The Courtside Scout: Four Teams, Two Series, One Trip to the Finals
No predictions this time. Just strengths, weaknesses, experience, secret weapons and what each WNBA semifinalist needs to do to keep playing.
Four teams are left.
And I’m not picking one.
Not because there aren’t advantages in these matchups. There are plenty. But after everything we’ve already watched happen in these playoffs, I’m much more interested in how each of these teams can reach the Finals than trying to tell you which one will.
New York entered the postseason as the eighth seed and promptly eliminated No. 1 Minnesota. Atlanta handled Washington in two games and reached the semifinals for the first time since 2018. Golden State needed all three games, a 16-point comeback and one of the best closing stretches of Gabby Williams’ WNBA career to survive Dallas.
Las Vegas needed three games too, but the defending champions are back here again. Eight consecutive semifinal appearances have a way of making this stage feel familiar.
Four teams. Four very different identities.
One series puts experience and size across from a team built to make comfortable basketball almost impossible. The other gives the league’s best defense perhaps the hardest possible test of what made it so good.
So I’m leaving the predictions alone.
Instead, we’re scouting.
What does each team do well? Where can each be tested? Which experience could matter once a series gets uncomfortable? Who are the players capable of quietly changing everything? And, most importantly, what does winning basketball need to look like for all four?
Welcome to The Courtside Scout.
Liberty vs. Dream: Experience Meets Disruption
There’s something funny about calling New York the underdog in anything.
The Liberty are the No. 8 seed, but they’re also a team with Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu that knows what October basketball feels like. Atlanta is the No. 4 seed, won 30 regular-season games and took two of three from New York during the regular season. The Dream also enter this round after sweeping Washington by a combined 33 points, while New York arrives after becoming the first No. 8 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the opening round.
Forget the numbers beside their names for a second.
This matchup gets much more interesting when you look at what each team is going to try to make the other one do.
What New York Wants This Series to Become
Slow it down. Make it physical.
And please, whatever you do, take care of the basketball.
New York has something Atlanta can’t manufacture overnight: size paired with skill. Stewart and Jones give the Liberty two frontcourt players who don’t need to occupy the same spaces to hurt you. Stewart can initiate, attack mismatches and move around the floor. Jones can establish herself inside, screen, pop and pull a defender farther from the basket than Atlanta might prefer.
Then there’s Leonie Fiebich’s length on the wing and Sabrina controlling things from the perimeter. New York doesn’t have to play small to maintain spacing, and that matters against Atlanta because the Dream would love for this series to become something entirely different.
They want mistakes.
New York needs to make Atlanta defend the first action, the second action and sometimes the third without gifting the Dream the thing they want most: a chance to stop playing half-court basketball altogether.
That also puts a lot on Sabrina. Atlanta has the personnel to make initiating offense exhausting. If Jordin Canada and Rhyne Howard can pressure her early, force New York farther from its preferred actions and make her work simply to get the Liberty organized, they’re already affecting the possession before a shot goes up.
And Sabrina can’t spend the entire night fighting through pressure on one end only to become the player Atlanta looks for on the other. Her ability to handle both sides of that matchup without being worn down could quietly become one of the more important pieces of this series.
Then there’s the experience.
Much of New York's core was part of the 2024 championship team. This is the Liberty’s third semifinal appearance in four seasons. They’ve experienced long series, bad shooting nights, road environments and possessions that suddenly feel much heavier because there are only a few minutes left.
That doesn’t win the series for them.
But it means very little about this stage should surprise them.
What Atlanta Wants This Series to Become
Chaos.
I mean that as a compliment.
Atlanta’s defense doesn’t just want stops. It wants to turn your possession into its possession before you’re ready for the change.
Rhyne Howard, Jordin Canada and Angel Reese finished first, second and third in the league in steals. Reese has now added Defensive Player of the Year to her season, and that trio gives Atlanta pressure at multiple levels of the floor.
