Washington's 26-16 record rests on close games, not on a +0.9 point margin

The Washington Mystics have won 26 of 42 games and outscored their opponents by 0.9 points a game. That is the smallest margin of any team with a winning record in the 15-team league. The Indiana Fever, one game ahead of Washington at 27-15, outscore their opponents by 5.8 a game.

A record and a margin should tell roughly the same story. Here they do not, and the difference is a single kind of game.

Every figure below is built from the final scores for the 316 regular-season games completed through Sunday, September 20, 2026. We left out the Commissioner's Cup final on June 30, which is not part of the regular-season standings. With that game out, our wins, losses, points scored and points allowed match the standings for all 15 teams.

What the margin predicts

A team's points scored and allowed give an estimate of how many games it should have won. The standard formula is Pythagorean expectation: games played times points scored to a power, divided by points scored to that power plus points allowed to that power. The power is a choice. Around 14 is commonly used for the NBA. We do not have a settled value for the WNBA, so the table shows 14 and the range from 10 to 16.

The table covers the eight teams with the best records. Each has played 42 games.

Team	Record	Points for	Points against	Margin per game	Expected wins (power 14)	Expected wins (range)	Wins minus expected (power 14)
Minnesota Lynx	32-10	3,834	3,519	+7.5	32.3	29.5 to 33.5	-0.3
Golden State Valkyries	31-11	3,457	3,140	+7.5	33.3	30.4 to 34.6	-2.3
Las Vegas Aces	29-13	3,836	3,615	+5.3	29.3	27.1 to 30.3	-0.3
Atlanta Dream	28-14	3,841	3,568	+6.5	31.0	28.4 to 32.1	-3.0
Indiana Fever	27-15	4,060	3,816	+5.8	29.6	27.3 to 30.6	-2.6
Dallas Wings	26-16	3,744	3,573	+4.1	27.6	25.8 to 28.5	-1.6
Washington Mystics	26-16	3,516	3,478	+0.9	22.6	22.1 to 22.8	+3.4
New York Liberty	26-16	3,792	3,624	+4.0	27.4	25.7 to 28.3	-1.4

Seven of the eight teams have won fewer games than their margin predicts, by 0.3 to 3.0 wins. Washington is the exception. Its margin is worth 22.1 to 22.8 wins, whatever power you choose, and the Mystics have 26. That is 3.2 to 3.9 wins more than their scoring says they earned.

Indiana is on the other side. Its margin is the fourth best in the league, behind Minnesota, Golden State and Atlanta. The formula puts it at 27.3 to 30.6 wins, and it has 27.

Where the extra wins came from

The gap has a clear source. Washington has won an unusual share of games that were close at the end.

Team	Decided by 3 or fewer	Decided by 5 or fewer	Decided by 7 or fewer
Washington Mystics	6-2	12-5	15-7
Indiana Fever	3-5	5-5	6-8

Of the 316 games played, 87 were decided by five or fewer points. Washington won 12 of its 17. That leaves the Mystics 14-11 in the 25 games decided by six or more, which is a winning record but a narrow one. The Fever are 22-10 in games decided by six or more, and 5-5 in the close ones.

The pattern does not depend on where the line for a close game is drawn. At three points, at five and at seven, Washington is well above .500 and Indiana is at or below it.

What the numbers show, and what they might mean

The numbers show that Washington's record is stronger than its scoring, that the difference is almost entirely close games, and that Indiana's record is somewhat weaker than its scoring.

What they might mean is less certain. It is possible that the Mystics have a real skill at winning close games. It is also possible that they won a share of 17 coin-flip games, and that a different 17 would have gone the other way. Seventeen games is a small sample, and this data cannot separate the two. What can be said is that the margin describes 42 games of play and the close-game record describes 17 of them.

Nothing here says Washington will lose, or that Indiana will win. Every game still ends with a score that counts equally in the standings.

The choice of power does not change the reading. It moves every expected total, but Washington's gap holds at 10, 14 and 16. More games would matter more, and the remaining schedule gives each team only two.

The two games each team has left

Washington plays two teams with losing records and negative margins. The Mystics host the Connecticut Sun (10-32, a margin of -9.7 a game) on Tuesday, September 22, and the Chicago Sky (15-27, -4.2) on Thursday, September 24.

Indiana plays the team with the best record in the league twice. The Fever host the Minnesota Lynx (32-10, +7.5) on Tuesday and visit them on Thursday.

In the standings the Fever are one game ahead of Washington. Over the season as a whole, the margins put Indiana well ahead: 5.8 a game to 0.9.