The WNBA's No. 1 Seed Is Already Gone. Is the First Round Too Short?

Thirty years. That's how long the WNBA went without an eighth seed beating a first seed in a playoff series. Then the New York Liberty did it in two games, and the Minnesota Lynx, owners of a 33-11 record, the Coach of the Year and the Rookie of the Year, were gone in three days.

Nobody's calling it a fluke, and nobody should. Minnesota lost 91-75 at home and 87-71 in Brooklyn, two defeats of exactly 16 points each. So did the format fail the Lynx? My answer is a little annoying: no, but the format made this upset possible, and that alone deserves a hard look.

Forty-four games for a two-game reward

Since 2022, the WNBA's first round has been a best-of-three. Eight teams qualify, seeded one through eight regardless of conference, a setup the league has used since 2016. Finish first and your prize is a series that can be over on its second night.

Think about what Minnesota actually earned. The Lynx won 33 of 44 games, hosted Game 1, then had to travel for Game 2, with a Game 3 that never arrived. The reward for the league's best record was one home date against a team ESPN described as up-and-down and one of the preseason favorites.

Baseball handles this differently. In MLB's wild-card round, the best-of-three is reserved for the lower seeds, and the top two teams in each league skip it entirely. The WNBA gives its best team a coin flip and calls it an advantage.

The Liberty finished eighth. Their roster apparently didn't get the memo.

The Lynx didn't help themselves

Fair is fair. Minnesota dropped four of its last six regular-season games and backed into the top seed, so the wobble was real before New York arrived. In Game 2 the Lynx shot 38.2 percent and never led, and the Liberty opened with a 9-1 run.

Breanna Stewart scored 21 for New York and Sabrina Ionescu added 18. Courtney Williams had 18 for Minnesota and Napheesa Collier had 14, which wasn't close to enough. The Liberty's size also bothered Olivia Miles, the rookie who'd just collected the league's top first-year honor.

Then there's the series margin. Minus-32 was the worst ever for a No. 1 seed in a best-of-three, according to Her Hoops Stats, as cited by CBS Sports. A team that gets unlucky doesn't lose by 16 twice. This was a better team wearing a worse number.

What a longer series would buy

Here's my case, and it isn't complicated. In a best-of-three, one cold shooting night is a third of the series. In a best-of-five, the better team can have a bad game and still survive it.

The league already believes this. The semifinals run longer than the first round, and the Finals moved to a best-of-seven in 2025. So the WNBA agrees that longer series give truer results. It just applies that belief after the surprises are over.

Two fixes are sitting right there. Give the top seeds a bye, as baseball does, or stretch the opening round so a top seed can survive one off night. Either one would make the regular season feel like it bought something.

The counterargument is the calendar, and it's a real one. A 44-game season leaves only so much room for extra playoff dates. Fans of chaos will also say the three-game sprint is the whole charm, and they've got a point, because few things beat a top seed falling in the first week.

Spare a thought for Cheryl Reeve, whose team fell seconds short of the 2024 title, still hasn't won a fifth championship, and now owns the most famous first-round exit in league history. Would you keep the chaos for the drama, or give a 33-win team room to have one bad night?