The post WNBA 2025 playoff matchups set after final regular season day appeared first on ClutchPoints.
The final day of the 2025 WNBA regular season has passed, which means that the playoff field is locked in — with eight teams remaining alive in the hunt for a championship.
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Earning the first seed by virtue of being consistent from start to finish are the Minnesota Lynx, a team that’s looking to bounce back from their heartbreaking five-game series loss in the WNBA Finals to the New York Liberty. Coming in at second are the Las Vegas Aces, a team that’s entering the postseason as the arguable favorite to win it all considering that they’re in the middle of a 16-game winning streak and has looked untouchable since the start of August.
Joining the Lynx and Aces as teams with homecourt advantage in the first round are the three-seeded Atlanta Dream and four-seeded Phoenix Mercury. The lower-seeded teams are as follows: coming at fifth are the reigning champion Liberty, at sixth are the Caitlin Clark-less Indiana Fever, the seventh-seed are the Seattle Storm, and, shattering all expectations of them, expansion team Golden State Valkyrie made it to the postseason as the eighth-seed in their inaugural season.
That gives us the following first-round matchups: (1) Lynx versus (8) Valkyrie; (2) Aces versus (7) Storm; (3) Dream versus (6) Fever; (4) Mercury versus (5) Liberty, as pointed out by Alexa Philippou of ESPN.
There are plenty of storylines to be had in the first round of the playoffs, which is sure to give fans plenty of exciting action.
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Liberty continue title defense; Lynx, Aces stand out as favorites
© Allan Henry-Imagn Images
The Liberty definitely did have a bit of a title hangover; they won five fewer games this year compared to last even though they played four more games played in 2025. (Breanna Stewart’s injury may have had something to do with that.) But with Sabrina Ionescu, Stewart, and Jonquel Jones on the roster and all being healthy, the Liberty definitely have enough talent to mount a championship push despite not having homecourt advantage in the first round.
Nonetheless, the Lynx have played with a chip on their shoulder all year, and the Aces have been playing like they want to remind the world that they were the most dominant team in the WNBA to start the decade, that despite losing a few key players, they can still compete with the best of them.
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But the Aces appear to have a smoother path to the WNBA Finals, provided, of course, that they take care of business against the Storm in the first round. The Lynx may have to go through the Liberty, and that is a tall order for any team, even one as good as Minnesota is.
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