LAS VEGAS — The Phoenix Mercury are waiting. Will the Las Vegas Aces or Indiana Fever join them in the WNBA Finals?
Half of the championship series is set after the No. 4 seed Mercury eliminated the No. 1 seed Minnesota Lynx on Sunday. The Aces host the Fever on Tuesday (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2) in a decisive Game 5 of a semifinal series.
The No. 2 seed Aces — who won WNBA championships in 2022 and 2023 — seek their third Finals appearance in the past four seasons. The No. 6 seed Fever look to go back to the Finals for the first time since 2015. Las Vegas has MVP A’ja Wilson and the home-court advantage in the winner-take-all, but Indiana already has pulled one series upset by defeating the No. 3 seed Atlanta Dream 2-1 in the first round.
Caitlin Clark, last season’s Rookie of the Year, has not played since mid-July because of a groin injury. The Fever have relied on All-Stars Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston to carry the team, which has been injury ravaged at the guard position.
The WNBA Finals — in an expanded best-of-seven format for the first time — will begin Friday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) with the highest remaining seed hosting the first two games. Can the Fever pull off another upset to get there? Or will the Aces prevail to set up an all-desert matchup against Phoenix?
ESPN experts Kendra Andrews, Charlie Creme, Kevin Pelton, Alexa Philippou and Michael Voepel break down what to expect Tuesday.
Creme: Neither has carried much weight in this series — both teams are 1-1 at home — but I lean on home court being the biggest factor in a winner-take-all game. The Las Vegas crowd will be loud and engaged, and while the Aces are not invincible at home (Indiana won Game 1), they went 17-5 at Michelob Ultra Arena in the regular season. The atmosphere should provide some extra energy, which seemed to disrupt Indiana in Game 2. The caveat: In the first round, the Fever won their deciding game on the road over Atlanta, which went 16-6 at home in the regular season, just 11 days ago.
Andrews: For Game 5, experience will be the biggest game-changing factor. The Aces are a proven championship team. That, paired with them playing on their home court, makes them the favorite to make it out of this series.
Pelton: This is the ninth time in WNBA history that a team has won Game 4 at home to force a deciding Game 5. In those situations, the home team is 5-3 in Game 5, a little worse than the overall mark for all home Game 5s (9-5, .643). So I’d say the edge goes to Las Vegas, but it’s close enough that anything could happen.
Creme: Kelsey Mitchell. The Indiana guard has proved to be at least the second-most unguardable player in the series. Indiana has found a formula that has worked twice, and it’s largely built on Mitchell and the Aces’ lack of answers for her quickness, speed and shooting range.
As historically good as Wilson is, Aliyah Boston has proved to be a worthy adversary, neutralizing Wilson or, as in Game 4, being able to score right along with the four-time MVP. Las Vegas will make adjustments just as it did to slow Mitchell in Game 2 after her 34-point explosion in the opener. But Mitchell threw a solid counterpunch Sunday with 25 more points. If she gets the upper hand one more time, the Fever could find themselves in the Finals.
Voepel: The Aces have shown vulnerability at home in these playoffs. In addition to losing Game 1 of the semifinals, they were an Erica Wheeler jump shot away from potentially being upset in the first round by the Seattle Storm.
The Aces are the home team, but the Fever are playing with “house” money. They are the underdog that wasn’t expected to get this far. There is more pressure on the Aces as the favorites, and we will see how they handle that.
Philippou: The Fever have thrived this year when they feel as if their backs are against the wall, especially in the postseason, where they are 3-0 in elimination games (the most by any team in a single postseason since the 2022 Connecticut Sun).
To Voepel’s point, the Aces are facing way more pressure trying to advance to their third Finals in four years and cementing their status as a WNBA dynasty. Indiana needs to play free but also with aggression and urgency from the jump, to pull off another upset. The Fever must not only hold stout defensively but also get contributions on the other end from more players beyond Mitchell. Boston is a logical pick as another top scorer, but look for Odyssey Sims to be their X factor as she was in their Game 1 and 4 victories.
