Early home-court advantage in first round of WNBA playoffs is gone if Game 3 happens

Bridget Carleton had her back to the basket, ball in her hand, though it wasn’t supposed to be. The play had been drawn up for Napheesa Collier, who already had 38 points against Phoenix on Sunday.

The Target Center crowd gave the Lynx forward a warning.

“Five,” they counted with the shot clock. “Four. Three. Two.”

Did Carleton hear them? “For sure.” She spun and hit a fadeaway three-pointer to put the Lynx up by six in the fourth quarter on their way to a victory in Game 1 of their 102-95 playoff victory over the Mercury.

Carleton wouldn’t have that thousands-strong alarm clock ticking down in a game in Phoenix, not like she had in the opening game of the best-of-three WNBA first-round series Sunday. So it’s in the best interest of the Lynx to wrap up the three-game series with a second victory Wednesday.

Instead of win or go home, it’s win or hit the road.

In the league’s playoff format, the first round of postseason play could be a trap for a higher-seeded team. In a three-game series, the No. 2 Lynx get to play host to the Mercury for Games 1 and 2. But, if Phoenix steals a game on the road Wednesday, it forces the series to end with a tiebreaker hosted by the lower seed.

“The message for me going into the locker room after the game is all we need is one,” said Natasha Cloud after her 30-point performance for Phoenix. “That’s it. All we need is one. Then we get to go home again.”

Adopted in 2022, the 2-1 first-round format is a vestige of travel convenience when WNBA teams flew commercial. But after teams switched to charter flights this season, some players such as New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart spoke out in favor of changing home-court advantage to Game 3.

Though if the higher seed can wrap it up in two, they can avoid a road game until the semis.

“I’ve never been a part of anything like this [format]. It’s very unique,” Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts said. “There’s advantages for the home team, but there’s also advantages for the road team.”

“Their mentality is, ‘Don’t let Phoenix go home.’”

Granted, on paper, both the Lynx and Mercury haven’t seen major dropoffs in their road form this regular season. The Lynx were 16-4 at Target Center and 14-6 on the road. The Mercury won 11 of 20 at Footprint Center, nine of 20 away.

And just last postseason, lower-seed Minnesota stole a game on the road against the Connecticut Sun, forcing Game 3 to come back to Target Center. The Sun took care of business as the away team, with a 90-75 win.

But in the postseason, “one of the reasons you worry about the seeding is having that home-court advantage,” Lynx guard Kayla McBride said. In the two previous seasons with the current playoff format, no higher seed has lost in the first round. “When you do have the ebbs and flows of a game, being at home, it matters.”

And a Game 3 in Phoenix would draw Mercury fans to what could be the last game for the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, Phoenix point guard Diana Taurasi. Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve called her “unequivocally one of the greatest competitors that a sport has ever seen, not just women’s basketball.”

The 42-year-old three-time league champion, two-time finals MVP and six-time Olympic gold medalist has alluded that this season could be her last. Her final regular-season home game drew over 11,300 fans, 50% higher than Phoenix’s season average.

Collier gave her kudos to her fellow University of Connecticut alum postgame, but said she hopes the Lynx can end her career Wednesday.

Counting changes in the number of playoff berths and the series’ lengths, the WNBA has rolled out seven different iterations of playoffs since 1997.

The first and second rounds used to not be series at all, with single-elimination games instead. From 2018 to 2021, the Lynx were knocked out of the playoffs by single losses.

“You work 40 games to get yourself an opportunity to play not just one [game], like we used to do when I first came into the league,” Cloud said.

Now, semifinals and the final are five-game series, but with the WNBA’s record-breaking attendance and viewership this season, whether to increase the first series to five games, or the final to seven, could be another decision in the league’s future.

“We have long desired to be a league that has five game series throughout our playoffs, and there’s a variety of reasons why that hasn’t happened, and they’re all good reasons,” Reeve said. “The reason to have it is obviously from a coaching perspective. There’s a business side to it as well that we’ve been on a journey on.

“What we’re seeing in the growth and popularity of it, it seems like we might be ready for that opportunity.”