MLP New York City 2025 – 5 Takeaways – They Picked Us

It was a banner weekend for MLP in New York City. We promise to put a moratorium on this specific take, but every time there is a great MLP event, we come away more convinced that if pro pickleball is ever going to garner mainstream attention, some version of the MLP format has to be the way to go. 

The culmination of an entire season of drama leading to one moment of jubilation from the Sliders is infinitely more satisfying to follow than some version of the same tournament being played at different locations throughout the year. You couldn’t script it any better with an underdog team taking down the top three seeds en route to an epic title win. The excitement and joy we saw from Parris Todd is unlike anything you’ll ever get on tour. There is something totally different about doing it with a team that you didn’t get to choose. Todd jumped into the arms of Andrei Daescu after securing the title and was crying tears of joy on the court.

We continue to have complaints and concerns about MLP and ways we think the product can be better because the raw version of this product can be so captivating. Hopefully UPA keeps giving the resources the MLP side of the business needs to have a chance at succeeding. 

1. They Picked Us – It was not a parity-filled season, but the Columbus Sliders pulled off their best Super Bowl XLVII-winning Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens impression in what had to be the most surprising championship win in MLP history, including the pre-2024 events. Every step of the way, the Sliders were the clear underdog, and it was a treat to watch them come together for a special playoff run that was so well deserved.

What is interesting for this discussion is whether anything was really missed by mostly discounting Columbus as a legitimate title contender. We had them at #5 in our power rankings to start the season and highlighted their mixed teams as the biggest question mark. They had a very disappointing Columbus event where CJ Klinger missed all their matches with an illness, and almost half their season was finished after the first two events of the year—Orlando and Columbus. It was hard to get a read on the Sliders.

Following the St. Louis event, we highlighted the event as being the first clear sign that the top teams were not immune to being upset. However, in our playoff preview, we had written the Sliders off as a “very outside shot”, partly due to some reports of team drama.

Columbus should send a thank-you card and some roses to the Dallas Flash. It was a massive blunder for the Flash to go that direction with their pick, and it may have been the catalyst that brought the entire Sliders team together as a unit for the playoffs. A tough Dreambreaker loss in Game 1 to Dallas gave Columbus a reason to believe, and they were off and running from there. It was a sliding doors moment for Columbus that they took full advantage of.

Andrei Daescu was the unquestioned MVP for the Sliders team. He was undefeated in men’s doubles in the playoffs with CJ Klinger as the pair finally played to their full potential. Daescu and Parris Todd only lost twice in mixed during the playoffs, which included going 5-1 against the Johnson siblings and Waters/Howells.

Daescu was also a beast in the Dreambreakers, going against the other team’s #1 male and paving the way for his team to survive six Dreambreakers in eight playoff matches. This is not to diminish what Klinger or Todd were able to do playing with Daescu, as both of them balled out and demonstrated how much they have improved over the past year. Daescu was just so incredible across all 3 disciplines and the one person matching his high level of intensity might have been his coach, Alex Pop-Moldovan, who brought the most intense stare-downs and finger points to the sidelines. 

Select pairings record entering playoffs as compared to record vs Andrei Daescu and Columbus in the playoffs:

Jorja/JW: 27-2 ➡️ 1-2
Gabe/H: 27-2 ➡️ 0-2
ALW/Will: 25-3 ➡️ 0-3

Total: 79-7 ➡️ 1-7@AndreiDaescuPkl @CbusSliders

— Matty Pickles (@matty_pickles) August 25, 2025

Matty Pickles highlighted on Twitter that Daescu was a combined 7-1 against three teams that had not lost three games or fewer throughout the entire regular season.

Andrei Daescu was a world-beater, but the rest of the Sliders were not dominant by any stretch – hence, six of eight matches going to Dreambreakers. Their women had two big wins against the Flash and the Shock when they really needed them, but they were 2-6 overall in the playoffs against stiff competition. Klinger/Jansen were 2-5 during the playoffs, but those two wins were also very timely, as their first one allowed them to go to a Dreambreaker with the Shock, and their second gave Daescu/Todd some freedom to know they didn’t have to win in their final match against the 5’s.

The non-Daescu teams were 4-11, but the Sliders were the only Dreambreaker team out there without any weak link. Andrei Daescu is apparently a singles specialist now, CJ Klinger is very tough to pass and has zero fear of the bigger moments, and both Sliders women are at the top of their field in singles.On top of all the adversity, the Sliders opponents got to react to their lineups because they were the lower seed. 

