WNBA vs. NBA Playoffs: Understanding The Format Differences

With the 2024 WNBA everyday season inching to a cease, eight of the 12 groups in the league make the postseason, setting the degree for but any other spherical of severe and scintillating action within the form of the playoffs. Over time, the league has passed through adjustments inside the layout and in contrast to the NBA, the playoffs are not primarily based on the seven-game collection that determines the winner transferring to the following round.

As it stands, the primary spherical of the WNBA playoffs is a first-class-of-3 collection. The winners develop to the semifinals—a great of 5, accompanied with the aid of the finals, any other first-class of five. A 3-five-five layout has been in style over the last few years compared to the scrapped unmarried-elimination video games that were the norm.

Why isn’t the WNBA playoffs a 7-game series just like the NBA?

For starters, the wide variety of groups taking part in the WNBA is fewer as compared to the NBA. While sixteen groups (8 from each convention) make the playoffs in the NBA, the WNBA works differently, with simply 12 groups common. In a way, a three-5-5 model works better to give teams a chance to move past the rounds and make the finals.

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As for the opposite cause, the version ensures extra opposition and will increase the scope of rivalry between the teams, as explained by Commissioner Cathy Engelbert in a 2022 declaration:

“Following considerable discussions with our competition committee and a playoff subcommittee we fashioned [in 2021], it was clear that while the prior format’s single-removal video games created a win-and-enhance level of exhilaration to the begin of the postseason, the brand new quality-of-3 series format will offer possibilities to create and exhibit rivalries with all playoff-eligible groups collaborating,” Engelbert said.

This came as a welcome trade after the most effective four of the top groups usually made the playoffs in the league’s first seasons and the postseason comprised the best rounds. In 1997, only one unmarried recreation changed played in all matches and the format shifted to a 3-sport series in 1998.

Seven groups have up to now made the playoffs for the 2024 season: the New York Liberty, Connecticut Sun, Minnesota Lynx, Las Vegas Aces, Seattle Typhoon, Indiana Fever, and the Phoenix Mercury.

The Chicago Sky and Atlanta Dream are fighting for the No. 8 seed, at the same time as the Los Angeles Sparks, Dallas Wings, and Washington Mystics have been removed from playoff rivalry.