Eight Teams, Eight Qualms: A Guide To The 2026 WNBA Playoffs
The 2026 WNBA playoffs begin on Sunday, following the league’s longest-ever regular season, one in which it felt like any team could win on any given night. (Except the Connecticut Sun.) As an ethical and objective journalist with no real rooting interest, I could be excited on everyone’s behalf. Unfortunately, my objectivity manifests as being nervous on everyone’s behalf for the postseason. Here’s a reason for concern about each team, grouped by first-round matchup.
(1) Minnesota Lynx: Is the Lynx defense OK?
The Lynx suck! Am I being a little facetious? Sure, they’re the WNBA’s top seed and they got themselves together for their regular-season finale Thursday night against the Fever, an 86-66 win. But before Thursday, they’d dropped four of five games and looked shaky. Their 96-77 loss to the Fever on Tuesday might seem like an artifact of Minnesota’s bench playing the last 25 minutes of the game. In fact, the Fever did most of the damage against Minnesota’s starters (sans an injured Olivia Miles), and head coach Cheryl Reeve yanked them because she thought the game already seemed out of hand.
Although the Lynx were an elite defense in May and June, Reeve has said she doesn’t think the team has defended well since early July. “Literally, a team can get whatever they want on us. Doesn’t matter the action. Doesn’t matter which personnel you go against. They get anything they want,” Reeve said on Aug. 6 after a bad home loss to the Sparks. “Every player at every position was terrible. Every player that played in the game at every position.”
In recent years, Reeve’s teams have struggled with bigger and more physical defenses in the postseason, so the recent defensive woes are something to keep an eye on. There isn’t one obvious culprit. Napheesa Collier is an excellent defender, but the Lynx might still be figuring out their team rotations now that she’s back in the starting lineup. Teams do seem to pick on Miles a little more, and the long season might be catching up with the superstar rookie. Center Dorka Juhasz rejoined the team from an injury in July. The Lynx like her size in the frontcourt, or at least they like the idea of it; she can play a little timid, and Minnesota has actually lost her minutes this season. The defensive fall-off could also be some regression to the mean after a few months of good shooting luck. Lynx opponents were shooting around 30 percent from three in May and June, but are shooting closer to 35 percent since July.
(8) New York Liberty: Can Breanna Stewart get some help?
Fortunately for the Lynx, the Liberty suck even more. Breanna Stewart will first need some help from her own body. The Liberty held her out of Wednesday’s regular-season finale against the Dream, listing her with knee soreness. It could have been precautionary, but the other Liberty starters played in that game, and Stewart did look to have hurt her knee in Monday’s game, also against the Dream. If she’s limited, don’t expect a real playoff fight.
I welcome all newcomers, but I feel a little sorry for any recent WNBA converts, because it’s hard to convey the sheer awesomeness of prime Stewie to someone who didn’t witness it live. But even a recent convert can see that despite the atrophy of Stewart’s shooting skills, her incredible motor and freaky defensive versatility are still enough to keep her among the best players in the league. Right now, it’s looking like she may end her career as the best defender never to win Defensive Player of the Year. It’s a bummer that her stellar play with the Liberty has been overshadowed by injuries, dubious coaching and some flawed rosters in New York. Never forget the “We are not fucking losing this game” game.
This feels strange to say about a team that has long had so many options here, but this might be the least trustworthy backcourt group in the playoffs. Rookie Pauline Astier has been a revelation this year. On a team that makes offense look really difficult sometimes, her ability to get downhill is refreshing. But no guard off the bench has looked like they’ll make an especially reliable playoff contributor. Astier’s backcourt partner, Sabrina Ionescu, has had the shooting season from hell, finishing 38.8 from the field and 29.5 percent from three, her second straight sub-30 percent outside shooting season. Aside from an outlier 2023 campaign, Ionescu was never the elite knockdown three-point shooter she’s often painted to be, but now her various injuries have slowed her down enough that she can barely get to the rim either. Across the league, her position is only getting more athletic. She’ll be a problem (the bad kind) in the playoffs, and the Liberty will have to figure out what to do with her if they want to keep contending in the Stewie era.
(2) Golden State Valkyries: Who’s on the other side?