Washington got a very quick introduction to what that can look like. Atlanta recorded a franchise playoff-record 16 steals in Game 1 of the opening round. Howard had five herself, and a game Washington once led by 11 eventually became a 92–77 Dream win.
That’s what makes this team dangerous. Atlanta doesn’t necessarily need its half-court offense to be perfect for five straight minutes because sometimes the defense fixes it.
A deflection becomes a steal. A steal becomes a transition opportunity. One rushed possession becomes another because now the other team is trying to get the points back.
Suddenly, a close game isn’t close anymore.
Against New York, that matters because the Liberty’s size is much less intimidating when Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart are running toward their own basket instead of waiting for Atlanta in a set defense.
If Atlanta can speed New York up, the Dream can change the geometry of this matchup.
Where New York Can Be Hurt
The obvious answer is turnovers.
Not just because empty possessions are bad, but because empty possessions against Atlanta can become points before the defense gets organized.
New York can’t get casual with entry passes or let Atlanta’s guards turn predictable ball movement into passing-lane opportunities. Sabrina has to handle pressure without letting it pull the Liberty away from what they actually want to run.
There’s another question I’m watching too.
Can Atlanta make New York’s size move?
Having Jones, Stewart and Fiebich on the floor creates enormous advantages when New York can dictate the matchup. Atlanta’s job is to keep them from dictating it.
Pull bigger defenders into actions. Attack before Jones establishes herself around the rim. Make every Liberty lineup defend in space.
New York wants its size to become the problem.
Atlanta needs to ask whether that size can keep up with its pressure.
And if Atlanta does force New York into a half-court game, this is where Allisha Gray becomes especially important.
The Dream won’t get to run after every possession. There’ll be stretches where New York gets back, takes away transition and forces Atlanta to create against a defense that’s already waiting. Gray gives the Dream someone who doesn’t need chaos to find offense. She can attack closeouts, get downhill, create from the perimeter and give Atlanta somewhere to go when the game slows down.
Atlanta’s defense can create chaos.
Allisha can help them survive when there isn’t any.
Where Atlanta Can Be Hurt
The same aggression that makes Atlanta’s defense so good can become dangerous when whistles start adding up.
Reese, Howard and Canada can’t create the same level of disruption from the bench, and New York has every reason to test that. Make Atlanta defend possessions deep into the clock. Put Reese into repeated actions. Force Howard to navigate screens. Make the Dream defend without reaching and make their most aggressive players decide how aggressive they can afford to be.
Then there’s the half-court question.
Atlanta’s defense can create offense, but what happens when New York doesn’t give it anything? What happens after a clean Liberty possession ends in a made basket and Atlanta has to walk the ball up against Stewart, Jones and all that length?
That’s where this series may become much less comfortable.
It’s also why Gray’s role matters so much. If Atlanta can still generate quality offense when the game isn’t moving at the pace its defense prefers, the Dream become considerably harder to solve.
The Experience Card
This should belong to New York. And then DeWanna Bonner walks into the conversation.
Atlanta’s core doesn’t have New York’s collective postseason history. The Dream hadn’t reached the semifinals since 2018 before this season, while New York has championship experience throughout the lineup.
Bonner gives Atlanta something different. She became the first player in WNBA history to appear in 100 playoff games.
Atlanta fell behind Washington in Game 1. The offense wasn’t flowing. Then Bonner scored 11 points in the third quarter and helped flip the energy of the game, eventually finishing with 13 off the bench.
Sometimes experience isn’t about producing 25 points.
Sometimes it’s recognizing that everybody around you is starting to speed up and refusing to join them.
Atlanta has plenty of players capable of changing a game physically.
Bonner may be the player who changes one emotionally.
Secret Weapons
New York: Jonquel Jones
Calling a former MVP a secret weapon feels ridiculous, so let me explain.
Stewie will be discussed constantly. Sabrina will be discussed constantly. But Jones might create the matchup question Atlanta has to answer most carefully.
