After Sunday’s action, the WNBA semifinals are set. In a few days, we’ll start two best-of-five series: the Minnesota Lynx vs. the Washington Mystics and the Los Angeles Sparks vs. the Phoenix Mercury. That’s something to think about in the future, though — there’s still time to process what happened on Sunday first.
3 things we learned from a record-setting second round of the WNBA playoffs
There was a record-setting shooting performance and a comeback that nearly did the same thing.
And that was a WNBA record being shattered and the second-largest comeback in playoffs history. You know, the usual. Ho-hum.
It was Phoenix that needed the rousing return from down 17 points in the first half of its game, while the Mystics saw hometown hero Kristi Toliver drain nine three-pointers to help propel them past New York.
Toliver saved her record-setting performance for a crucial playoff game.
No WNBA player had hit nine threes in a game before Toliver did on Sunday. The regular-season record had been eight, set several times by a couple of different players. But Toliver broke that — and she made it look easy.
Toliver found room simply by stepping back. Several of these threes came after staring down her defender, as if she was daring them to let her shoot. It didn’t matter that they were only a step away or that she was farther off the line than usual.
It’s even sweeter that Toliver grew up in Virginia not far from Washington D.C. and went to college at the University of Maryland, just 30 minutes up the road. She’s a local product and that factored into her decision to sign with the Mystics last February in free agency.
On Sunday, she had her biggest game yet when the Mystics needed her, turning a one-point game into a 20-point blowout when her barrage of threes started hitting in the second half.
Don’t bet against Diana Taurasi in elimination games.
Or to be slightly more precise: Don’t bet against her in winner-take-all elimination games, like the single-elimination first and second rounds of the new playoff format. Last year, the Phoenix Mercury were the lowest seeded playoff team heading into the two win-or-go-home games. They had better seeding going into this postseason, ranked No. 5 after an 18-16 season, but still nothing was guaranteed.
Taurasi and the Mercury won all four.
This is what Taurasi and her teams do: In the WNBA, she’s 11-0. Throw in NCAA Tournament appearances, too, and she’s 33-1. She’s clutch as hell — always good for a much-needed bucket or big play. And sure, there’s some luck thrown in there, too, but nobody can deny Taurasi is one of the greatest closers this league has ever seen.
The WNBA has to love what it ended up with.
The Lynx and the Sparks were locks for the Final Four due to the new playoff format. They received byes as teams in front of them duked it out, single-elimination style. There’s no surprise there.
But the WNBA had no clue who would come out of the mix behind them. As it turned out, it was the two teams with the biggest stars. In Phoenix, Taurasi is a Hall of Famer while Brittney Griner might be the best-known women player in the sport. Casual fans may not have known Toliver, but Washington is a prestigious market with Elena Delle Donne as its star. She’s just a couple of seasons removed from winning WNBA MVP, after all.
Yes, this worked out great — for the WNBA and for everyone watching. There’s star power mixed in among four teams that all play entertaining basketball. What more could you want?