Andrews: The amount of energy and effort it takes to go on a 17-game win streak can make it hard to sustain. The same could be said for what happened with Minnesota. The Lynx were so good for such a long period of time, but they ran out of steam (not to mention the unfortunate injury to Napheesa Collier and suspension of coach Cheryl Reeve).
The point is: It’s hard to play so perfectly for such long stretches. The fact Las Vegas did and fought its way from playoff bubble to the No. 2 seed is incredibly impressive. But now, some of the Aces’ energy is faltering, and it has cost Las Vegas at times against this pesky Indiana team.
Voepel: The Fever have had players step forward in a big way in their two victories this series, so a lot of the credit for how the Aces have looked goes to Indiana. Mitchell in Game 1 and Boston in Game 4 were the stars who stood out, but Sims was also big in both of those victories with a combined 35 points on 59% shooting from the field. The Fever have made the Aces’ defense work hard in Indiana’s two victories.
Philippou: Game 1 felt like a fluke, perhaps in part due to all the excitement from Wilson’s MVP announcement earlier that day. At the time, Wilson chalked it up to something simple: “We didn’t come to work.” Aces coach Becky Hammon has stressed that her team cannot get too high emotionally after wins, and while she seemed frustrated about the free throw disparity in Indiana’s favor in Game 4, she also acknowledged that her team lacked energy defensively.
It’s not a coincidence that Las Vegas is 0-3 this postseason when it gives up over 80 points and is 4-0 when the opponent doesn’t reach that threshold. The Aces’ defensive improvement was a big factor fueling their win streak. No doubt Hammon will be looking for Las Vegas to win the series with defense Tuesday, with containing Mitchell the top priority.
Voepel: Guard Jewell Loyd took a different role with the Aces this season than she had for a decade in Seattle. That especially became the case when she moved to a reserve role off the bench. And Loyd told ESPN earlier this month that she takes pride in being thought of as more than a scorer. She wants to be seen as someone who sets good screens, helps set up her teammates and plays good defense.
Those things all matter a lot. But the Aces might need her scoring in Game 5. Going back to Game 3 of the Aces’ first-round series with Seattle, Loyd is averaging 4.6 points over her past five games while shooting 30.4%. She scored in double digits only once in that stretch, with 10 points in the Aces’ Game 2 victory over Indiana. Loyd can still stretch the defense when she is hitting from the perimeter, and it could be a big help Tuesday.
Pelton: NaLyssa Smith wasn’t bad in Game 4, scoring eight points on 4-of-5 shooting, but she has been the biggest bellwether for Las Vegas in the playoffs. When Smith scores in double figures, including Games 2 and 3 in this series, the Aces are 3-0. Las Vegas is 1-3 in the four games in which Smith has been held to single digits.
Philippou: Jackie Young has been a two-way force in the playoffs and might sneakily be the most important player for the Aces’ success this series. Aside from her, Dana Evans has had some really strong moments in which her ability to get downhill has swung momentum in Vegas’ favor. A big night from her would bode well for the two-time champs.
Pelton: The Fever attempted 23 more free throws than the Aces in Game 4; the advantage was the largest for any WNBA team in the playoffs so far, which naturally caught the attention of the Aces. Wilson spent part of her postgame availability highlighting that three Las Vegas starters had five fouls, and reserve Megan Gustafson was called for four in 15 minutes.
Inevitably, the situation will be more favorable for the Aces in Game 5. Although there is some carryover from game to game in terms of free throw differential, which might reflect teams’ strengths and weaknesses, it tends to move about 50% toward even from one game to the next. Sometimes that is attributed to complaints by players and coaches when it’s probably nothing more than regression to the mean.
Still, after the WNBA followed Cheryl Reeve’s suspension for Game 4 of the other semifinals matchup by fining both coaches in this series for their comments critical of referees in support of Reeve, the officiating will again be under the microscope Tuesday.
Voepel: The officials might feel they are under an unfair microscope now as this has become the biggest topic of the playoffs. But that toothpaste is out of the tube. And I agree with Kevin: The pendulum during a series tends to swing back and forth, which should benefit the Aces.