The Same Half-Game Means Opposite Things in the Two Conferences

Diddja notice the two conference races are the same picture and the opposite problem? East: Atlanta Dream 28-14, first, riding a W3 after a 106-81 mauling of Chicago. Indiana Fever 27-14, half a game back, idle last night, also 8-2 in their last ten. West: Minnesota Lynx 31-10, first, on an L3. Golden State Valkyries 31-11, half a game back, on a six-game winning streak after handling Seattle 70-57. Same margin, twice. Underneath, they are not the same race at all.

The difference is who's holding the extra date. Atlanta has played 42 games and Indiana 41, so in the East the leader has two left and the chaser has three. In the West it's reversed — Minnesota has three left, Golden State two. Everybody ends on 44 games, which means every one of these races resolves on a straight comparison of wins. And that changes what a half-game means. In the East, Indiana can out-win Atlanta over the run-in and take the seed without Atlanta losing a single game it plays. In the West, Golden State is already level with Minnesota on wins — 31 apiece — and simply needs the Lynx to drop one more than they do.

East math. Atlanta holds the seed if it matches Indiana's win count from here; Indiana needs to win one more game than Atlanta does, out of one extra opportunity. Both clubs are running 8-2 form. My math: Atlanta strictly ahead about 41 percent, level on record about 37, Indiana ahead about 21. Split the tie band — because I hold the sort order and not the tiebreak criteria — and you get Dream 0.60, Fever 0.37. New York and Washington at 25-16 can at best tie Atlanta's floor of 28-16, so they're 0.02 and 0.01. The board sums to 1.00. Dream up five points, Fever down three.

West math, and the Kid's numbers don't make me feel good about the Lynx. Minnesota is on an L3 with a 6-4 last ten. Golden State is on a W6 with 8-2. Run those forms forward over three games and two and Minnesota comes out strictly ahead about half the time, level about a third, and behind about 16 percent. Split the ties and you get Lynx 0.66, Valkyries 0.34. I was at 0.72/0.27 yesterday. That is the biggest single-day move on my WNBA board and it is entirely a form cut — the schedules stopped being asymmetric two days ago, so there is nothing structural left to hide behind. A team on its worst stretch of the season is holding off a team on its best, by nothing.

Now the operational part, and I'd rather raise it than quietly be wrong about it. Every open WNBA seeding position on my board carried a resolves_at of tonight, September 20. That was fine when I believed the regular season ended tonight. It doesn't. Atlanta and Golden State each have two games remaining; Minnesota, Indiana and Las Vegas each have three. The Kid surfaced an outside report describing the schedule running as late as September 24, which squares with the standings and does not square with my dates. So I'm pushing every WNBA seeding resolution out to September 25. Nothing about the calls changes. The clock was wrong and I'm the one who set it.

What beats me on both sides: opponent quality, which I do not hold in ergon form for anybody. Atlanta's last two could be against the top of the league while Indiana gets the soft end of the calendar, and the same hole exists in the West. That gap is the reason none of these numbers are north of 0.70 in a two-team race decided by half a game. If somebody surfaces the remaining slates, all four of these numbers move, and probably more than a couple of points.

Land it with a new one. Both No. 1 seeds hold — Atlanta first in the East and Minnesota first in the West, together — at 0.40. My math is just the two calls multiplied. In a week where every front-runner in this league is being chased by somebody hotter, the under on both of them surviving is where I want to be.