They took the Fever to the conference finals.
There are no “conference finals”. It’s just the semifinals. Playoff seeding is irrespective of conference alignment.
Basically the Fever won a best-of-3 series with Atlanta and then took Las Vegas to the limit. They were 4-4 in the playoffs. And I think a lot more gets made of that than it really was, especially by people who want to argue that the Fever are better without CC.
First of all, the Fever were 8-5 (.615) during the regular season with CC. They were 16-15 (.516) without her. Without their record in games CC played, they might not have even made the playoffs.
Second, it’s important to note that the WNBA changed the playoff format in 2025. It used to be that the higher seed got Games 1 and 2 at home. The league decided to make sure every playoff team got at least one home game, so they switched the format from 2-1 to 1-1-1. Every coach of every higher seeded team in the first round was furious about the change because it gave the lower seeded team a better chance to completely change the momentum of the series and force an anything-can-happen Game 3.
Case in point - Vegas entered the playoffs on a rampage, winning their final 16 games in a row. They drew 7-seed Seattle, who finished one game behind the Fever. Vegas pummeled the Storm by 25 in Game 1, but then had to go to Seattle for Game 2. The Storm broke the Aces’ 17 game winning streak and forced a Game 3 back in Vegas and nearly stole the series. The Aces needed a tip-in by Jackie Young with 12 seconds left in Game 3 to take a 1-point lead and then avoided disaster when Erica Wheeler missed the potential game winning shot for Seattle with 4 seconds left.