INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Fever (20-19) clinched a playoff berth earlier this month, but their playoff opponent remains unsettled, as does the WNBA’s playoff field.
As the league enters the final week of the regular season, seven teams have clinched playoff spots, with the eighth still up for grabs. Chicago, Atlanta and Washington are all knotted at 13-25 and jockeying for the last position with two games left.
Dallas and Los Angeles have both been eliminated. In the WNBA, eight of the twelve teams make the playoffs.
The Fever are locked into the sixth seed; they can’t catch any of the teams ahead of them and own the tiebreaker over the Phoenix Mercury. Even if the Mercury win out, and the Fever lose their final regular-season game (both teams would finish 20-20), Indiana would remain in sixth place.
The most likely scenario is for the Fever to play the Connecticut Sun in the first round. However, that’s not set in stone because Connecticut can steal the second seed from the Minnesota Lynx.
The Sun would need to win their final two games and Minnesota would have to lose out for that to happen. The teams have a head-to-head matchup on Tuesday that could clinch for Minnesota or keep Connecticut’s hopes of getting a higher seed alive.
The Fever played the Sun three times in the span of a month early in the season and lost all three of those games. They notched a win against Connecticut in August, however, as part of their impressive post-Olympic break run.
The league’s top spot isn’t secure quite yet. The New York Liberty sit atop the standings and their magic number is one. If they win one more game—or Minnesota loses—they’ll clinch homecourt advantage in the playoffs.
The Fever play their final game of the regular season on Thursday night, a road game against the Washington Mystics. They have a chance to finish with a winning record for the first time since the 2015 season.
The WNBA Playoffs start on Sept. 22.
