🏆 Layup Lines: It begins

Happy Sunday and welcome back to Layup Lines, your quick recap of what’s going on in the WNBA. The sun is shining and we’ve got four playoff games on all day. Who’s got it better than us?

• Big stat: 2025 was the most-watched WNBA regular season ever on ESPN Networks, with an average of 1.3 million viewers — up 6% from 2024’s record season. This is a fun counterargument to the “people only watch the WNBA for Caitlin Clark” crowd.

This 494 word newsletter should take about 2 minutes to read.

💪 From 8 to 4

• Of the four first round playoff series, I expect one of them to be competitive. But hey—in a best-of-three series, anything can happen.

  • The marquee matchup is the Mercury and the defending champion Liberty, who have been dealing with injuries all season and might just be too tired to get back to the Finals. If you’re not afraid to fade the possibility of Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart all being healthy, there’s good value in taking the Mercury with a home court advantage.

    • Series line: New York -210, Phoenix +175

  • The Fever won five of seven to end the regular season but are probably missing too many guards (Clark included) to hang with the Dream’s explosive backcourt for three games.

    • Line: Atlanta -425, Indiana +310

  • The Aces finished the regular season on an incredible 16 game win streak while the Storm seemed to be optimizing for Cancun. Even with a ton of talent on the floor, this series still shouldn’t be close. Something to watch: An Aces sweep means Noelle Quinn is likely not coming back next season as the Storm’s coach.

    • Line: Las Vegas -450, Seattle +310

  • The Valkyries are one of the most fun stories of the season as the first expansion team to ever make the playoffs. If they’re able to upset the 34-win Lynx (+115 to win the title), they become one of the best stories in league history.

    • Line: Minnesota -2500, Golden State +1000

📺 Today’s games

• I still don’t think it makes any sense to start the playoffs at the exact same time the NFL kicks off, but it’s still great to see ESPN roll out an entire day of coverage.

• If I still had a touch and hadn’t lost my entire regular season budget by going 86-103 with picks, I’d take:

  • Golden State +12.5

  • Indiana / Atlanta over 159.5 points scored

  • Phoenix moneyline +102

👑 One last MVP take to go

• The official MVP announcement is a week from today. The arguments have been fun, but the 2025 MVP should be Napheesa Collier.

  • She’s the best player on what was clearly the best team who finished with a historic shooting season … no need to overcomplicate this.

Layup Lines is written 100% by a human being. I very much appreciate you reading and will see you back here Tuesday.

— Everett Cook, Founder & Editor