Morning Distribution for Wednesday, August 17, 2022

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Wednesday, August 17, 2022 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [2022-WNBA-PLAYOFF-PREVIEW-4×3]( [4 Stats That Could Decide The First Round Of The WNBA Playoffs]( By [Howard Megdal]( The WNBA playoffs have arrived, and with them come a new set of matchups and storylines to watch. Will Seattle’s Sue Bird end her WNBA career with a fifth championship? Can Candace Parker and the Chicago Sky repeat? Will either the Las Vegas Aces or Connecticut Sun finally figure out how to convert regular-season success to a championship parade? (And where, exactly, would the Sun hold such a parade?) But let’s simplify things a bit. The league certainly has: Gone are the play-in games, and it’s a [traditional bracket]( with no reseeding. The first round follows a best-of-three format, so no more higher-seeded teams will lose their entire seasons in a single game. The only wrinkle for the higher seeds? They get the first two games at home, so if they fail to hold serve, the winner-take-all game is on the lower seed’s home court. For each playoff series, we’ve isolated one stat to know — a factor that might well decide who advances and whose season ends prematurely — starting with the [Wednesday night matchups](. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Why Have Democrats’ Odds Of Winning The Senate Improved?]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.