Four teams remain in the race for the WNBA title and it kind of seems like a foregone conclusion that of those four, Minnesota and Vegas will emerge from the semifinals to face off for the title, right?
I mean...you have the team that's been the best all season and the team that ended the regular season on a 16-game win streak. We know what's going to happen, right?
I'll be real here: probably. The Lynx and Aces seem like they're on a collision course toward the Finals, and it's going to be tough for anything to change that, but it's not going to be impossible.
The Indiana Fever and Phoenix Mercury have already surprised everyone in Round 1. Phoenix overcame a Game 1 loss to reverse sweep the Liberty while the Fever, still without Caitlin Clark, defeated the No. 3 seed Dream in three games.
So, which team is more likely to wind up getting the upset?
The Fever need a huge series from Kelsey Mitchell
Indiana isn't supposed to be here. With Caitlin Clark out, the Fever were expected to crumble, but instead, the team is the latest example of the Ewing Theory. Best player out? No problem — someone else will just be the best player.
In Indiana's case, that someone has been Kelsey Mitchell, who stepped up and was voted top five in the MVP race. She averaged a career-high 20.2 points per game in the regular season and improved that to 23.3 points per game in the first round series against Atlanta. Mitchell was on fire from 3-point range, connecting on 44.4 percent of her looks.
Meanwhile, the Indiana defense was relentless in making life difficult for Allisha Gray, limiting Atlanta's best offensive weapon and allowing an injury-depleted Fever team to get the series upset.
Vegas is much, much more built for a playoff run than that Dream squad was, though the team surprisingly struggled in Game 2 and Game 3 against Seattle. Indiana has to stop three players in the backcourt rather than the two it needed to slow down in the last series, as Atlanta's Jordin Canada wasn't the offensive threat that Vegas point guard Chelsea Gray is capable of being.
If Indiana is going to win this series, Mitchell is going to have to be in her bag. The team can't expect its defense to do as well as it did against Atlanta, so Mitchell has to be the best offensive guard out of both teams while the team simply does the best it possibly can on the defensive end.
The Mercury need Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally playing at an MVP level
After losing Game 1 in overtime, Phoenix took control of its first-round series against the Liberty, stopping the New York offense in its tracks. In Game 3, Phoenix kept every Liberty player not named Breanna Stewart from scoring in the fourth quarter.
Credit Phoenix for how it played in that series, but something was just off with New York. Jonquel Jones couldn't get anything going. Sabrina Ionescu scored points, but not when it mattered. Emma Meesseman, whose midseason acquisition was hailed as a game-changing move, played just nine minutes in Game 3 as she proved to be too much of a defensive liability.
The Mercury can't count on its defense shutting down Minnesota. It's going to take a big offensive effort.
That effort will require the entire big three (Alyssa Thomas, Satou Sabally and Kahleah Copper) to step up, but it's the forwards who are most important solely because they're going to face tougher defenders. Minnesota's Alanna Smith was co-Defensive Player of the Year, while Napheesa Collier had a strong argument for the award as well. We can expect those two to take on the task of stopping Thomas and Sabally, something both are more than capable of doing.
Thomas has to just be the absolute best version of herself, an unstoppable wrecking ball driving to the basket. Sabally has to shoot the ball like she did in the final 15 games of the 2024 season and not like she did most of the 2025 season. It won't be easy, but that's what has to happen for this team to beat an incredible Minnesota defense.
Can either team score a series upset?
Again, probably not. Minnesota and Las Vegas are just too good.
But if one team can do it, I'd put my money on the Fever. Phoenix just doesn't feel like it's built to defeat a team whose best skill is frontcourt defense. Indiana, though, has a pretty good frontcourt that can go almost toe-to-toe with Vegas, plus Mitchell is capable of just going on a heater offensively.
Everything has to go exactly right, but Vegas has more cracks than Minnesota. Gray is inconsistent at this point in her career. Loyd sometimes just forgets how to shoot. There's a chance here. It's a slim one, but Indiana could head to the WNBA Finals, with could being the key word.