⛈ Layup Lines: Seattle's free fall

Happy Friday and welcome back to Layup Lines, your quick recap of what’s going on in the WNBA. Here’s hoping you had a relaxing day off yesterday and are now ready to lock in for a weekend full of basketball.

• There’s officially less than a month before the playoffs begin!

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

Standings update

• Wednesday had some important results for the playoff picture, including Golden State over Washington, Las Vegas over New York and Atlanta over Seattle.

  • Keep in mind that if the Valkyries or Sparks make the playoffs over the Storm, every coach on the former gets an extension and every coach on the latter gets fired. Seattle has three 2025 All-Stars and traded for a 4th at the deadline!

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Tonight’s games

• After going 2-0 with picks on Wednesday night, we’re now 77-85 this season and have $200 of our initial $1,000 budget remaining to wager.

• With five games tonight on ion, we’re going to lean into the playoff hunt.

  • Let’s start with a 3-leg moneyline parlay of the three teams in the early games who need to win for standings implications.

    • Bet: Indiana -380, Golden State -340, L.A. -205 to all win (+143), $50 to win $71.

  • The Aces’ defense has returned to form after adding NaLyssa Smith (more on her below) and this is going to be a very competitive game.

    • Bet: Las Vegas / Phoenix under 168.5 points scored, $50 to win $46.

  • The Storm could flip the switch before the end of the season, but it’s hard to do that against a team as good as the Dream.

    • Atlanta -2, $50 to win $44.

Relocation take of the day

• A second ownership group has bid $325M for the Sun with plans to move them to Hartford. Whether it’s there or Boston, I wouldn’t say I have a strong take.

  • But this sentence in Front Office Sports gave me pause: If (Houston Rockets owner Tilman) Fertitta is willing to pay the sale price plus a relocation fee to expedite the process of getting a team, the league would favor that deal.

    • There are plenty of off-court reasons to not be into a Fertitta ownership group. On-court, since buying the Rockets in 2017 — one of the NBA’s most valuable franchise — he’s paid the luxury tax a total of one time.

    • It’s great the league wants to return to Houston, but this is the guy to do it?

NaLyssa Smith tweet to go

• The Aces are coming alive in the second half and are now 11-6 since trading for NaLyssa Smith on June 30.

Layup Lines is written 100% by a human being with visual assistance from AI tools. I very much appreciate you reading and will see you back here tomorrow.

— Everett Cook, Founder & Editor