Hello, hoopheads! After almost two full seasons of horrendous injury luck, frequently questionable effort and boatloads of unfulfilled promise, my beloved New York Liberty (23-15) looked like the team we’ve been waiting to see in a 109-102 win over the Indiana Fever (24-14) that put the Libs squarely back in the mix for a top-four seed and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Liberty put together probably their second-best effort of the season in the first game Leonie Fiebich played since their best effort, a 99-86 win over the league-leading Minnesota Lynx on July 3. It was, however, proof that not only was I not overstating the impact of her absence, as I’d feared at times, I was probably underselling it. Fiebich had 20 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists and a steal in just shy of 34 minutes while going 7-for-10 (70%) from the field including 3-for-5 (60%) from deep and most importantly, hounding the Fever on defense. Fiebich wasn’t her team’s top scorer, coming up two points shy of Breanna Stewart, but for my money Fiebich was the best player on the floor for either team.
As I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter, the mere fact that Fiebich was set to return before the World Cup seemed to be an acknowledgement from the Liberty that, if not exactly a “put up or shut up” situation, last night’s game stood to be one of the most important of their season. The win left the Liberty a game behind Indiana for the No. 5 seed and two games behind Las Vegas (25-13) for the No. 3 seed, while they’re presently in possession of tiebreakers over both teams. They’ll have the tiebreaker over the Aces no matter what, having won the head-to-head series, while a 2-2 split with Indiana sends it to records against winning teams — last night’s win made the Liberty 9-9 (.500) against winning teams while Indiana fell to 9-11 (.450). I suppose it’s worth a token mention that the “teams with winning records at the end of the regular season” cohort isn’t technically set in stone yet, but it should be pretty soon. The Dallas Wings (21-16) and Washington Mystics (21-15) each need to win only two more games to guarantee winning records, while one more Portland Fire loss guarantees there won’t be a ninth winning team. In between the Aces and Fever are the Atlanta Dream (25-13), who held off the Phoenix Mercury last night (13-24) to remain 1.5 games up on the Liberty. The Dream-Liberty tiebreaker will be decided when the Dream come to Brooklyn for the final two games of the regular season, but the Liberty won the only meeting so far. It’s not going to be easy, particularly given the Liberty also have games against Golden State (at home on Thursday) and at Minnesota (their first game after the World Cup), but improving their standing seems a lot more plausible for the Liberty after last night’s reminder of what they’re actually supposed to look like.
Today’s four-game slate doesn’t feature a matchup of playoff teams, but I think it’s fair to say that the most compelling tilt sees the Indiana Fever (24-14) visit the rival Chicago Sky (15-22) (7:00 ET, NBC/Peacock), as Indiana closes a five-games-in-eight-days road trip looking to avoid its first three-game skid of the season, while the Sky look to extend their season-long win streak to four straight. Chicago is riding higher than it has in literal years after finally getting the job done on Friday in their fifth attempt at a three-game streak when undrafted rookie star Sydney Taylor stunned the Golden State Valkyries (25-11) at the buzzer, although it’s fair to note that the Sky led for pretty much the entire game. Indiana, on the other hand, has followed up a pair of five-game win streaks over its last 14 games with back-to-back losses each time. As high as the Fever had been riding prior to the last two games, they will be tied with the Liberty in the loss column if they drop this one, and as I already told you, that would give the Liberty the inside track on a higher seed than Indiana.
Kelsey Mitchell extended her 20-point scoring streak to a WNBA-record 22 games with her game-high 25 points on 9-for-15 (60%) from the field last night in Brooklyn, Caitlin Clark added 21 points on 9-for-18 (50%) and Aliyah Boston had 22 points on 8-for-14 (57.1%), but the Fever ultimately took their sixth loss of the season when scoring at least 100 points. That doubles the previous single-season WNBA record, including playoff games, and while there’s no doubt that scoring 100 doesn’t quite mean what it used to amidst this season’s offensive explosion, it does mean you’re supposed to win the game. Indiana fell to 11-6 (.647) when reaching the century mark while the rest of the WNBA is 63-12 (.840) when doing so. Even that framing is probably being a bit too kind to the Fever, because the other seven playoff-bound teams are 45-0 when they score 100 points. That makes non-playoff teams 18-12 (.600), which is quite a bit closer to Indiana’s win percentage than Indiana’s is to any other playoff team (the Valkyries are the lone WNBA team not to score 100 this season, so they have no such win percentage). Indiana has also shattered the single-season WNBA record for 100-point games, with 17 and counting, but I’m not sure that record means a whole lot anymore given that the team that previously held it — the 2009 Phoenix Mercury — went 13-0 when it scored 100, including four of its seven postseason wins en route to a WNBA title. Apropos of nothing at all, the Minnesota Lynx have scored 100 points 11 times this season, and I bet you know what their record is when they do it.
Each of today’s other three games also sees a playoff team facing off against a non-playoff team. Those had been essentially guaranteed wins for playoff teams for a while there, as they went 41-4 in such scenarios from mid-July into last week, but the Sky’s wins over New York and Golden State give the non-playoff teams wins in two of the last six such games. The first team looking to add a non-Sky win to that list today will be the Seattle Storm (7-30) in a visit to the Dallas Wings (21-16) (4:00 ET, NBA TV/local affiliates). Dallas will have plenty of opportunities to take bad losses the rest of the way, as it’s beginning a stretch of seven straight against losing teams to close out the regular season after getting a much-needed win over Indiana on Thursday. That gave the Wings the tiebreaker, and they’d pull within 1.5 games of Indiana with a win and a Fever loss today despite currently occupying the No. 8 seed. The remaining games both tip simultaneously with Fever-Sky, including the Washington Mystics (21-15) visiting the Portland Fire (15-21) (7:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass) in a rematch of one the season’s most memorable games (a Mystics win in a WNBA record-tying four overtimes). Both the Mystics and Wings can guarantee that they finish no worse than .500 with wins today, with Dallas on the verge of avoiding a third straight losing season while Washington would snap a three-year streak of losing records. Rounding out the schedule, the Las Vegas Aces (25-13) head to Vancouver to take on the Toronto Tempo (11-25) (7:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass), with the reigning champs trying to win a second straight game and avoid falling to 10-9 since starting 15-5 while the Tempo look to win a second straight after losing a dozen in a row. Toronto will unfortunately be extremely shorthanded, perhaps the most shorthanded it’s been during an injury-plagued inaugural season, as Marina Mabrey, Brittney Sykes, Aneesah Morrow, Nyara Sabally and Maria Conde — a playable starting five, even if it wouldn’t be this team’s ideal group — have all been ruled out.