field. It was, if you remember back to yesterday’s newsletter, the second straight game in which two-thirds of the Aces’ trio of future Hall of Famers struggled, and the step up in competition was probably the difference between overcoming those struggles and succumbing to them.
With their pursuit of the top spot in the playoffs now effectively over, the Aces’ biggest concern the rest of the way is going to be holding off a handful of teams who are within striking distance and looking to improve their own position. Among those teams are the sixth-place New York Liberty (22-14), who played a pretty miserable first quarter-plus and third quarter yesterday, but ultimately pulled away from the Connecticut Sun (8-25) to win for the ninth time in 11 games and finish the 24-season Liberty-Sun series with a 46-45 edge in the regular season. The forever-rivals fittingly went 51-51 including a 6-5 Sun edge in the playoffs. That win left New York just two games behind Las Vegas, despite three spots separating them in the standings, and the Libs are also in possession of the tiebreaker thanks to a 2-1 edge in the season series. The fourth-place Indiana Fever (22-12) not only have the tiebreaker over Las Vegas, but are also tied in the loss column. The good news for the Aces is that Indiana plays its final two games of the season against Minnesota, and my guess is that the World Cup break is going to necessitate that the Lynx and everyone else headed to the postseason make the most of the minutes available to them in between the resumption of the season and the start of the playoffs. The alternative to that could be trying to knock rust off during a best-of-three first-round series, which doesn’t sound like something a team with championship aspirations is going to want to do. Also working in the Aces’ favor is the fact that their own schedule is pillow-soft after Tuesday’s home game against Atlanta (21-12). That’s the reigning champs’ final regular-season game against playoff-bound opposition, with their final seven games all coming against the league’s bottom seven teams. The Aces can’t slide further than fourth if they don’t lose again, and they’ll be favored in every game the rest of the way. Not that they know anything about season-ending win streaks.
Today’s schedule features three games, two of which pit non-playoff teams against each other, while the other one sees the Indiana Fever (22-12) visit the Atlanta Dream (21-12) (5:00 ET, ESPN/Disney+) for a pivotal showdown to open a crucial five-games-in-eight-days road trip. An Atlanta win would not only see it leapfrog the Fever for the fourth spot in the standings, but the Dream would also clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker by virtue of a 3-1 record in the season series. An Indiana win, on the other hand, would give it a 1.5-game cushion on Atlanta and dictate that any tie be broken by the teams’ records against teams with winning records. That tiebreaker would likely favor Indiana, which is 8-9 (.471) in such scenarios while Atlanta is 7-10 (.412), and that gap would widen by a game with Indiana’s hypothetical win today. All three previous meetings between the teams came during a 17-day span in June, first in a Commissioner’s Cup game and then, somewhat inexplicably, twice within the first three days after Cup play ended. The Fever won the first by a 12-point margin at home, but lost the subsequent home-and-home, first by seven points on their own floor and then by 17 on Atlanta’s two days later. The latter stands as Indiana’s most lopsided loss so far this season, but it’s probably most notable for being the last time Indiana’s Kelsey Mitchell failed to score 20 points. She finished with 16 points on 5-for-13 (38.5%) from the field in that loss, having scored 20+ in 18 straight games since then, the longest such streak in WNBA history (including both postseason games and multi-season streaks).
Mitchell’s streak was in the most jeopardy it’s faced thus far when she got to the last two minutes of the Fever’s win over the Dallas Wings on Friday night with 19 points, but she finished with 23 after making back-to-back layups off of Caitlin Clark’s ninth and 10th assists of the game in the final 90 seconds. I think it’s fair to be a little bit dubious of the Fever seeming to specifically go after both the extension of Mitchell’s streak and Clark’s WNBA-record-extending 20th 20-point/10-assist game of her young career, given Indiana was up by 10 points before the first of the two buckets in question and the game’s outcome was decided. That said, I also think it’s fair to tell the Wings they should play better defense if they don’t want things like that to be done against them. Not many teams have figured out how to prevent Indiana from piling on lately, and Clark’s averages of 21.9 points and 8.3 assists per game would blow away any precedent in league history. Diana Taurasi is the only player to complete a 20/6 season so far, doing it once, with averages of 20.3 and 6.2. Olivia Miles (19.9 and 6.1) and Paige Bueckers (20.5 and 5.8) both have a chance to expand the 20/6 club even further this season, but as you can see, both are currently short of the pace while Clark is actually increasing her sizable cushion as the season goes on. Atlanta held Clark to 17 points on 6-for-17 (35.3%) from the field the first time the teams played, but she had 26 points in each subsequent matchup while going 19-for-34 (55.9%) from the field and 5-for-12 (41.7%) from deep in those games. Of course, Indiana won the game in which she struggled and lost the ones in which she went off, so perhaps there was a conscious choice by the Dream to pick their poison.
Atlanta is looking for its third straight win, but has lost its last two games against playoff-bound opposition and six of its last seven such games after starting the season 6-4 (.600) against the other seven teams making up the top eight in the standings. That 1-6 (.143) stretch against playoff teams — which, as a reminder, is interchangeable with “winning teams” — began immediately after those aforementioned home-and-home wins over Indiana in June. The Dream’s lone win over a playoff team since then came in a memorable comeback against the Dallas Wings late last month which saw Atlanta finish on a 15-5 run and included a five-point possession to steal the 82-81 win in the final 20 seconds. Which is all to say that the Dream haven’t exactly been making good on the promise that led me to pick them to win the WNBA title of late. It hasn’t helped that four-time All-Star Brionna Jones, one of the league’s best two-way players and rebounders, has played in only nine games. She will unfortunately miss another one tonight after being forced from Atlanta’s win at Connecticut — where Jones starred before leaving for the Dream prior to the 2025 season — after just 4:40 of action due to a left leg injury. I still believe in Atlanta’s upside at both ends of the floor, however and they might benefit from the FIBA break as much as any team if it allows Jones to get healthy and provides any sort of a reset as far as chemistry and momentum are concerned.
Today’s other two games aren’t quite as appealing as Fever-Dream, given the closest any of the teams comes to .500 is six games under. Tipping off at the same time as Atlanta and Indiana are the Chicago Sky (12-22) and Seattle Storm (7-29) (5:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass). Both teams will be missing guards who could’ve put on a show, as Chicago remains without standout rookie Sydney Taylor and future Hall of Famer Skylar Diggins while Seattle won’t have StudBud Natisha Hiedeman. Someone will get a win, however, with the Sky looking to snap a three-game skid while Seattle tries to avoid losing for the 30th time in its last 37 games (yes, that is the whole season, you eagle-eyed reader, you). As rough as the Storm’s results have been, watching Dominique Malonga and Awa Fam is never a bad use of a second screen. Rounding out the compact evening schedule right after the first two games are the Portland Fire (14-20) and Phoenix Mercury (13-22) (7:00 ET, ESPN/Disney+). I’d be more excited about watching this one if Kelsey Plum hadn’t been ruled out again, but the Fire have been the most entertaining of the non-playoff teams by a decent margin and I’m always down to see what they get up to. If you’re wondering about the non-playoff entertainment power rankings, the order goes: Fire, Sky, Storm, Mercury, Tempo, Sparks, Sun.