If she’s establishing deep position, does Atlanta let Reese handle her alone? If the Dream send help, where does it come from? What does that open for Stewart? What happens when Jones pulls a big away from the rim instead?
Every extra decision she forces Atlanta to make creates something for somebody else.
The secret isn’t Jonquel Jones.
It’s what guarding Jonquel Jones could do to the rest of Atlanta’s defense.
Atlanta: DeWanna Bonner
Again, we’re using “secret” loosely. Everybody knows DB.
But Atlanta doesn’t need her to be the best player on the floor to change this series. It needs the veteran who’s already experienced almost every version of playoff basketball. The one who can come off the bench and settle a game without demanding that the offense suddenly revolve around her.
And if you’re looking even deeper, keep an eye on Madina Okot.
Karl Smesko experimented with Okot and Reese together in Game 1 against Washington, giving Atlanta another way to put size on the floor. Against New York’s frontcourt, that option becomes considerably more interesting.
From My Courtside Notebook
Watch where Jonquel catches the basketball.
A Jones catch six feet from the rim is a completely different problem from a catch 18 feet away. If Atlanta consistently pushes those catches farther out, that’s a small win before the possession even really begins.
Watch what happens immediately after a Liberty turnover too. Don’t follow the player who lost the ball. Watch Atlanta. How quickly do Howard and Canada turn around? Where is Reese? How many Liberty defenders are actually between Atlanta and the basket?
And watch the fouls.
Reese’s aggression is part of what makes her special defensively. New York has every reason to find out how much of that aggression she can maintain while staying on the floor.
What Winning Looks Like
For New York, this needs to become a half-court series. Protect the basketball. Control the glass. Use Jones and Stewart to make Atlanta defend size without sacrificing spacing. Get Sabrina into offense without making every possession a wrestling match, and force the Dream to create against a defense that’s already waiting for them.
For Atlanta, make New York uncomfortable before any of that can happen. Create extra possessions. Run. Turn mistakes into momentum and make the Liberty spend five games reacting to pressure instead of calmly imposing their size. And when New York does slow everything down, Atlanta needs Gray, Howard and the rest of its offense to prove it can still create without transition doing the work for them.
If Liberty versus Dream asks whether disruption can overwhelm experience, the other semifinal asks an entirely different question.
What happens when the best defense in the league meets players capable of breaking good defense anyway?
Valkyries vs. Aces: The League’s Best Defense Meets Basketball’s Hardest Problem
Golden State built its identity on defense.
Now it gets A’ja Wilson.
Seems fair.
The Valkyries finished with the WNBA’s best defensive rating. Gabby Williams and Veronica Burton give Natalie Nakase two elite perimeter defenders. Kiah Stokes protects the interior. Golden State can disrupt actions, take away preferred spots and make an offense work considerably harder than it planned to.
We just watched the Valkyries do it to Paige Bueckers.
Dallas found other answers, most memorably Arike Ogunbowale’s 45-point Game 2, but Golden State ultimately survived the series. It erased a 16-point deficit in Game 3, held Dallas to 73 points and advanced to the semifinals for the first time in franchise history.
Now the defense gets a different assignment.
Vegas won all three regular-season meetings between these teams. That doesn't decide what happens now, but it does give Golden State three games of film showing exactly how difficult this particular assignment can become.
A’ja Wilson averaged 26.2 points during the regular season and enters the semifinals averaging 32.0 through the first round.
Against Golden State this season?
25 points and 12.7 rebounds per game on 61.7 percent true shooting.
So yes.
There’s a problem.
What Golden State Wants This Series to Become
Uncomfortable.
That’s the Valkyries’ favorite kind of basketball. Golden State wants to disrupt the first action, make catches happen a little farther from the basket and use Williams and Burton to make guards work simply to begin possessions.
The challenge is that Vegas can survive a broken play differently than most teams. Blow up the action? Chelsea Gray can create something. Stay home? Jackie Young can attack. Switch? Now somebody has A’ja Wilson in a matchup Vegas probably likes.
