It seems obvious to say that the second-best player on a team is very, very important in a playoff series. You don't stand a great chance of winning if your No. 2 option is off.
The Phoenix Mercury are taking this idea to the extreme, though. These playoffs have been feast or famine for Satou Sabally, and Phoenix's game results have gone the way that Sabally has gone. The former Dallas Wing is averaging 20.6 points on a 54 effective field goal percentage in Phoenix's playoff wins, but she's been brutal in the two losses, averaging 9.5 points on a 19.6 effective field goal percentage.
Either you get good Satou and the Mercury win, or you get bad Satou and the Mercury lose. This really magnifies how important she is to this team's quest to upset the Minnesota Lynx and return to the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2021.
Satou Sabally's shooting is directly tied to Phoenix winning
This isn't just about the playoffs, though it's been a more pronounced trend in the postseason. During the regular season, Sabally averaged 17.1 points per game in Phoenix's wins and 15.1 per game in Phoenix's losses, which is definitely a notable difference, but it didn't really foreshadow this drop-off in the playoffs.
What I think did foreshadow it was how Sabally shot from deep in regular-season wins and losses. She's never really been able to be a consistent 3-point shooter in the pro game despite encouraging shooting results in college, but Sabally shot a very solid 36.4 percent from 3-point range in the team's regular-season victories. In losses, that dropped to 26.1 percent. That right there feels notable, especially as shooting becomes more important in tight playoff series, where one or two big shots can swing the game.
That feast or famine thing from deep has continued in the playoffs. In two losses — both, coincidentally, in Game 1 of their series — Sabally was a combined 1-for-15 from deep. In the three wins, she's shot 11-for-24. So, 45.8 percent from 3-point land in wins and 6.6 percent from deep in losses? Yeah, that tracks with what the eye test has shown in these two series, which is that when Sabally looks off, the whole Mercury team looks off.
Unfortunately for Phoenix, there's not really much they can do here. The good shooting nights are too good for you to just tell Sabally to stop shooting. You need those big nights from here if you're actually going to get wins in this series, and that means you've just got to live with the bad nights. The Mercury just have to hope that the bad nights don't show up in elimination games. Going down 0-1 in a series isn't great, but if Sabally's cold nights can be contained to Game 1, then Phoenix has a shot to defeat anyone. Yes, that includes the team having a viable shot to defeat the No. 1 seed Lynx in this series.
The margins are tight, but we saw on Tuesday night that when Sabally is hitting shots, anything can happen. She just has to find a way to maintain that level of play instead of having another one of those disaster games in Game 3.