This season's WNBA postseason looks to be one of the most interesting in a while, largely because it's hard to pinpoint who, exactly, is a title contender. Sure, the Minnesota Lynx are obvious, but two teams have to make the Finals, and every other major contender for that spot has at least one big flaw that can hurt their chances of taking the crown.
What are those flaws? Let's dig into them.
Minnesota Lynx: Inability to get to the line
It's admittedly hard to find a weakness on this Minnesota Lynx team, especially with Napheesa Collier back. This is the league's best team with the league's best head coach, the league's best rookie and a top-three player in the world finally back healthy.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the Lynx are first in the league in net rating and average margin per game. In a season where so much of the league seems to keep finding things that can go wrong, the Lynx are just chugging along.
But hey — if we're going to nitpick here, it's that the team has the league's lowest free throw rate at just 14.1 percent. Can the team draw fouls and get to the line in tough games? (Probably, but I had to point something out here.)
Golden State Valkyries: The team can't score
The Golden State Valkyries defense is good. Like, GOOD good. Like, I'd probably write the word good 15-20 times here if I didn't think it'd be too annoying. This team can stop anyone, making any game an extremely ugly one.
But even if you hold your opponent under 70 points, you still have to score 70 points, and the Valkyries aren't necessarily great at that. Only the Mystics have lost more games this season when holding their opponent under 75 points.
The Valkyries rank 14th in the league in points per game. Some of that is due to the team playing at the league's slowest pace, but even then, being eighth in offensive rating doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The team will need to figure out a playoff rotation that gives them more offensive upside without sacrificing on defense, something will, admittedly, be very, very difficult, though not impossible. (They need Tiffany Hayes to go on a heater this postseason).
Las Vegas Aces: Stephanie Talbot
(Note: I wrote all this up without knowing what the NaLyssa Smith knee injury situation is going to end up looking like. Obviously if we get word that she's done for the season, that becomes the fatal flaw, but since we're still in waiting mode, I'm going with something we know for sure is an issue.)
I mean, yes, saying Stephanie Talbot here can be viewed as "too easy," but the Las Vegas Aces do have a fairly serious problem, which is that they start five players like every other WNBA team does, but one of those players is not an offensive contributor at all.
Talbot is only averaging 3.5 points per game this season for the Aces, and she's been awful from 3-point land, shooting 25.4 percent from deep. She was a good shooter when she was younger, but 2026 marks her third year in a row shooting under 30 percent from 3-point range.
You can give more of her minutes to Jewell Loyd, but that creates its own issues on both ends. The Aces defensive rating is 2.4 points per 100 possessions worse with Loyd on the floor, and she's posting the lowest field goal percentage of her career. You can't just replace Talbot with her in the starting five, because that creates even more issues. You need Talbot to suddenly become an average 3-point shooter again.
Atlanta Dream: Efficiency concerns
The Atlanta Dream's fatal flaw entering the season was that the team looked like it would struggle to make 3-pointers. And, well...the team ranks 12th in the league in 3-point percentage, so it'd be fair to say that has been an issue.
This Atlanta team has a lot of talent, but that talent isn't necessarily known for its efficient scoring. Angel Reese is one of the league's worst finishers, though her ability to grab offensive boards makes up for that a bit. Rhyne Howard can make big shots, but she also has a tendency to take bad shots at times. Jordin Canada is barely a shooter. Allisha Gray has struggled more than expected from deep.
Just a lot of questions about making shots. I think Howard is a great player to have late in games to take and make a big shot when needed, but you need to actually get to the end of the game with the score still close, and that's something that the Dream might not be able to do easily.
Indiana Fever: Can the defense get stops?
With Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell in the backcourt, the Indiana Fever are an almost unstoppable force on offense. This is a team that can put up 100 points without much strain. The issue is that they also struggle to get stops.
The Fever have been really, really struggling on the defensive end this season. The team is 12th out of 15 teams in scoring defense and even when you factor in pace, things don't get much better, with the Fever improving to just 11th in defensive rating.
The personnel just isn't here to make big plays on defense. Sophie Cunningham's steal numbers are down. Monique Billings hasn't been giving them much rim protection. Credit to Aliyah Boston for everything she does on that end, but she's also only one person out of the five that are on the court.
New York Liberty: Injuries
The Liberty added Satou Sabally this offseason, but after missing the early part of the season, Sabally returned and soon suffered a serious concussion that still has her sidelined two months later. And that hasn't been the only issue for the Liberty this season on the injury front, as Sabrina Ionescu and Leonie Fiebich have both missed extensive time.
Let's assume Sabally doesn't return, but the other two remain good to go going forward. That won't be the Liberty team this front office built, but it will still be a good one. The issue, though, is that all these injury issues throughout the season have created some discontinuity with this roster.
And I think the numbers show that discontinuity and how it's impacted the team. New York has started 11 different players this season. The team averages the fourth-most turnovers and is only in the middle of the pack in assists per game. Something is off, and the constant injury issues have contributed to that being off. I also think that because of this, the upcoming World Cup break could be bad for the team, because right as things seem to be turning a corner, this roster will have to spend two weeks not playing together.
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