SI:AM | One Thing to Know About Each WNBA First-Round Series

Plus, Joe Burrow’s new normal.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The high stakes of best-of-three playoff series should be a lot of fun.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏀 It’s playoff time

🐅 Burrow’s encore

🐘 What will Saban do this year?

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What to watch for in the WNBA playoffs

After an exciting final weekend, the WNBA playoffs get started tonight.

Since 2016, the WNBA has been doing something I’d love to see its men’s counterpart adopt: Playoff teams are seeded without considering a team’s conference. The top eight teams in the standings make the playoffs—end of story. That led to some exciting playoff races down the stretch, with the Liberty and Mercury claiming the final two spots.

The playoffs have a new format this year that does away with single elimination games in favor of three-game opening-round series. The first two games will take place on the home court of the higher-seeded team, with a decisive Game 3 hosted by the lower-seeded team. I think that isn’t an ideal situation—imagine losing Game 2 and facing a do-or-die game on the road—but it makes sense given the travel challenges of conference-less playoffs.

The action gets started tonight with the Liberty traveling to Chicago to face the Sky at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN2 and the Aces hosting the Mercury at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN. Here’s what to watch for in each of the four first-round series:

No. 1 seed Aces vs. No. 8 Mercury

Las Vegas is the favorite to win it all. The Aces have the best championship odds at SI Sportsbook at +175, narrowly ahead of the defending champion Sky at +200. But our experts are even higher on the Aces. All five participants in our WNBA playoff roundtable picked Vegas to win it all. Claire Kuwana thinks the Aces will prevail in four games over the Sky:

If the Aces can present a playoff defense even close to as solid as their offense has been this season, they should be able to go all the way. However, I think the Sky’s veteran combination of Courtney Vandersloot and Candace Parker won’t make this a walk in the park.

No. 2 Sky vs. No. 7 Liberty

Watch out for the Liberty in this one. The Sky had a great regular season, finishing with a 26–10 record (identical to the Aces, but Vegas won the tiebreaker by virtue of winning the season series 2–1), while the Liberty finished below .500 at 16–20. But New York has plenty of talent. Star point guard Sabrina Ionescu is capable of taking over a game and could give Chicago headaches.

“A team that is too inexperienced to understand its ceiling is a dangerous one,” Amna Subhan writes. “The Liberty exude that naivete. Yes, they’ll have to face the reigning champions Sky, but don’t expect the broom to come out.”

No. 3 Sun vs. No. 6 Wings

Dallas is in deep trouble without its leading scorer Arike Ogunbowale, who will miss at least the first round of the playoffs after undergoing abdominal surgery last week. Even a fully healthy Wings team would be a significant underdog against a Connecticut team that two of our experts picked to make the Finals, and losing Ogunbowale makes an upset all but impossible.

No. 4 Storm vs. No. 5 Mystics

All eyes will be on Sue Bird in this one. After losing to the Aces in Bird’s final regular-season game in Seattle, the Storm won two out of their last three on the road to secure the No. 4 seed and ensure that Bird would get to play at least two more games in front of the home crowd. Washington won’t go down easy, though, as Elizabeth Swinton argues:

The Mystics may be getting hot at the right time after finishing the season on a 7–3 run. They will get tested against Seattle right away in the first round in what may potentially be Sue Bird’s final playoff series. These teams finished with the same regular-season record at 22–14, but if [Elena] Delle Donne can quiet [Breanna] Stewart, the Mystics may have an upset in them.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated

Today’s Daily Cover is the cover story from the football preview issue of the magazine, by Conor Orr on how Joe Burrow is adjusting to being a celebrity:

Just a few days before Super Bowl LVI, Burrow sent a text to his closest confidantes, confirming their weekly ritual was still on. His firm grasp on sanity amid sudden, uncomfortable fame depends in part on Xbox Live nights. That’s when the boys from Athens High all hop on. These days it’s Star Wars Battlefront II, but last winter it was Grand Theft Auto V’s fist-fight death matches, where they would embody their digital avatars and beat the hell out of one another while trash-talking over their headsets.

Nick Saban has won at Alabama by evolving, Richard Johnson writes, so what will he do differently this year? … Liverpool’s winless start shows just how difficult the Premier League is, Jonathan Wilson writes.

