{"id":141327,"date":"2025-09-13T15:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T15:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/141327\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T15:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T15:56:11","slug":"eight-teams-eight-questions-a-guide-to-the-2025-wnba-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/141327\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Teams, Eight Questions: A Guide To The 2025 WNBA Playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 WNBA playoffs begin on Sunday. Here are some questions I\u2019m asking about each team, paired by first-round matchup. If you, the person reading this, are not much of a reader,\u00a0we also discussed a few of these questions on the most recent episode<\/a> of Nothing But Respect.<\/p>\n

(1) Minnesota Lynx: So how\u00a0do\u00a0you beat the Lynx?\u00a0They may have answered that themselves on Thursday night\u2014not by losing, but by wanting to win a game that didn\u2019t matter. In the last game of the regular season, with the top seed firmly locked up, Minnesota\u2019s starters still played heavy minutes against the Golden State Valkyries, a win that dropped the Valks to the No. 8 seed and moved Seattle to No. 7. Perhaps the Lynx wanted to avoid another round of\u00a0Electric Slide taunting from Skylar Diggins<\/a>. Perhaps they wanted MVP candidate Napheesa Collier to juice her numbers a little more. But they might also have been trying to avoid a matchup they didn\u2019t like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the Lynx arrived in the Finals with a real flaw last year, it was the team\u2019s relative lack of size in the frontcourt. Collier plays up so well that you don\u2019t notice her true height (6-foot-1) on most nights. It\u2019s a little more noticeable on nights when she\u2019s suiting up against teams with deep frontcourt rotations, like Seattle or Atlanta, both of whom played the Lynx tough in the regular season. Same goes for the 6-foot-3 Alanna Smith, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate who looks like she\u2019s fighting for her life when she has to guard Brittney Griner. To crudely illustrate the height difference at center there: Smith has won 45 percent of her jump ball attempts this year, and Griner has won 91 percent of hers. The good news for the Lynx is that they wouldn\u2019t see either Atlanta or Seattle until the Finals, and they\u2019ll begin the postseason against a Valkyries team with size problems of its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(8) Golden State Valkyries: Is WNBA basketball a “weak link” sport?\u00a0This Valkyries season has reminded me of some conversations I heard during the 2024 WNBA Finals and 2025 NBA Finals about basketball\u2019s new\u00a0\u201cweak link\u201d era<\/a>, in which being the team with the best player on the floor matters less than being the team without the worst player on the floor. What propelled Golden State to a historically successful expansion season was the team\u2019s night-to-night unknowability. They didn\u2019t really blink when All-Star Kayla Thornton suffered a season-ending injury. Eleven different Valkyries players had at least one team-high scoring night in 44 games, and the player with the most team-high scoring games, Veronica Burton, still only had a quarter of them. Rookie head coach Natalie Nakase<\/a> so regularly tinkered with lineups and tailored her gameplans that it now feels like a Valkyries win can take many shapes. When a coach can trust everyone on the roster, the playoffs become much easier.<\/p>\n

Their first-round opponent doesn\u2019t make this series a great test case for the weak link theory, though: The Lynx had eight different players score the team-high total this season, and their greatest strength might be their total competence at every position. But it\u2019s something I\u2019m watching as the WNBA begins a period of rapid expansion and the league\u2019s star talent gets spread thin.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(2) Las Vegas Aces: Will the Aces lose a basketball game ever again?\u00a0The last time the Aces lost a game, they really made it count: a 111-58 loss to Minnesota, the largest margin of defeat in a home game in WNBA history. This happened more than a month ago. The Aces evidently got all the losing out of their system in one night and will now enter the playoffs on a 16-game win streak. A\u2019ja Wilson remains the model of consistent excellence, but things around her seemed to click at the trade deadline, when the team dealt for NaLyssa Smith and brought her into the starting lineup in place of the offensively challenged Kiah Stokes. Head coach Becky Hammon also moved struggling offseason acquisition Jewell Loyd to the bench midseason, at Loyd\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n

The Aces’ effort on defense has certainly looked better during this streak than it did in the first half of this season, or even in the second half of last season. That might be a result of Hammon\u2019s new motivational tactic: She told ESPN\u2019s Kendra Andrews<\/a> that she\u2019d started to ask players to create their own scouting reports. The Aces like to switch everything, and while this has brought out point guard Chelsea Gray\u2019s charming ability to guard the four, it might produce some mismatches that playoff opponents can attack. Keep an eye on how they\u2019re communicating defensively and how they look guarding the pick and roll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(7) Seattle Storm: How will fatigue affect teams this postseason?\u00a0You might look at the Storm roster, which skews deep in the frontcourt and uber-athletic on paper, and guess they\u2019d be pretty good on the glass, but they\u2019re actually\u00a0the worst rebounding team in the league. They can end possessions in other ways, forcing turnovers on a fifth of opponents\u2019 possessions thanks to the pesky likes of Gabby Williams, Erica Wheeler, and deadline add Brittney Sykes. But a lot of the time, it just looks like they don\u2019t have quite as much zip as the other team. Seattle\u2019s roster is veteran-heavy, so age might have something to do the energy levels. Without a quality bench, the starters also end up playing a ton of minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t love this inconsistent Seattle team\u2019s chances against the red-hot Aces, but it\u2019ll be interesting to see how they and the other playoff teams hold up after the WNBA\u2019s longest-ever regular season. New this year, too, is a first-round playoff format that will require extra travel by guaranteeing both teams one home game. Travel from Vegas to Seattle isn\u2019t too bad, but it\u2019s certainly something to watch in the Lynx-Valkyries series, the Mercury-Liberty series and through the rest of the playoffs. For the first time, the WNBA Finals are best-of-seven. Having somehow survived the horrid sight of last year\u2019s Finals Game 5<\/a>, I shudder to imagine players with even deader legs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(3) Atlanta Dream: Can you win a WNBA championship when your best player isn\u2019t a big?\u00a0Last year\u2019s Finals\u00a0left me thinking about all the cool stuff the league\u2019s best bigs are doing these days: eating up crazy space on defense, operating as passing hubs in the paint. Atlanta\u2019s bigs are not really doing any of that. That isn\u2019t to say Traditional Big Things aren\u2019t valuable. For the Dream, they absolutely have been. Overshadowed, maybe, by the team\u2019s dramatic offensive improvement is the Dream\u2019s second-best defense in the league.<\/p>\n

