Hello, hoopheads! The WNBA playoff field is set, with only the exact order of the eight teams left to be determined after the Dallas Wings (23-16) and Washington Mystics (23-15) each clinched winning records last night. The part about winning records is convenient, independent of solidifying a field that has been pretty solid for quite a while, since the WNBA uses teams’ records against teams who finished the regular season with winning records as the second tiebreaker for playoff seeding after head-to-head records between teams. There is now no doubt that all eight playoff teams will have winning records and all seven others will not, which hasn’t always been the case in the W, so those tiebreakers can be projected without need for any disclaimers about the groups of teams changing. Most teams played each other three times this season, so the second tiebreaker won’t come up terribly often, but it could be a factor between, off the top of my head, the Indiana Fever (25-14, 9-11 vs winning teams) and my beloved New York Liberty (23-15, 9-9 vs winning teams), who split their series 2-2.
Dallas jumped out to a 27-18 lead after the first quarter of its win against the Portland Fire and never looked back, getting 22 points and 11 assists from Paige Bueckers while Jessica Shepard added 21 points, 9 boards and 6 assists. The Wings won their 23rd game of the season, which is their most since moving to Dallas from Tulsa a decade ago. It is not, as was said on last night’s broadcast and repeated elsewhere (including in the AP game story which runs on WNBA dot com), a “franchise record,” because the Wings are the same franchise that went 25-9 (.735) en route to the 2003 WNBA championship as the Detroit Shock. I will not stand for Swin Cash erasure in any form. Washington had the tiniest bit more trouble with Phoenix than Dallas had with Portland, but only the tiniest bit, in a 94-84 win to remain ahead of the Wings in the loss column and locked in a tie with the Liberty. Sonia Citron led the Mystic Babies with 19 points and 9 assists while twin towers Kiki Iriafen (18 points and 10 rebounds) and Shakira Austin (16 points, 6 rebounds, 2 steals and 2 blocks) combined for 34 points and 16 rebounds.
With the playoff field set and playoff teams having gone 53-6 (.898) against non-playoff teams over the last six weeks or so, most of the games left on the WNBA schedule are going to be extremely low on both stakes and intensity. There will be a concerted effort made to convince you that the teams playing out the string reeeeeeally want to play the role of spoiler, and in the case of the Chicago Sky, who are 3-6 (.333) against playoff-bound opponents since July 13, it’s probably a good idea not to take them lightly. The other six non-playoff teams are 3-48 (.059) against playoff teams in the same span and haven’t gotten a win since the Los Angeles Sparks knocked off the Minnesota Lynx three weeks ago tomorrow. Losing 48 of 51 doesn’t happen entirely for lack of trying, but it definitely looks like it does sometimes.
Tonight’s schedule features a pair of games and only one playoff team in action, so it should be a pretty quiet Wednesday in the W. Starting off the twinbill are the Golden State Valkyries (26-11) and Connecticut Sun (10-27) (7:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass). In addition to being 25-5 (.833) against everyone except for Minnesota and Las Vegas this season, Golden State also has the good fortune of catching the Sun on the back half of a back-to-back. Connecticut held off the Sky 87-81 last night behind 26 points and 10 rebounds from Aaliyah Edwards on 11-for-18 (68.8%) from the field while Diamond Miller added 21. That was Miller’s second 20-point game this month, before which she hadn’t cracked the 20-point threshold since 2023 (when she did it five times). The Valkyries are starting their own back-to-back, which concludes tomorrow night in Brooklyn against a Liberty team which will have had four days of rest since beating Indiana on Saturday. Golden State’s win at Minnesota on Monday means it can afford to lose one more game and hold on to the No. 2 seed even if the Aces don’t lose again, and tomorrow’s game will be the Valkyries’ sixth in 11 days, with one in Portland on Sunday to make it seven in 14 days heading into the World Cup break. Given all of that, it seems fairly likely that Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase would try to get some of her key players a bit of rest either tonight or tomorrow. If anyone is getting a scheduled night off, however, it’ll be in Brooklyn, as the Valkyries submitted a clean injury report.
Tonight’s second game, which will be the 288th out of 330 in the regular season, sees the Toronto Tempo (11-26) visit the Seattle Storm (7-31) (10:00 ET, USA Network/local affiliates). The Tempo submitted about as far from a clean injury report as possible, as they’ll be without Marina Mabrey, Brittney Sykes, Aneesah Morrow and Nyara Sabally while Marie Conde is questionable as Toronto tries to avoid losing for the 14th time in its last 15 games. Seattle has lost three in a row since snapping its second 11-game losing streak of the season.