Playoff Picture: Aug. 29

With the WNBA season back underway and just seven games remaining, it's time to start focusing in on the battle to make the playoffs and for positioning within them. Here's the first installment of storm.wnba.com's Playoff Picture updates.

Team           W   L    GB  Storm  Conf   H/A  500+
---------------------------------------------------
San Antonio   19   9   0     1-2    8-9   3/3   6/0
Seattle       18   9   0.5         12-5   2/5   4/3
Los Angeles   16  12   3.0   1-1    8-7   4/2   5/1
Sacramento    15  13   4.0   3-0    6-8   3/3   5/1
Houston       14  13   4.5   2-1    9-7   4/3   5/2
Minnesota     13  13   5.0   2-0    8-7   3/5   3/5
Phoenix       12  16   7.0   3-1    4-12  3/3   5/1

With the top three teams in the West all winning, the Storm remains a half-game back of San Antonio for the top spot in the West and 2.5 up on third-place Los Angeles.

The more important doings are a little lower. With the Storm's win and Phoenix's loss, the Mercury can do no better than tie the Storm, and the Storm holds the tiebreaker. The most wins any of Houston, Minnesota and Sacramento can get is 21, so by winning three more games, the Storm would guarantee at least a tie with them. The Storm holds tiebreakers with both all three teams by virtue of head-to-head record.

There's an extraordinarily unlikely possibility of a four-way tie with Houston/Minnesota, Los Angeles and San Antonio that would leave the Storm out of the playoffs, but for all intents and purposes the Storm's magic number to clinch a playoff spot is three wins or any combination of Storm wins plus losses by TWO OF Houston, Minnesota and Sacramento that adds to three.

(UPDATED 8/29 at 3:00 p.m. to reflect Storm holding tiebreaker over Minnesota.)