Here is the only safe advice for predicting Game 5 of the WNBA Finals: Don’t even try.
If the No. 1 New York Liberty and No. 2 Minnesota Lynx have done anything over the last week, they’ve made sure their respective fanbases have not experienced any peace, going through wild momentum swings and dragging viewers right along with them. The margin of victory has been just one basket in three of these four games. (And the remaining game stayed just as close until the final minutes of the fourth quarter.) It has been the first Finals in league history to feature more than one comeback of at least 15 points. The series has included both mind-boggling flubs and stone-cold winners. It feels a little unfair at this point to ask for anything more. It would be entirely fair, in fact, to ask for a bit less, if only for the sake of cardiac health.
But it’s nonetheless satisfying to know there’s more to come. It seems fitting the WNBA will get all five games in this best-of-five Finals. This has been a historic season for the league, and this series has followed suit, bringing in the highest television ratings in decades as well as record attendance. Yet those numbers feel incidental here. These games have been so good that it feels almost like a disservice to focus the conversation on anything but the basketball itself.
These Finals have not simply met the moment for the WNBA. They have delivered one all their own. If this has been a year that changed everything for the league, it has gotten a championship series that has managed to match those stakes, delivering a string of games that have felt like instant classics. They will get a chance to offer one more when the series returns to New York for a winner-take-all Game 5 at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday.
Minnesota ensured this one would go the distance in Game 4 on Friday, staving off elimination by winning on its home court, 82–80. After a series defined by its comeback attempts—each of the first three games featured a halftime lead of double digits—this was the opposite. The Lynx led by just one at the break. There were 14 lead changes and 13 ties. The gap between the two teams never got larger than two possessions. It was proof these rosters still had new ways to make each other uncomfortable. That introduced a different brand of drama to a series that had already been full of it.
It adds up to a Finals that very well may end up viewed as historically great. Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve has been involved in more high-intensity postseason games than anyone. She is not just the winningest playoff coach in the history of the WNBA. She individually has won more postseason games than has any other franchise. (Except, of course, her own: Reeve has been on the sideline for 49 of the 50 playoff wins for Minnesota. No other franchise has won more than 47.) In a decade and a half with the Lynx, she is making her seventh trip to the Finals, yet this one has still brought a particular thrill.
“The players deserve all the credit,” she said, “for the show that we’re being treated to.”
How that show might end feels all but impossible to guess. The Lynx were the only team able to beat the Liberty more than once in the regular season. They’ve now done it twice in the playoffs. If they were not originally expected to be contenders—fresh off a quick-turn, modest rebuild with a roster full of new pieces—they have certainly looked the part of a championship team over the last month. Their defense is the best in the league, and this series has been full of evidence why, highlighted by Defensive Player of the Year winner Napheesa Collier. But there is no guarantee that will be enough. The Lynx have proven capable of blowing a serious lead once in this series, and they have struggled at points to contend with the depth, length and pace of the Liberty.
Minnesota also must reckon with the fact that it will be difficult to shut down New York’s biggest stars in Game 5 as well as they did in Game 4. Breanna Stewart had 11 points on 5-of-21 shooting. Two days after her star-hanging, game-winning logo shot, Sabrina Ionescu scored just 10, and she did not make a single three. Each has played the hero earlier in this series, but neither was particularly impactful as they attempted to close things out on Friday. It’s a credit to New York, of course, that it can remain competitive until the final seconds even when its two leading scorers perform well below their average. That meant efficient nights from both former MVP center Jonquel Jones (21 points on 7-of-10 shooting) and rookie forward Leonie Fiebich (19 points). But the Liberty cannot afford repeat performances from Stewart and Ionescu on Sunday.
“All that happened tonight is the series is even,” Stewart said. “There’s a Game 5, winner-take-all. We’re going back to New York, and we’re going to get it done there.”
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert began this series with an announcement that Finals would move to a best-of-seven format starting in 2025. That might have brought reasonable questions just a few years ago—concerns about logistics, about feasibility, about doing too much, too fast—but it now seems like the most obvious move in the world. A bigger platform for the biggest moments of the season feels like a no-brainer. It almost seems a shame the change will not go into effect a year early. But if this series isn’t able to go seven, it seems intent on delivering all the drama that it can in five.
“What I’m just thrilled about is that this group gets to experience a Game 5,” Reeve said. “It’s beyond words.”
She was speaking about her team, of course, a roster that has limited history playing this deep into October. But the message felt applicable to everyone who has been watching. What a thrill to experience this particular Game 5—cardiac health be damned.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as There’s No Predicting How the WNBA Finals Will End.