Atlanta wins defensive possessions with suffocating pressure. The athletic Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray force opponents into bad shots, and on the boards, Brittney Griner, Brionna Jones and Naz Hillmon make sure those are the only shots the other team gets. If I\u2019m a little skeptical of their title chances, it\u2019s only because the roster doesn\u2019t quite look like recent Finals teams: There\u2019s no Stewart-Wilson-Thomas-Collier-style game-wrecking power forward doing it all. But the WNBA is in a nascent golden age for dynamic guards\u2014just look at its youngest stars and its next few draft classes. If we\u2019re headed for the Guard Era, I\u2019ll be watching the Dream to see what that might look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"RhyneAlex Slitz\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

(6) Indiana Fever: What does postseason success look like for this Fever team?\u00a0It\u2019s been a bummer of a season for a team that began the year with real championship aspirations. Caitlin Clark missed most of the season with injuries, and as the season went on, more and more of her teammates joined her on the bench in street clothes. To declare that the Fever should just expect to get their young players experience and nothing more in the postseason brings on some 2024 d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n

Certainly there have been bright spots peeking from behind the clouds of injury: Kelsey Mitchell led all WNBA guards in scoring. She belongs on an All-WNBA team. Aliyah Boston\u2019s been a total pro this year; keep an eye on how she performs against the WNBA\u2019s best rebounding team. As first-round matchups go, this is probably the one Indiana wanted. The Fever avoid the Aces and the champion favorite Lynx in the first round, and they may be able to challenge Atlanta by trying to play in transition more. The Dream are among the league\u2019s slowest teams, 12th\u00a0in pace, and for all their injury woes, the Fever still finished the season with a top-three offense.<\/p>\n

(4) Phoenix Mercury:\u00a0Is\u00a0WNBA basketball a “weak link” sport?\u00a0If any player can prove that stars matter\u2014that one woman actually\u00a0can\u00a0win a postseason series by herself\u2014it\u2019s Alyssa Thomas, who can manufacture a paint touch or a good look for anyone at any time. Not surprisingly, she has looked absolutely awesome with a cast of capable three-point shooters and elite cutters around her, and the much clearer path to the rim in Phoenix has helped boost her own scoring numbers, too. The team\u2019s relative experience might help here: Kahleah Copper was a Finals MVP, DeWanna Bonner and Sami Whitcomb have rings, and Thomas might be the best playoff riser never to win a championship. A few of their\u00a0lovable rando rookie teammates<\/a>\u00a0will be making postseason debuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Getting out of the first round could be its own challenge for Phoenix: This isn\u2019t exactly a true-talent five-seed they\u2019re facing. Thomas is best when she can run the offense in transition, but the Liberty usually do well to limit points off the fast break. Everyone is at a size disadvantage against New York, and the Mercury’s frontcourt is already undersized to begin with. Natasha Mack probably shouldn\u2019t be the starting center on a playoff team, though she\u2019s fun to watch defensively and a good dancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(5) New York Liberty: Can the Liberty get away with it?\u00a0While the Liberty did have some problems when fully healthy\u2014they\u2019re a weirdly terrible rebounding team, for one\u2014it\u2019s hard to know what to make of their season, which was just a mess of injuries to key players. In only 12 of 44 games did Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart all start and finish the game healthy. (They won all 12.) It\u2019s not surprising that the team never really seemed to get into a rhythm this year after a hot start to the season. I have absolutely no idea what version we\u2019ll be seeing when the playoffs begin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pedigree still means something to me, especially in playoff basketball, so the idea that New York might flip a switch and figure things out is tempting. For inspiration, the Liberty could look to the 2021 Sky, a similarly talented No. 6 seed that happened to goof around and get hurt a lot in the regular season. Still, the Sky are an exception to the rule that lower-ranked seeds generally do not fare well in the WNBA playoffs. And if the absence of one player is enough to bring down an entire team, that might say something about the quality of the team. Sometimes you just are what the record says you are. In the last two games of the season\u2014literally New York\u2019s first injury-free games since the first two games of the season\u2014head coach Sandy Brondello tested out some playoff combinations. A three-big jumbo lineup with Stewart, Jones, and midseason signing Emma Meesseman could be on the table. If it\u2019s clicking, they’d be hard to stop.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 WNBA playoffs begin on Sunday. Here are some questions I\u2019m asking about each team, paired by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-141327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}