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Kelsey Mitchell and the Fever visit Phoenix tonight for a preview of a potential playoff matchup (Photo credit: Chris Poss)

Another night in the WNBA means another matchup with the potential to significantly alter the playoff picture. An Indiana win in the desert would pull it just a half-game back of the Mercury in the standings while defending home court would give Phoenix a 2.5-game cushion over the Fever.

  • Indiana and Phoenix would face off in the first round of the playoffs if the season ended now. They would occupy the two least desirable spots in the bracket from my vantage point — the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds. That means the winner of their best-of-three series would most likely face Minnesota in the best-of-five semifinals. By contrast, the No. 2, No. 3, No. 6 and No. 7 seeds all know they won’t have to face the top seed until the Finals, while the No. 8 seed would at least get a decisive Game 3 at home if it steals Game 1 or 2 on the road in the first round.

  • Indiana’s five-game win streak, tied for its longest in a decade, was snapped on Tuesday at Los Angeles. However, the Fever can finish off a 3-1 road trip and improve to 9-7 on the road this season with a win. The loss on Tuesday dropped Indiana to 9-7 (.563) against opponents with a losing record, which is nearly identical to its 8-6 (.571) mark against teams with winning records. Defense continues to be the barometer for the Fever, who allowed the Sparks to post an offensive rating of 125.0 points per 100 possessions in Tuesday’s loss, the highest mark by a Fever opponent so far this season. They fell to 1-10 in their 11 worst defensive rating games (allowing 104.7 points per 100 possessions or more in each), compared to a 16-3 record the rest of the time (including five wins while allowing in the 102.3 to 104.1 range).

  • Phoenix needed a couple of “get right” games after dropping five of six, and get right it did against Chicago on Sunday and Connecticut on Tuesday. Those were only the Mercury’s fifth and sixth wins in their last 13 games since capping off a 12-4 start with a 15-point win over the Liberty late June. Phoenix has a pretty similar season split by defensive rating to Indiana’s, having lost seven of eight times it allowed an opponent to post a rating of at least 104 points per 100 possessions compared to a 17-4 (.810) mark when holding opponents below that threshold. The Mercury held both the Sun and Sky to ratings under 90, improving to 8-1 when doing that.

  • One of Phoenix’s losses during its recent 1-5 stretch came in a 107-101 track meet last Wednesday at Indiana, the only meeting between the teams so far this season. Aari McDonald led the Fever with 27 points on 7-for-11 from the field; Aliyah Boston scored 22 on 6-for-11 from the field, and the two of them combined to go 20-for-23 at the free-throw line. Boston also added 12 rebounds while Indiana matched the second-highest defensive rating it’s overcome in a win (104.1 points per 100 possessions). Alyssa Thomas led Phoenix with a career-high 32 points on 14-for-22 from the field while adding 15 rebounds and 7 assists, although she did have 8 turnovers. Indiana’s 118.9 points per 100 possessions was the second-highest mark Phoenix has allowed so far and part of an 0-5 record when allowing ratings higher than 111.0.

Indiana’s Kelsey Mitchell flirted with a career-high for the second time in the last 10 days in the Fever’s loss on Tuesday, although her pattern in that span suggests I might be pointing my spotlight in the wrong direction. Thomas’ recent play leaves no other option but to make her my Phoenix player of choice. If she keeps it up, she could find herself as the contrarians’ MVP choice depending on how long Napheesa Collier ends up being sidelined.

  • Mitchell scored 34 points on 11-for-19 from the field in the loss at Los Angeles, four points shy of her career-high and four games after scoring 35 on 12-for-19 from the field in a win at Chicago. She scored 40 points in the three games in between, with totals of 8, 23 and 9 points in succession while going 3-for-10 and 3-for-16 from the field in the single-digit outings, so science tells us she’s highly likely to score 10 points tonight while going something like 3-for-22 from the field. Mitchell has three 30-point outings this season, the fourth-most in the WNBA and trailing only the lead shared by Collier, A’ja Wilson and my favorite hooper Sabrina Ionescu with five 30-burgers each. This is the first time Mitchell’s had more than two 30-point games in a season after having a pair in both 2023 and 2024.

  • Thomas has had triple-doubles in the last two games, her third time having back-to-back triple-doubles in her career while all the rest of the players in WNBA history are still waiting to do it for the first time. I mentioned yesterday that Thomas now has four-and-a-half times as many triple-doubles in her career than Ionescu (four) in second, but another way to look at it is that the WNBA leaders in career triple-doubles are: Thomas in her standalone triple-doubles (12), Thomas when she has back-to-back triple-doubles (six), Ionescu (four). You could also do Thomas’s triple-doubles since Ionescu’s last one (11), followed by Thomas before Ionescu’s last (seven) and Ionescu (four). AT has had 13 or fewer points in her last three games since putting up her career-high 32 against the Fever, but she is averaging 17.9 points, 10.1 rebounds and 8.2 assists per game while hitting 52.8% from the field in her last 10 games. That span started four weeks ago yesterday with a then-career-high 29-point outing in a win over the Lynx and includes four 20-point outings.