It somehow combined for the perfect storm in New York, and we are all fortunate to have been able to follow along with the journey.

2. Did they Want it Too Much? – Anna Bright and Anna Leigh Waters are two of the best players and competitors that we have in pro pickleball. They do not give an inch to anyone on the court and have teamed up together on the PPA Tour to create what currently feels like an unstoppable machine in women’s doubles. However, they were both unable to lead their respective teams to a title over the weekend and it is hard to believe that it happened in the way that it did. 

Anna Bright and Kate Fahey came out cold in the first game to 11 against Todd and Jansen, who blew them off the court in game 1. The Shock lost game 1 in regulation, 3-0. St. Louis came back stronger in game 2 and Anna Bright won both of her matches, but it wasn’t enough as they lost in a Dreambreaker to lose the series. 

While Anna Leigh Waters and Meghan Dizon were unstoppable as an MLP duo over the past few months, Anna Leigh Waters and Will Howells were unable to get anything going against the Sliders in their final series. They went 0-3 against Todd/Daescu, which may have been more shocking than the Johnson’s losing their first two to the Sliders considering we are so used to Anna Leigh Waters just winning. 

A question we brought up in our playoff preview and one that we feel could apply to both the Shock and the 5’s is whether their teams simply wanted it too badly? 

There’s nothing to measure this. We don’t know what the players were feeling. What we do know is that neither team as a whole played to the level they are capable of playing. These are two organizations that have poured their heart and souls into MLP, and two players who want nothing more than to win one of these MLP championships.

Anna Bright won three of the event championships (one with the Ranchers in 2022 and two with the Squeeze in 2023, but these full seasons of MLP are different. They mean more. Anna Leigh Waters has never won anything at MLP and it is the only thing missing from her decorated resume. 

Anna Leigh Waters running to the referee about a potential hindrance call at 12-15 of the 2^nd Dreambreaker against the Sliders shows you how badly she wanted that title. You don’t react that way to a so-called hindrance if that MLP title doesn’t mean something to you. 

Maybe this isn’t a factor at all because who the heck knows. It is a theory that this could have factored into the losses for the Shock and the 5’s. That doesn’t mean that Anna Bright or Anna Leigh Waters are any less clutch that we know them to be. It simply means that this desire of them, their teammates and their organization to win could have taken away some of that free and easy mentality that their Slider counterparts benefitted from. 

It’s an amazing thing to want to win as much as Bright and ALW do. That’s what we see from the greatest competitors in any sport. Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t always translate to a title. 

3. Dizon Stepping Up – One of our big questions heading into the year was whether the Meghan Dizon situation would work out in New Jersey. Our two primary concerns about Dizon’s fit with the 5’s were Dreambreaker prowess and handling the pressure of playing with Anna Leigh. Given the construction of the 5’s, she was a better fit to allow Waters to play the left, and put Zane back to the guy’s usual spot on the left in mixed.

In hindsight, the aspect of the discussion that we overlooked was how the new regular season format with 25 matches changes things from a chemistry-building perspective. Prior to 2024, teams only had three events to quickly figure out their chemistry and get comfortable with one another. With 25 regular season matches, players can get much more comfortable with their teammates on and off the court (or less comfortable if the chemistry is bad).

We tend to think our concerns about Dizon’s comfort playing with Anna Leigh were an issue early in the season, and that reflected in their suboptimal first-half results. Frankly, we tend to think the 5’s decision-makers felt this way too, or else they would not have traded for Mari Humberg and played her in the most important match of the midseason tournament.

It seems like after that Humberg loss with Anna Leigh in Grand Rapids, a switch was flipped with Dizon. The pair went on to win 23 straight games to close the season, and Dizon looked like everything the 5’s hoped she would be with ALW. The hardest part about playing with Anna Leigh Waters is the pressure. Everything else, in theory, should be easier playing with the best player in the world. Once Dizon got comfortable, it was over for the rest of the women’s teams in MLP.

We have noticed in past years that the MLP bump is a real thing. Players who show out well in MLP carry that confidence through into tour events to bigger results. We’ll be curious if this happens for Dizon, who has been getting back to some more winning ways and has finally settled into a role on the right side.