It wouldn’t be a playoff preview without the Golden State Valkyries, who have never missed the postseason in their history. This year, they’re back in the playoffs thanks to one of the best team-defensive seasons in league history. Natalie Nakase’s squad is disruptive, athletic and always in sync on that side of the ball. Golden State’s offense is less impressive: Their 104.7 offensive rating ranks seventh in the league. Of the teams in the playoffs, only Washington’s ranks worse.
The standings are so clustered together this year that matchup luck will determine outcomes for a bunch of teams in the postseason, but the limits of the variance-prone Valkyries offense, which relies heavily on threes, puts some extra pressure on the defense to perform. Teams that can throw some size at Golden State, like the Mystics, could pose a problem. If the regular season is any indication, the best counter to the Valkyries’ defense is an offense with multiple quick-thinking playmakers who can also score in a few different ways. The Valkyries have yet to beat the Aces this season, and they’ve had a hard time with the Lynx. In their second season, this team is no longer a sweet feel-good story, just content to be here. They’ll have lots of eyes on them in their first real test as a contender. But don’t let anyone say the regular season doesn’t matter. Golden State’s first- and second-round opponents will have to survive the rowdiest building in the league. Long live Ballhalla.
(7) Dallas Wings: Can the Wings stop anyone?
If there’s a team most likely to join Cathy Engelbert on the range soon …
… it’s probably this one. The Wings shut down Azzi Fudd for the season in mid-August because her knee is all fucked up (again). Without her, they’re down their best defender at the point of attack. Fudd was impressive in that role in her rookie season—this isn’t a slight—but a team where she’s the go-to on-ball defender probably isn’t constructed very well to begin with. The Wings indeed are not.
Even when Fudd was healthy, it was too easy to get to the rim against Dallas, and an opponent doesn’t have to worry about much once they’re there. Free-agent signing Alanna Smith has been on the fringes of the rotation all year. Free-agent signing Jessica Shepard, Dallas’s All-Star paint passing hub, has panned out better, but she can guard absolutely NO ONE. (An infamous if rudimentary stat: It took Shepard until July to record her first block of the season.) Awak Kuier has been left to anchor the Wings defense herself, and while she’s proven herself a real part of the Dallas core going forward, there are still too many defensive liabilities in the rotation to feel good about their playoff chances.
One thing to feel good about: With one of the most efficient shooting seasons the league has seen, Paige Bueckers led the Wings’ 17-win improvement from last season, a WNBA record. It’ll be fun to watch her ball out in the playoffs, no matter how it ends.
(3) Las Vegas Aces: What do the Aces actually look like without NaLyssa Smith?
What a bummer that the Aces lost NaLyssa Smith to a season-ending non-contact leg injury, shortly before the FIBA World Cup break at the end of August. Vegas’s trade for Smith last year raised some eyebrows at the time (certainly mine). Her play in Indiana and Dallas didn’t seem nearly worth the first-round pick the Aces gave up for her. But she turned out to be a key player in their midseason turnaround and championship run, returning my eyebrows to their natural resting place. Smith gave the Vegas frontcourt some needed size and scoring next to A’ja Wilson, and before the injury, she was on pace for the best season of her career, her 63.8 percent field goal percentage near the top of the league.
Head coach Becky Hammon has asked more of Brianna Turner, Cheyenne Parker-Tyus and Stephanie Talbot in Smith’s absence. Talbot’s been OK, but the Aces ended their regular season without having seen a single playoff team since Smith’s injury. Against better opponents, Vegas’s old rebounding and rim scoring woes might return. An Aces fan will just have to have some faith in the known quantities: Hammon is one of the best coaches in the league, Wilson is sure to win her fifth MVP title this year, Chelsea Gray is still dishing kooky behind-the-back passes, and Jackie Young recovered from a brutal early-season shooting slump to finish the season worthy of First Team All-WNBA honors.
(6) Indiana Fever: Will the Fever get production outside their Big 3?
Just say the line with me: No offense has a higher ceiling. No team has quite this collection of weapons to work with: the WNBA’s best playmaker in Caitlin Clark, its best A’ja Wilson stopper in Aliyah Boston, and its best scorer in Kelsey Mitchell. The Fever could beat anyone. They could beat anyone. They could also lose to any playoff team.
