WNBA: New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury begin first-round playoff games

The No. 4-seed Phoenix Mercury (27-17) and No. 5-seed New York Liberty (27-17) will begin their first-round series in the 2025 WNBA playoffs this Sunday, Sept. 14. The Mercury will host the first game in the best-of-three series, with tip-off scheduled for 5 p.m. ET (ESPN).

As with most 4-versus-5 series, the Liberty and Mercury match up well against each other. In fact, they finished the 2025 regular season tied in the standings, with a better head-to-head record handing Phoenix the higher seed. From the reigning champion Liberty’s title defense to the new-look Mercury’s unique formula for success, there’s plenty to unpack for both teams, so let’s review how each of them got here in anticipation of Sunday’s game.

Can the Liberty “flip the switch” and return to championship form?

New York has had a surprisingly up-and-down season for a team that rivals last year’s championship-winning squad on paper. Though the Liberty lost important pieces like Kayla Thornton and Courtney Vandersloot over the offseason and have had to play without Betnijah Laney-Hamilton due to lingering knee issues, Natasha Cloud has been an adequate defensive-minded replacement at point guard, and the midseason addition of Emma Meesseman has made the Liberty’s frontcourt arguably the most skilled in the WNBA.

The problem is that, for one reason or another, the Liberty’s best players simply haven’t shared the court enough. They’ve suffered injury after injury. Starting center Jonquel Jones and power forward Breanna Stewart both missed 13 regular-season games, while shooting guard Sabrina Ionescu had to sit out a crucial stretch in which the Liberty let a top-four finish in the standings slip away.

Given the Liberty’s injury woes and overall inconsistency since the All-Star break, it’s easy to forget that they started the season 9-0. At the time, New York was the best team in the WNBA, leading the league in both offensive and defensive rating, and it seemed like the Liberty were destined to meet the Minnesota Lynx in the Finals for the second year in a row.

The Liberty may still be the same team as the one that started 9-0 (except for Meesseman, of course, who theoretically makes them even better), but they’ve lost a lot of their luster since then. Injuries aren’t the only thing to blame–New York has had trouble closing games this season, and hasn’t been playing with the kind of defensive intensity that spearheaded the team’s hot start. The Liberty may technically be defending their title in 2025, but in a way, it feels like they’ll need to prove that they still belong among the league’s best first.

Beginning the postseason fully healthy will be a good start. The Liberty have no injuries to report ahead of their first game against Phoenix, which is something that didn’t typically happen in their season series. The Liberty went 1-3 against the Mercury in the regular season; their lone win was earned with a starting lineup that was at full strength, while their three losses were marred by shorthanded rosters, subpar defense—or both. But the Liberty are now at a point where injuries can’t be used as an excuse.

They’re the defending WNBA champions, and they need to play like it to make it out of the first round.

Alyssa Thomas and the Mercury look to start strong

Whereas the Liberty were able to retain most of their core from a highly-successful 2024 campaign, the Mercury have started almost completely anew. Save for star scorer Kahleah Copper and backup center Natasha Mack, the Mercury are a totally different basketball team than they were last year, opting to trade nearly all of their assets for forwards Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally and fill out the rest of their roster with mostly-unproven complementary players.

The results have been exactly what Phoenix hoped for. Acquiring Thomas gave the Mercury someone they could build around, which was particularly important in the wake of the loss of franchise cornerstones Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner. Rather than rebuilding, the Mercury reloaded, finishing with their best regular-season winning percentage (61.4 percent) since they went 29-5 in 2014.

That 2014 team, of course, won a WNBA championship, and while this year’s Mercury haven’t been quite as dominant, they quickly established a winning identity on both ends of the floor, which is more than can be said for most of the teams in the latter part of the Taurasi and Griner era. Running offense through Thomas, rather than a traditional point guard, has allowed head coach Nate Tibbetts to be more creative with his lineups; he’s adhered to a “positionless” philosophy that leans on Thomas’ strengths as a passer and the team’s versatility on the defensive end. Phoenix finished fourth in the WNBA in opponents’ turnover percentage, wreaking havoc with its group of athletic perimeter defenders and thriving in transition.

It’s a formula that the Connecticut Sun used for years with Thomas as their centerpiece, and she’s been better than ever in her first season with the Mercury. She averaged 15.4 points, 8.8 rebounds and a WNBA-best 9.2 assists per game during the regular season and racked up a league-record eight triple-doubles, and she seems like a lock for yet another top-three finish in MVP voting.

While this worked for the Mercury during the regular season, the playoffs are a different beast entirely. Prior to this year, there was already plenty of evidence that Thomas could will her team to a top-four finish, but she’s still chasing that elusive championship, and there will inevitably be questions about how far Phoenix can go with her as their hub.

A more pertinent question might be how high Phoenix’s other stars, Copper and Sabally, can raise their own games. Together with Thomas, they make up one of the most individually-talented trios in the WNBA, but talent alone doesn’t win championships, and compared to most of this season’s other contenders, the Mercury’s core hasn’t played together for very long. There’s no question that when the Mercury’s top players are at their best, they’re tough to beat, but one could say that about most other teams, too. How far the Mercury get will depend not only on the consistency of their stars, but their ability to stick to the winning ways that have gotten them to this point.

No. 5-seed New York Liberty (0-0) vs. No. 4-seed Phoenix Mercury (0-0)