The CHRIS WNBA Finals Preview
Two teams remain. The Lynx and Fever got “stunningly” (in Ryan Rucco’s words) close to the WNBA Finals, but in the end, the Phoenix Mercury and Las Vegas Aces prevailed and will face off for the Tiffany & Co-crafted WNBA Championship Trophy.
It’s bound to be an exciting, drawn-out series that could feature the first Game 7 in WNBA history. The Aces took the regular season series against the Mercury, three games to one, and held Phoenix to some of their lowest scoring outputs of the year. But the Mercury are riding high after taking down both of last year’s Finals teams, the Liberty in Round 1 and the Lynx in Round 2.
Game 1 is this Friday, so to get you ready with water-cooler banter and random, interesting stories about these two teams, here is the bi-annual CHRIS Finals Preview:
Mapping the WNBA Finals
Let’s start with a lay of the land. Here’s who will be on the court when the first jump ball is tossed into the air in two days.
The starting fives for both teams have gone through a couple of iterations this season, as the rookie Monique Akoa Makani earned her way into the starting Point Guard role with the Mercury, and Kierstan Bell replaced Jewell Lyod in the Aces’ starting unit.
The two sets of starters are nearly perfectly matched in height (Vegas gives up two inches, 78” to 80” in total across the starters), professional experience (Vegas has two more years of experience, 34 to Phoenix’s 32), and All-Stars (three each).
As has been well documented, all of the Mercury starters (and the rest of the team for that matter) are essentially brand new to the desert. Meanwhile, three of the five Aces’ starters have spent their entire careers with their franchise. Will connectivity give Vegas an edge?
The Aces start two number one picks plus bring a third (Jewell Lyod) off their bench. The Mercury don’t have any, but that puts on a chip on their Big 3’s shoulders.
I Was Already Good
Kahleah Copper and Alyssa Thomas certainly play with that chip. Both have put in the work and consistently improved, year over year, throughout their careers. They’ve gone from about average production in their first few seasons to multiple All-Star selections each. The third member of that Big 3, Satou Sabally, started a bit better as a rookie in Dallas, but has played some of her best basketball recently with the Mercury.
Wilson’s progression is ridiculous. She was good in her first few years, and has just kept getting better, winning a WNBA-record four MVP trophies during that climb to the top. She’s a handful for anyone, including Mack, Thomas, Sabally or whatever combination of defenders Mercury Head Coach Nate Tibbetts plans to throw at her.
Who Are We Really Rooting For?
Speaking of Tibbetts, he’s now made the WNBA Finals in just his second year at the helm. Since Mat Ishbia bought the team in early 2023, he’s brought in Tibbetts and a new GM who in turn brought in an entirely new roster of players. The only consistent thing in Phoenix, the only thing we’re really rooting for, is their logo of 11 years and their mascot, the purple … uh, thing … known as Scorch.
Las Vegas has only been a franchise since 2018, A’ja Wilson’s rookie year, when the Stars moved from San Antonio. They revamped their logo last season, dropping the red entirely.
How They Got Here
Ok, back to the on-court play. The Aces were sitting at about 0.500 for over half of the season, before going on a historic 16-game winning streak to end the regular season and launch themselves into the two-seed in the Playoffs. Even though Vegas passed them in the win-loss column though, Phoenix was still the better team all year in net rating, which more accurately tracks performance by margin of victory. Phoenix dropped as low as sixth, while Vegas was down to 10th a few times, but both teams ended on strong runs that brought them up to fourth and sixth in the league respectively.
They each started their rise up the ranks about 30 games into the season. The Aces winning streak dominated the headlines, but the Mercury quietly went 11-3 for a stretch (before dropping their final three games of the regular season). A big part of their second half success was purely being healthy. Both squads have had nearly every one of their players available for every game over the last few months.
Fingers crossed for a healthy Finals as well🤞! I won’t try to predict playoff injuries this time.
Lineup Patterns
With that availability, both teams have been able to settle into consistent playoff rotations. With everything on the line, both teams are relying heavily on their experienced stars.
Starting with the Mercury, the thing that jumps out to me in the chart below is the clear reliance on vets. While Akoa Makani and Natasha Mack are still getting the starts, Tibbetts is phasing them out over the course of the game, instead going with Sami Whitcomb and DeWanna Bonner. Whitcomb and Bonner have been around the WNBA for a decade, and between them have more WNBA championships (4) than Akoa Makani and Mack have seasons played (3).
The Aces have been relying just as much on her stars, as the Wilson-Gray-Young trio are each playing about 35 minutes per game. Becky Hammon has stuck with her decision to start Kierstan Bell over Jewell Lyod in the postseason, but it really isn’t as big a deal as you might think. Lyod enters the game after just two-to-three minutes, and is averaging two-and-a-half times more minutes than Bell. It’s a “false start”.
Four Factors
In just one season together, the Mercury have built a reputation as a hard-nosed, defensive team. While they were in the bottom quartile in the four offensive factors, they were above average in most defensive metrics.
That’s been exaggerated in the playoffs, where more physicality is generally allowed: the Mercury have been top three in getting turnovers and limiting opponent free throws, and the best in getting their opponents (again, the Liberty and Lynx, last years’ Finals teams) to miss shots. Meanwhile, the Aces have the single highest shooting percentage in the playoffs.
An immovable object (AT) is about to meet an unstoppable force (A’ja).
Instagram Offseasons
And … back off the court to what might actually decide this series: Instagram posts. Three Finals players (Satou Sabally, A’ja Wilson, and Jewel Lyod) were among the most active Instagram users last offseason. Overall, the Aces and Mercury pre-season starters posted the second and third most times among all teams. Does social media use lead to playoff success? Clearly.
The subjects of the posts varied from player to player:
satou_sabally posted about her fashion 25 times in the seven-month offseason. That’s about one fit per week.
aja22wilson, the face of the league, posted a ton of sponsored content, mostly of her new Nike A’One shoes.
jewelllyod’s posts featured a wider range of content, including the most offseason training posts of any player in the league with 10. Wilson and Sabally got their work in too though.
Awards that Don’t Exist
Of course, A’ja Wilson won MVP and Co-Defensive Player of the Year, but she also has some hardware that doesn’t exist. She was the co-most loyal player in the league this year, in recognition of her eight years of service to the Aces organization.
And A’ja’s not the only one with invisible trophies in these Finals. The Robin to Wilson’s Batman, Jackie Young, was named (by me) Second MVP, for being the best player who is not the best player on her team. She almost took home Clutch Player of the Year as well, but was edged out by her Finals opponent Alyssa Thomas. Thomas was incredible in clutch minutes during the regular season, compiling an 11-5 record in those games, and she may have made the most clutch (if controversial) play of the year in her last outing.
I can’t wait for these Finals to start! I’ll be back next week with a fun game you can play as you watch and enjoy the action. See you then.