Golden State can’t approach this series thinking it’s going to stop Wilson. I’m not sure that’s a realistic assignment. The better question is whether the Valkyries can make everything difficult enough around her that one dominant player doesn’t turn into an entire dominant offense.
That means changing looks, making catches difficult, showing help from different places and making Wilson work before she even gets the basketball. Perhaps most importantly, it means not sending so much attention toward A’ja that Chelsea and Jackie spend the night solving four-on-three situations.
What Vegas Wants This Series to Become
A series of impossible choices.
That’s what having Wilson, Gray and Young allows. Golden State’s defense is built on recognition. The Valkyries see what you’re trying to do, disrupt it and force you somewhere else.
Vegas can respond by simply being comfortable somewhere else.
A’ja doesn’t need the first action to work to score. Chelsea doesn’t need a perfectly designed play to manipulate a defense. Jackie doesn’t need a wide-open lane to attack one. That’s why Golden State’s challenge isn’t simply executing its scheme. It’s executing it again and again and again.
How many correct defensive decisions can you make in one possession before one of those three creates a decision with no particularly good answer?
That’s the chess match.
Where Golden State Can Be Hurt
We just watched the answer: individual shot creation.
Golden State made life miserable for Paige throughout the first round, and Dallas still found a way to score 108 points in Game 2 because Arike decided elimination basketball was apparently the perfect time to score 45. Vegas has more than one player capable of creating outside the structure, and that’s dangerous.
The other issue is positional. Two of Golden State’s best defenders, Williams and Burton, do their best work on the perimeter.
A’ja does not live there.
Stokes gives Golden State a legitimate interior defender and finished second in the WNBA in blocks, but asking one player to solve Wilson for an entire best-of-five series isn’t much of a plan. The Valkyries need help.
The question is how much help they can afford.
Every additional defender who shades toward Wilson is a defender who’s paying a little less attention to someone else. Against a team with Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young waiting to recognize exactly where that help came from, those decisions can get expensive very quickly.
Where Vegas Can Be Hurt
Golden State has to make Vegas defend too. It’s easy to spend an entire preview talking about how the Valkyries handle A’ja and forget that Golden State gets possessions on the other end.
Gabby Williams has become especially interesting here. She scored a playoff career-high 36 in Game 2 against Dallas. Then, with Golden State’s season in serious danger in Game 3, she scored 17 of her 19 points in the second half and 11 in the fourth quarter.
That’s not the version of Gabby we’ve always been asked to watch in the WNBA. We know the defender, the connector and the player who can affect a possession without scoring. Now Golden State is asking whether she can be the person who ends one too.
That matters against Vegas.
Veronica Burton has to attack. Tiffany Hayes has to pressure the defense. Golden State’s shooters have to punish rotations. Janelle Salaün and Cecilia Zandalasini have to make spacing matter. The Valkyries can’t spend five games hoping their defense wins every possession by itself.
Eventually, somebody has to score.
The Experience Card
On paper, this isn’t close. Vegas is making its eighth consecutive semifinal appearance. Wilson, Gray and Young have been through championship runs together. Gray has four rings and is the winningest active player in the WNBA. Young has been part of all three of Vegas’ championships. Wilson has led every one of them.
Golden State is in Year Two, and this is the first semifinal in franchise history.
And yet, there’s a little wrinkle here.
Natalie Nakase knows Vegas. Kiah Stokes knows Vegas. Tiffany Hayes knows Vegas. Nakase was an assistant on Becky Hammon’s staff for two Aces championships. Stokes played alongside Wilson for all three of Vegas’ recent titles. Hayes won Sixth Player of the Year during her season with the Aces.
Golden State doesn’t have Vegas’ collective playoff history, but it isn’t walking into this series blind. There’s intimate knowledge on both sides. Nakase knows what Hammon likes, and Hammon knows what Nakase knows. Stokes has spent years practicing against Wilson, and Wilson knows exactly how Stokes likes to defend her.
That’s not an advantage I’m comfortable assigning to either side.
