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Sabrina Ionescu and the Liberty have some soul searching to do after Thursday’s loss to the Sky (Photo credit: Chris Poss)

One of the most pivotal games left on the schedule is set to take place tomorrow afternoon, with added importance since the Liberty lost to the Sky last night and fell a game behind Atlanta (with Las Vegas in between). A Liberty win would give them the tiebreakers over both Atlanta and Las Vegas (which is already locked up), creating a three-way tie in the loss column that would functionally be a one-game lead for the Liberty. An Atlanta win, on the other hand, would split the season series and leave it two games ahead of New York with seven to play. That’s not an impossible hole to get out of, but as I’ve mentioned quite a few times in Tulin’s Treasures, Atlanta’s final six games are all against Connecticut, Dallas and Los Angeles. Even as a noted Sparksmentum believer and while acknowledging the Sun have played pretty well lately, as a Liberty fan this feels like a must-win.

It would’ve been a very important game regardless of last night’s results, but with the Liberty taking their newly-crowned worst loss of the season and the Dream beating the Lynx for the second time in three tries, the margin for error has disappeared. I don’t mean to make a song and dance about it, but the Liberty only need to look in the mirror — or to the wisdom of Kelsey Plum — to know what went wrong. To paraphrase America’s newest poet laureate: they need to play some my favorite word redacted here defense. The Liberty let the Sky, who are 12th out of 13 teams in offensive rating at 93.3 points per 100 possessions for the season, put up a season-high mark of 115.2 last night. Their previous high of 115.0 came against the Sparks in late June, which you might think was what inspired the last few sentences, but I honestly looked it up as I was going and it’s just a perfect encapsulation of the kind of defense New York played. The laugh Bestie got out of me when she used Kelsey Plum’s instantly immortal words in the fourth quarter last night isn’t the most depressed one she ever has (she was there while I beat cancer), but it would make the list. The most frustrating part, to both me and the team, is that it came two nights after a great effort against the Lynx. Last night started with the Liberty misnaming Michaela Onyenwere — the 2021 Rookie of the Year with New York — as “Moriah,” but somehow the Jumbotron actually outplayed the team. If that seems harsh, just remember I’m a paying season ticket holder.

Atlanta played good enough defense last night to overcome one of its worst offensive ratings (90.4) of the season, holding Minnesota to 89.0 points per 100 possessions in the 75-73 win. That win gave Atlanta the season series over Minnesota, which is probably a psychological edge more than anything, but not a bad one to have. It was also the first time the Dream have won a game with an offensive rating lower than 97.4 points per 100 possessions, having previously been 0-6 in those games. It’s an encouraging sign given the Dream are still well below .500 when they’re held to 104.2 points per 100 possessions or worse (now 6-13), something that’s likely to happen more as they advance in the playoffs. Allisha Gray was the only player on either team with more than 16 points last night and one of only two Atlanta players in double digits, scoring 27 points on 10-for-21 from the field including 3-for-8 from deep. Score one for the Researcher’s Curse after I brought up her slump in the second quarter of the season yesterday following a couple of struggles from the field to open the fourth quarter. Gray’s 27 points were tied for her fourth-most in a game this season, and Atlanta improved to 6-0 when she scores more than 25. The Dream also have a winning percentage over .800 when she scores more than 17 points. They’re 17-3 (.850) when Gray hits that mark, which is almost two points below her season average. As an Allisha Gray fan, I am happy to have invoked the Researcher’s Curse, but as a Liberty fan, I hope the Dream make 0% from the field tomorrow.

Minnesota will look to avoid a third loss in four nights as it faces Indiana for the first time since the Commissioner’s Cup championship game. It’s been a busy seven weeks in the WNBA, so in case you’ve forgotten, that game ended with the Fever on top by a 74-59 margin, the most-lopsided loss the Lynx have taken so far in 2025. The teams are set to run it back on Sunday in Minneapolis, then meet again in Indiana’s regular-season finale on Sept. 9 (Minnesota’s penultimate game). It’s not implausible that the teams end up playing three more times in the opening round of the playoffs given the Fever enter this weekend only two games up on the No. 8 seed in the loss column.

Minnesota is playing on back-to-back nights after losing back-to-back games for the first time this season. A loss tonight would give Minnesota as many losses since Tuesday as it suffered from June 25 through Monday. The Lynx were held to 73 points in Atlanta last night after scoring 75 in Brooklyn, the first time they’ve been held under 80 points in back-to-back games this season and also their first time having offensive ratings under 100 points per 100 possessions in consecutive games. The league leaders in pretty much every shooting category (field goal, 2-point, 3-point and effective field-goal percentages), the Lynx hit just 58-of-141 from the field (41.1%) over the last two games. They also still have a six-game cushion on Atlanta in the loss column and an MVPhee candidate nearing a return as Napheesa Collier was listed as questionable last night after being doubtful on Tuesday, so I don’t think Lynx fans need to worry. Here’s hoping we see Phee this weekend!

Indiana hasn’t played since roaring back from a 19-point halftime deficit to win at Connecticut in overtime on Sunday behind Kelsey Mitchell’s career-high 38 points. Mitchell has scored at least 24 points four times in her last six games, averaging 24.7 points and 5.8 assists per game while making 46.8% from beyond the arc in that span. The win on Sunday was just the Fever’s second in their last six games, with the other one coming against Chicago. Indiana improved to 13-2 (.867) in the regular season when it has an offensive rating of at least 107 points per 100 possessions, but it’s 6-14 (.300) when failing to reach that high bar. The Fever have unfortunately been in the headlines since Sunday’s win, first with the news Sophie Cunningham’s season-ending knee injury and more recently that Caitlin Clark suffered a bone bruise in a workout earlier this month. The Fever signed six-year veteran Shey Peddy earlier this week to take Cunningham’s place. It’s hard to remember seeing a team get hit as hard by injuries in one area as Indiana has in the backcourt.