History (of All Sorts) Awaits in the WNBA Finals
The Aces are chasing GOAT dynasty status, while Alyssa Thomas is chasing her first ring — all in the league’s first-ever best-of-seven playoff series.
When the WNBA Finals tip off on Friday night, it won’t quite be the matchup we seemed due for in the middle of the 2025 regular season.
While the still-dynastic Las Vegas Aces ranked second in the preseason betting odds to win the title, and the Phoenix Mercury were a respectable fifth — if outside the top tier of contenders — the two squads seemed far from where they wanted to be in early July. Neither ranked among the Top 5 in the Elo ratings at that time, and other rivals such as the Minnesota Lynx, New York Liberty, Indiana Fever, Seattle Storm and Atlanta Dream appeared ascendant.
But then, the Aces rediscovered what made them arguably the GOAT WNBA team just a few years earlier — thanks to a 16-game winning streak to close the regular season and a coinciding MVP push by the league’s best player, A’ja Wilson. And the Mercury quietly won 11 times in a 14-game span from early August to early September, as the forever-underrated Alyssa Thomas averaged a near triple-double (15.4 PPG/9.6 APG/9.9 RPG) with a cool 60.7 TS% over that span.
The playoffs still had their share of challenges in store. The Aces needed to survive the maximum number of games against the Storm in Round 1 and then again versus the criminally shorthanded Fever in Round 2 to reach the Finals. The Mercury went the distance with the defending-champion Liberty, then knocked off Napheesa Collier and the Lynx in a semifinal upset. Now the resulting matchup will see the Aces go in as about a 70 percent favorite over the Mercury, according to my WNBA Elo forecast model:
These Finals will pit the two best players of the playoffs thus far, Wilson and Thomas, in a matchup that has a lot of history and legacies on the line. For a deep dive into the stats, lineup rotations and even Instagram activity of the matchup, I’d recommend reading this preview from my buddy Chris Gunther — but I wanted to take a moment to also focus on the bigger-picture narratives: How Las Vegas can add to its all-time dynasty case, and how Thomas might finally get her ring with this new cast of Mercury teammates. (If the new Finals format doesn’t get in the way, that is.)
As alluded to earlier, the champion Aces of 2022 — and especially 2023 — staked out their case as some of the greatest teams in WNBA history. In the second of those two title runs, Las Vegas ended the postseason with an Elo rating of 1738, which is the third-highest season-ending rating by a team ever, trailing only the ridiculously loaded 2020 Storm and the dynastic 2000 Houston Comets:1
This year’s Aces, however, weren’t quite as dominant. During the regular season, their efficiency differential — which was a near-league record +15.6 in 20232 — was down to just +3.7 in 2025, only fifth-best in the league, and they had 7.4 fewer wins per 44 games as well. Their record was merely .500 (14-14) as late as August 2, and though they proceeded to win 16 straight from there — a record winning streak to close out the regular season — before advancing through the playoffs, their current Elo of 1651 is significantly lower than it was going into the Finals of 2022 (1680) or especially 2023 (1711):
The good news for Las Vegas, though, is that the Mercury’s 1595 mark is a far cry from the 1735 Elo the Liberty carried into that star-studded 2023 Finals battle, still probably the most stacked championship matchup in league history. That’s why Phoenix goes into this series with just a 30.5 percent chance of winning the title — and the league’s new format isn’t doing them any favors, either.
For the first time ever, this season will feature a best-of-seven WNBA Finals instead of best-of-five, as it had been every previous season since 2005. Because it represents a larger sample size of games, with less chance for randomness to influence the series, an underdog has a smaller chance to win in a best-of-seven than a best-of-five series, giving Phoenix less of a shot at the upset. It wouldn’t matter that much, mind you — the Mercury would be around 32.3 percent to win in a best-of-five — but with a championship on the line, every point of win probability matters.
A bigger problem for Phoenix is simply what to do about Wilson, who’s averaging 26.0 points and 9.1 boards in the postseason, alongside teammate Jackie Young and her 20.5 PPG/5.3 APG/4.8 RPG and .666 TS%. But the Mercury can counter with the performance of Thomas, who is playing better — particularly in terms of scoring and assists — in the lead-up to these Finals than in either of her previous two Finals appearances (both losses):
Since Thomas has tended to shine on the Finals stage itself — improving on her average pre-Finals Game Score by 72 percent! — she could certainly rise to the occasion again and keep proving people like me wrong about her team’s chances.
If not, though, the Aces will add more evidence to their claim as the greatest dynasty in WNBA history.
The default answer to that question used to be the Cynthia Cooper/Sheryl Swoopes/Tina Thompson Comets, who won each of the league’s first four championships from 1997-2000 — still the only time that’s ever happened. The Minnesota Lynx of the 2010s came along and made their own case with four championships in a seven-year span from 2011-2017, making the Finals every season in that span except one (2014).
But the Aces are now one of only five teams to make four Finals in a six-season span — joining the Lynx and Comets, plus the 1997-02 Liberty and the 2003-08 Detroit Shock — and they are closing in on joining the Comets as the only teams to win at least three titles in a four-season stretch. That at least puts them in the GOAT conversation, particularly considering how much the league’s talent base has expanded over the past 25 years.
(With apologies to the legends of that old-school era — and I love players like Cooper — it’s obvious that the WNBA’s current stars are miles better at basketball than their counterparts from previous generations.)3
There’s one last area where Vegas may already be the GOAT, but can add to their résumé even further. Here are the highest average Elo ratings across spans of four, five and six consecutive seasons in WNBA history, going into the 2025 Finals:
As we can see, the current Aces already hold the league records for highest Elo ratings in a four- and five-year span, and they are second only to the peak Maya Moore/Seimone Augustus/Sylvia Fowles Lynx of the 2010s in terms of six-year runs. These numbers are subject to change for either good or bad — the Aces have slim margins in the 4- and 5-year categories, and might risk dropping if they, say, get swept. But at the same time, a decisive win over the Mercury could help them gain in the one category above that they don’t dominate yet.
Whether the Aces cement their place as the WNBA’s greatest dynasty or not will hinge on the play of Wilson and her teammates, while Thomas — still chasing her first ring — isn’t about to let history be decided without her having a say. The only thing left is to settle it once and for all in this, the first best-of-seven WNBA playoff series ever.
Filed under: WNBA
This differs from my previous finding from 2023 because my list of games at the time was not including the Aces’ blowout loss in the Commissioner’s Cup final. (Yes, that can matter when it comes to all-time greatness.) The Elo ratings kept on the Substack now do include the Commissioner’s Cup in their calculation.
Trailing only the Houston Comets in 2000 (+18.1) and 1998 (+17.5).
And why wouldn’t we expect this to be the case? The WNBA is a very young league, only having started in 1997; the 2025 season is still just its 29th of existence. That would be like comparing the NBA of 1975 with 1947 — a game that at least somewhat resembles the modern NBA, versus a nearly unrecognizable sport.