It’s just really good basketball theater.
Secret Weapons
Golden State: Gabby Williams, the Closer
Not Gabby Williams the defender. Everybody knows her.
I’m watching the other version, the one Golden State trusted when its season was disappearing Friday night.
Williams has said she hasn’t previously been given this kind of closing responsibility in the WNBA despite doing it internationally. Golden State is giving it to her now, and that distinction matters. The Valkyries needing Gabby to score throughout a game is one thing. Trusting her when everybody in the building knows Golden State needs a basket is something else entirely.
If the Valkyries have actually discovered a reliable late-game creator inside one of the league’s best defenders, one of their biggest offensive questions suddenly has a much more interesting answer.
Las Vegas: Chelsea Gray
Calling the Point Gawd a secret weapon might be even more ridiculous than doing it with Jonquel Jones, but again, it’s the advantage I’m talking about.
Golden State wants to make offenses think. Chelsea Gray has built a career out of thinking faster. If the Valkyries change a coverage, she’s looking for what the change exposed. If they send help, she’s reading where it came from. If they hesitate, she’s already found the pass.
Against a defense this intelligent, having a point guard capable of treating every coverage like a puzzle matters.
And then there’s Jackie Young.
Every time Golden State sends another body toward A’ja or gives Chelsea additional attention, somebody has to answer a very uncomfortable question:
Who’s guarding Jackie now?
From My Courtside Notebook
Don’t only watch A’ja once she catches the ball. Watch what Golden State does before the catch.
Can Stokes push her starting position farther from the rim? Does help arrive early? Are the Valkyries fronting? Digging? Changing the picture from possession to possession? By the time Wilson catches it comfortably in her preferred spot, the possession may already be lost.
Watch Chelsea after Golden State changes coverage too. The first adjustment isn’t necessarily the interesting part.
Her response to it is.
Golden State spent the final two games of the first round discovering that one of the league's best defenders might also be the player it trusts when everybody in the building knows somebody has to go get a basket.
Finally, watch the familiarity. There may not be another semifinal where so many people on opposite benches already know exactly what the other side wants to do.
What Winning Looks Like
For Golden State, make Wilson work without allowing the entire defense to collapse around her. Change looks, make catches difficult and trust the league’s best defense to survive possessions without overreacting. Then get enough offense from Williams, Burton, Hayes and the Valkyries’ depth to make Vegas defend for 40 minutes too.
For Las Vegas, let A’ja force the first decision, then let Chelsea and Jackie punish the second. Don’t allow Golden State’s defense to become easy offense going the other way, and don’t get frustrated when the first action doesn’t work.
Against this defense, it probably isn’t supposed to.
Four Paths. Two Tickets. No Predictions.
There isn’t one kind of team left.
New York has size, star power and the memory of what championship basketball feels like. Atlanta has pressure, athleticism and a defense capable of changing a game before the offense ever gets settled. Golden State built the league’s best defense in only its second season and now gets perhaps the hardest possible test of it. Las Vegas has been here so many times that reaching the semifinals can start to feel routine.
Nothing about doing it eight consecutive times is routine.
And that’s why I’m not picking either series. I don’t need to. The more interesting question is what happens when every team’s greatest strength gets placed directly beside something capable of testing it.
Can New York protect the basketball long enough for its size to take over? Can Atlanta make experience uncomfortable? Can Golden State defend A’ja without accidentally opening everything around her? Can Vegas solve one more defense before that defense finds something new?
Underneath all of that are the things we can’t scout perfectly: the adjustment nobody expected, the role player who suddenly hits four threes, the veteran who settles a team before a bad five minutes becomes a bad night, the whistle that changes a rotation or the player who spends an entire regular season as a secondary option and decides October is a good time to become something else.
That’s playoff basketball.
Four teams have four very different answers for how they want to play it. Starting Sunday, we find out which answers still work when somebody gets multiple games to take them away.
No predictions. Just basketball.
And I’ll be watching.
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