INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Sept. 12, 2024)—The Las Vegas Aces conclude their 4-game, east coast road swing, Friday, with a 4:30 pm PT tip against the Indiana Fever. The game, which is being televised nationally on ION, has vast playoff implications, so let’s dive in.

Download Game Notes (final)

The 3 Seed

The Aces trail the Connecticut Sun by 3 games with 4 to play, but they square off against one another one more time on Sunday, Sept. 15, at Michelob ULTRA Arena. Las Vegas also owns the tiebreaker over the Sun, so 3rd place is still within the Aces reach.

Connecticut plays 4 games against playoff contenders down the stretch at Phoenix, (Sept. 13), at home against Minnesota (Sept. 17) and Chicago (Sept. 19), and against Las Vegas, Sunday. If the Sun beat the Mercury Friday, the Aces would need to run the table and Connecticut would need to lose their remaining games in order for Las Vegas to secure the 3 seed.

The 4/5 Seed

The Aces lead Seattle by a game heading into the weekend, and both teams have 4 games remaining on the docket. The Storm still have games at Dallas (Sept. 13), vs. Los Angeles (Sept. 15) and at Phoenix (Sept. 19) on their schedule, along with a Tuesday, Sept. 17, meeting with the Aces in the Emerald City.

Las Vegas currently owns the tiebreaker between the clubs having won 2 of the previous 3 meetings on the season. The second tiebreaker is record against teams that finish the season at or above .500. The Aces are 8-7 at the moment with 3 games remaining against non-losing teams, while Seattle is 7-10, with 1 game left. A Las Vegas victory over Indiana tomorrow or Connecticut Sunday would lock up that tiebreaker, assuming the Fever remain at or above .500.

If you would like to jump headfirst down a rabbit hole that explores a scenario where we could have the first-ever playoff position in major professional sports history to be decided by a coin flip* scroll down to the bottom of the article.

 

 

The Indiana Fever began the season with the youngest team in the league, and one of the toughest schedules, playing 11 games in the first 20 days. Despite the drafting of Caitlin Clark with the No. 1 overall pick, growing pains were to be expected, and they stumbled out of the gates to a 2-9 record.

They had the second least efficient offense in the WNBA (94.9 OER), and the least efficient defense during that stretch (111.8 DER), but they began turning things around during the middle of the season winning 9 of their next 15 games to push themselves into playoff contention. Since the Olympic break, Indiana’s offense has been the best in the league (109.3 OER). Their defense is still their Achilles’ heel, particularly on the perimeter, but it has improved by more than 7 points per 100 possessions over the team’s first 11 games. The Aces flipped the script on the Fever during their Wednesday night meeting, however.

 

The Fever’s surge in the standings has been fueled by their big three of Clark, Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston, all of whom have improved considerably on the offensive end of the floor throughout the season.

 

 

Mitchell in particular is channeling her inner All-Star as her 24.8 points per game since the resumption of the season are second only to …

A’ja Wilson (27.3 ppg), who continues to shatter records this season. Most recently, she broke the WNBA single-season scoring record passing Jewell Loyd at the top of the list. Wilson now has 956 points on the year, 44 shy of 1,000.

Last Friday evening, the six-time All-Star broke the league record for “stocks” in a season, besting Brittney Griner’s mark of 151 combined STeals and blOCKS in 2014. Wilson now has has 66 steals and 94 blocks for a total of 161 “stocks” on the year.

The 6-time All-Star is averaging 27.3 points per game on the season, which is 2 points per game better than the record 25.3 that Diana Taurasi averaged in 2006.

The South Carolina grad is also likely to become just the third player in WNBA history to block 100 or more shots in a season, joining Brittney Griner (3 times) and Margo Dydek (4 times).

Already this season, Wilson has set or tied WNBA records for …

Consecutive games scoring 20 or more points with 20 straight from August 28, 2023, to June 27, 2024

Consecutive games scoring 25 or more points with 8 straight from May 25 to June 13, 2024

Consecutive games scoring 30 or more points with 4 straight from September 2, 2023, to May 14, 2024

Consecutive games with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds with 8 straight from July 5 to August 18, 2024

On Sept. 1 at Phoenix, Wilson tied the WNBA record for most 40-point games in a career with 4 (Diana Taurasi, Breanna Stewart).

Out of all the players in WNBA history to average at least 20 points per game, Wilson’s 12.0 rebounds per game are the highest in league history, as are her 2.68 blocks per game.

Wilson’s 10.4 win shares are also far and away the most in the league—2.5 more than second place Breanna Stewart of New York (7.9) and 3.7 more than Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier. To put that in perspective, Wilson’s season is approximately a Jewell Loyd (3.8)  better than Collier’s this year, and a Rhyne Howard (2.5)  better than Stewart’s.

Oh, and she is doing all of this while leading the WNBA in lowest turnover percentage, committing a miscue on just 5.4 percent of the possessions she impacts. In fact, here’s a trivia question for you. Can you name all the players in the history of the WNBA who have averaged at least 20 points per game in a season, while also making 50 percent or more of their field goal attempts, and committing fewer than 1.5 turnovers per game? The complete list is here.

Sorry. We got off on a bit of an A’ja Wilson tangent there.

Leading Sixth Player of the Year candidate Tiffany Hayes, who signed as a free agent with Las Vegas on May 31, has been the Aces second-most efficient offensive player of late. Over the last 14 games, she is averaging 11.4 points per game, while shooting 56.5 percent from the field and 48.7 percent from 3-point range. For the season she now ranks 10th in the league in field goal percentage at 50.8 percent and 14th in 3-point field goal percentage at 39.2 percent.

Kelsey Plum (11th, 17.8 ppg) and Jackie Young 16th, (15.9 ppg) are also both ranked in the top 20 in the league in scoring. Plum’s 99 made 3s are tied for the 5th most in the W this year, and she is on pace to become just the 3rd player in league history to make 100 or more 3s in multiple seasons (Taurasi, Arike Ogunbowale). In addition to her scoring, Young ranks 7th in the league in assists at 5.2 per game after tying the franchise record when she dished out 14 dimes at Phoenix on September 1.

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The mostly far-fetched coin flip playoff seeding scenario

Okay, here’s how it would work.

Tiebreaker No. 1—head to head

Seattle beats Las Vegas evening the seasons series between the teams at 2-2.

Tiebreaker No. 2—record against teams with records of .500 or above.

If New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Las Vegas, Seattle and Indiana are all at .500 or above.

And if the Aces and Seattle finish with either identical 23-17 or 24-16 records, where 2 of the Aces losses were to Connecticut and Indiana.

Then the Aces and Storm would have identical records of 8-10 against teams with records of .500 and above.

Tiebreaker No. 3—scoring differential in head-to-head games

Las Vegas has outscored Seattle 243-240 in the series to date. If the Storm beat the Aces by exactly 3 points on September 17 this tiebreaker is tied as well.

Tiebreaker No. 4—scoring differential against all opponents.

Las Vegas has outscored its opponents by 175 points, while Seattle is a plus 168 on the year.

If the Storm beat the Aces by 3 on Sept. 17, then they would need to outscore their remaining opponents by 4 points more than Las Vegas outscores their opponents to leave this tiebreaker tied as well, which brings us to….

Coin flip

Inquiries to the league office as to who flips the coin, if the coin flip is conducted in person or virtually, or who gets to call the flip, have not yet been returned.

* We don’t actually know this to be true, but as Abraham Lincoln once said, “the best way to determine if something is true, is to claim that it is.” **

** We don’t actually know that this is true either.