Around the sports world

Drew Lock was supposed to start the Seahawks’ next preseason game, but then he tested positive for COVID-19. … A 12-year-old from Utah was hospitalized after an accident at the Little League World Series. … The Braves signed Rookie of the Year candidate Michael Harris to a big contract extension. … Wayne Gretzky is being sued for $10 million by a chewing gum investor. … Mets pitcher Taijuan Walker left last night’s start with an injury, the second New York starter to get hurt in a span of 24 hours. … LIV golfer Patrick Reed is suing Golf Channel and analyst Brandel Chamblee for defamation, claiming they have been “targeting Reed since he was 23.”

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday

5. This ridiculous interception return in Madden.

4. The fortunate bounce that allowed Mets catcher Michael Perez to throw out a runner.

3. A walk-off hit-by-pitch win for the Cardinals.

2. Jake Paul’s hapless batting practice session.

1. Chris Taylor’s game-saving catch in the bottom of the 10th.

SIQ

On this day in 1966, Willie Mays homered off the Cardinals’ Ray Washburn to move into second place on the all-time leaderboard behind only Babe Ruth. Who did he pass?

• Jimmie Foxx
• Ted Williams
• Lou Gehrig
• Mel Ott

Yesterday’s SIQ: On Aug. 16, 1927, Babe Ruth became the first player to hit a home run completely out of which American League stadium?

• Griffith Stadium
• Comiskey Park
• Sportsman’s Park
• Navin Field

Answer: Comiskey Park. Ruth’s accomplishment was noteworthy because the White Sox had just added a second outfield deck—with a roof—before the season.

The renovation nearly doubled the stadium’s capacity from 27,000 to 52,000, making it the third biggest ballpark in the majors behind Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. Before the renovation, the stadium had limited seating in the outfield. After the renovation, the entire stadium was surrounded by two levels of seating, with a 75-foot-tall roof.

On Aug. 16, 1927, though, the roof proved to be no match for Ruth. In the fifth inning, facing the White Sox’ best pitcher, Alphonse “Tommy” Thomas, the Babe hit a Ruthian blast to right. Here’s how John Gabcik described it in an article for the Society for American Baseball Research:

The ball flew off the bat, heading well above Comiskey’s insurmountable roof in right field. It cleared the outfield wall, 360 feet from home plate, then the roof, landed in a parking lot, and bounced off, eastwardly, toward what today is the Dan Ryan Expressway.

Ruth was the first player to clear the roof but far from the last. According to a (thoroughly sourced) post by user “kibbe77” on the Baseball Fever message board, there were 49 home runs in the history of Comiskey Park that either landed on or flew over the stadium’s roof.

From the Vault: Aug. 17, 1970

“The Last Rebel,” a Larry Spangler production

From the moment I saw this cover, I knew there had to be a good story behind why a bare-chested, impossibly tanned Joe Namath would be on the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing Jerry Seinfeld’s puffy shirt.

The reason, Richard Munro explained in the issue’s publisher’s letter, was Namath was the latest athlete to try his hand at acting. The issue also featured a profile of Johnny Weissmuller, a U.S. swimmer who won five gold medals at the 1924 and ’28 Olympics before beginning a successful acting career. Weissmuller was best known for playing Tarzan, hence the article’s tremendous headline: “AAAH-EEEE-AAAH...UMGAWA.”

Namath’s projects were not as well received. He shot two of them during the 1970 offseason, Munro wrote. The one where the cover image came from was a spaghetti western called The Last Rebel, in which Namath plays a Confederate soldier who refuses to surrender after the Civil War. Namath’s character later saves a Black man (played by Woody Strode, who broke the NFL’s color barrier in 1946 and later became a popular star of westerns) from being lynched. You can watch that scene here. (A warning: The characters use the n-word multiple times.) Later, Namath and Strode’s characters fight off a gang of Ku Klux Klan members. Namath kills one by throwing a knife into his back.

New York Times critic Vincent Canby called the movie “dumb and technically dreadful but harmless,” describing Namath’s performance as “sheepish.”

Canby was kinder to the other project Namath filmed that year, a biker movie called C.C. and Company. Canby called it “a work of such opportunism, such vulgarity and such old-fashioned, romantic nuttiness that it's impossible not to be charmed by it, at least much of the time.”

You can watch the whole thing here and judge for yourself.

I was hoping the issue would include a story about Namath filming the movies, but instead there is a photo spread that highlights the contrast between his two careers. It features photos by Carl Iwasaki of Namath being pummeled by defenders.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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