First round of WNBA playoffs goes exactly as expected

I admit that I have not been watching the games live and instead spend that time often watching videos that are about how the WNBA has squandered their one opportunity at relevancy and how it is likely to get a lot worse before it gets better.

The favorites winning the first game of the first round of playoffs isn't a spoil-sport sort of thing though, it is just what everyone expected to have happen.

What's going to happen is that Minnesota is going to breeze through to the end and win the title. New York might give them a little bit of trouble along the way but that will be it.

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At the moment everyone is saying that Minnesota and Las Vegas are going to meet in the finals and honestly folks, unlike the NBA this is a lot easier to predict. Since there is a real lack of number of teams even participating in the WNBA you don't even have to be very good to make the playoffs. Someone might say the same about the NBA playoffs and how both of them are too big given the number of teams, but check this out, there are so few teams in the WNBA that only 5 teams DON'T make the playoffs.

Also, there tends to be a very clear better team that appears during the regular season in the WNBA and thankfully the two dominant teams just happened to be on different sides of the bracket this year. In years past it has been New York and Minnesota who are both on the same side of the bracket and then when they play one another that is the real final, then the official final that is dictated by the bracket system is just a sweep with maybe a consolation game going to the other team because, I dunno because the team that was always going to win it lets off the gas during one game in order to extend the finals for money-making purposes that seem unlikely in the WNBA because it doesn't make money.

I suppose the New York vs Phoenix game was reasonably close but it wasn't really. When you are up by 10 points with just a few minutes remaining in the game it is expected that you are going to play defensively because well, that is how you win basketball games.

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Of course the biggest disappointment of this playoffs is that the Golden Child, Caitlin Clark is still out "injured" and isn't playing in the post-season. This has likely had a massive impact on the number of people that are watching and it's probably really low. The WNBA hides this information when it is bad news and talks about it endlessly when it is good news (for them) so the fact that they have not said how many people watched the games is a good indicator that it wasn't very many.

Minnesota walked all over Golden State and you can go ahead and count on that happening for the next 2 games as well. In the WNBA the first round of playoffs is the best of 3 games, not 7 lol. Then the semi-finals are best of 5 and only the Championship games are best of 7. I am reminded of how women in sports are often talking about equal or better pay but they have a much shorter season and even play a far reduced amounts of games in the playoffs, just like in women's tennis. Whatever! I'm not trying to turn this into a sexist debate it is just a bit embarrassing to me that the playoffs are intentionally made shorter. If the NBA had the choice they would probably extend the playoffs to be the best of 11 if they could.

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Atlanta handily defeated everyone's favorite team, Indiana and this shouldn't be a surprise since Atlanta won all but one of their regular season games vs. The Fever even when the Fever were playing at full strength including Caitlin Clark. Now Indiana is playing with nearly 50% women that were not on the team until a month or so ago. Their strategy right now seems to be to give the ball to Kelsey Mitchell and see what she can do wit it. She had 27 points and nearly zero turnovers but, and I hate to say this, she rarely dishes the ball off to anyone and therefore, she is much easier to guard. This sort of strategy reminds me of a time when I was on a club team for soccer (football) and there was one guy on the team that was exceptionally better than the rest of us. However, it was well known that he was going to keep the ball so opposing teams with competent coaches simply guarded the hell out of him and we would lose constantly.

Kelsey is good but she shoots about 50%, which is really good. But when she gets the ball the defense isn't really looking to guard who she might pass to because she doesn't do a lot of that. Caitlin on the other hand, was always looking to dish and this is why she would often have double-digit assists.

Anyway, the Fever are going home after their next game tomorrow, mark my words.

The final will be Minnesota vs Las Vegas and Vegas might win a game or two but Minnesota is much better than anyone else in the league and is going to march to victory with very little doubt about that victory.

The season is already over but I guess it doesn't really matter because half of the audience stopped watching once Indiana's roster was decimated.