Not unlike the Dallas Wings, roster construction has done the Fever’s stars few favors. Indiana has trouble protecting the rim, the help defense generally sucks, and their collection of wings is below average. The rest of the roster has its charms, like uber-athletic center Makayla Timpson, who’s earned her way into the starting lineup of late and can claim some of the season’s best highlights. But the bench is such that they let a 29-point first-half lead get to single digits in the third quarter of Tuesday’s win over the Lynx. On any given night, it’s hard to know what Fever team you’re going to get.
For a team to be so flawed and still so alluring says something about its star players. Clark, Boston, and Mitchell have the skills and smarts to create any halfcourt advantage they want together. They’re why I can’t totally write off the team’s championship hopes. But the case for this team rests mostly on the forgiveness of small sample sizes, and it would be in the Fever’s interests to build something a little more sustainable. With Clark due for a raise next year and Mitchell due for a new contract after a career-best year, it’ll take some savvy to keep these stars together.
(4) Atlanta Dream: Can Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray create off the dribble and hit their shots?
All season long I’ve been pessimistic about Atlanta’s playoff prospects, because of the team’s reliance on transition play. They’re fast, athletic, and the best team in the league at forcing turnovers, but for most of the season, the game looked much harder for them in the halfcourt. On top of the inefficient paint scoring they’re going to get from Angel Reese, their roster is missing the true pick-and-roll decision-making maestro that most of these other teams have. (If they sound like Golden State’s dream opponent, that’s right: The Valkyries beat the Dream three times in the span of two weeks this season.) All the truisms about playoff basketball—when the game slows down, when the game tightens up, when you need halfcourt bucket getters—would seem to disfavor Atlanta.
But they do seem to be peaking at the right time. They head to the postseason on a five-game win streak and as winners of nine of their last 10 games. (That loss, to the Portland Fire, is not one they’ll have to worry about in the postseason.) Theirs was a lighter schedule to end the year, but some of those wins were nothing to sneeze at. They took a game off the Aces, one against the Lynx, and two against the Liberty.
Reese has looked dominant in that 10-game stretch, stating her case to be voted Defensive Player of the Year and shooting a respectable 56 percent from the field. Calling midseason signing DeWanna Bonner a real difference-maker at this point in her career might be overstating things, but to her credit, she’s been hitting her shots since she got to Atlanta, and she does seem to open the offense up a bit. What’ll swing the postseason for the Dream is the performance of Atlanta’s guards, whose weaknesses have turned up in crunch-time moments this season. In an environment that asks stars to create good looks for themselves off the dribble, Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray will need to step up.
(5) Washington Mystics: Can the Mystics win the possession battle?
The cop-out concern here is inexperience: Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen will be playing their first playoff games, and Shakira Austin has played only two—both four years ago. But that doesn’t worry me too much. The youngest team in the league has played contenders tough all season despite their age. No team has more wins in “clutch time,” when the game is within five points in the last five minutes. The length and physicality up and down their roster makes Washington a real pain to play against. They’ve got the depth to survive tight officiating and plenty of defensive answers for the veteran stars they might see in the playoffs. The vibes are pretty great, too. Head coach Sydney Johnson is always doing stuff like this:
Alongside the Mystics’ impressive wins are a few baffling losses and close wins that probably shouldn’t have been close: a four-overtime squeaker over Portland followed by a blowout loss to them in July, a fourth-quarter collapse against the Sparks just before the FIBA break, a victory in a dogfight against the 14th-place Sun earlier this week. Any variance probably has to do with their offense. Dean Oliver’s “four factors” of basketball might be old-fashioned, but they’re a good starting place for thinking about how teams might win the possession battle. In two of Oliver’s categories, offensive rebound rate and free throw attempt rate, the Mystics are a top-five team. That’s their size showing up. But in the two categories he weighs more heavily, effective field goal percentage and turnover percentage, the Mystics are a bottom-three team. That’s their shaky point guard play showing up.
My heuristic for calling a team a contender is to ask whether they can dig themselves out of a hole fast. Shooting is the obvious way to do that, and it’s no secret that the Mystics are a poor shooting team. But there are other ways to quickly make up a difference—turning stops into transition offense, generating more turnovers than you allow—and the Mystics aren’t great at either, and they tend to prefer slower games. In the playoffs, they may have to pay for their one real roster weakness.