Big credit to Meghan Dizon for figuring things out, along with improving her singles game that propelled the 5’s to a Game 1 victory over the Sliders. The 5’s made some big decisions to try to bring a championship to their squad, and it is very evident that the Dizon one ended up being a correct decision for New Jersey.

As a side note, we remain fine with the decision to trade for Noe Khlif and bench Zane Navratil. The upside play almost paid off for the 5’s, who were one Dreambreaker or mixed ALW win from hoisting the trophy and no one being able to question the decision. Navratil/Howells beat Daescu/Klinger once this year, but they weren’t beating them the way they were playing in the playoffs. Khlif/Howells also won twice against Ben/Hunter in the semis. The one thing that Navratil always brings is zero fear in the biggest moments, and it should be acknowledged that factor is impossible to truly measure.

4. Not Wanting It Enough – Ben Johns is the anti-Anna Leigh/Anna Bright. It’s getting tiring pointing out the great one’s most fatal flaw, but it was on display with another disappointing effort from Ben Johns in the team environment.

It’s easy to forget how impressive the 5’s win over the Mad Drops was in NYC, but they went 3-0 in consecutive matches to get to the final. Things might have gone differently for the Mad Drops had Ben Johns and Hunter Johnson been able to pull out either of their men’s matches, which were both 12-10 losses.

Those losses led to Ben moving into classic Ben mode. It wasn’t full mopey Ben, but he did not bring his best play nor effort in either mixed match against Anna Leigh Waters and Will Howells. The scorelines reflected it.

We got a great chirp from New Jersey’s owner/GM, Ryan Harwood, near the beginning of their first mixed game. Harwood could be heard on the broadcast yelling, “he’s rolling his eyes,” and it encapsulates the problem of Ben Johns as an MLP player in 2025. He’s the worst type of partner that you could find yourself with at an open play session at the park – no paddle taps, rolls his eyes at your misses, and diminishing effort based on your level of play. 

It was sad to see this on the wrong side of 40 Aaron Rodgers eye rolling version of Ben rear its ugly head at the first moment it might arise with his new team. We started seeing this MLP version of Ben in Season 2 of the 2023 season with the Chicago Slice when he played with Erik Lange. It was somewhat excused with his sorry Carolina Hogs situation, but to see it come back in the playoffs with the Mad Drops leads to major questions about building a team around Ben Johns going forward.

Ben handles adversity in a way that you might expect your 5-year-old to and he seems to care about MLP as much as Matt Wright and Lucy Kovalova when anything doesn’t go how he wants it to. He was already bothered with the court situation before he stepped onto it in NYC. That is not good for a team environment that sees inevitable ups and downs over the course of the season, and the need for a leader to bring players together.

We have to expect that the Mad Drops will pay the money to keep Ben Johns for another season. He’s still an amazing player in a league where talent is hard to come by, but it would be fascinating to see where Ben landed if there were a complete re-draft for MLP given his flawed leadership qualities.

5. Close Calls and Court Bounces – A couple of underrated factors that were ignored on the broadcast throughout the final weekend were the quality of the replays and the court in Central Park. We’re very happy that the challenge overturn at 10-10 in Game 2 of the finals was not the biggest talking point coming out of the weekend. It usually is not fun when non-court performance overshadows what happens on the court.

At the same time, we shouldn’t ignore what a poor choice it was not to have better cameras in place to ensure a smooth replay system at the season’s most important event. Our understanding is that it costs about $20,000 per event to have the high-quality cameras in place, and it was a definite misstep not to spring for something that would avoid almost inevitable controversy. Budget decisions have to be made, and $20K is nothing to scoff at, but having it in place for one weekend would have obviously been best to avoid any of these discussions.

The other thing that was neglected on the broadcast was the quality of the court in New York. A ridiculously cool venue brings some complications, including the need for a rollout court on an ice rink that is used for pickleball courts in the summer months.

Personally, it is our view that it was a disservice to viewers that the broadcast did not acknowledge the differing play conditions that a rollout courts create and the especially bad bounces the rollout court in New York was giving players. It looked like this rollout court was particularly poor, with consistently lower bounces, even for a rollout court, as well as bad bounces leading to missed returns and missed dinks.

Off-Bounce Speedups during the regular season averaged +6.7% Net Margin (Won% – Lost%).

Semis & Finals this weekend, it was just +1.7% Net Margin 😬

Meanwhile Aerial Speedups were even MORE effective than usual, potentially thanks to better Aerial Opportunities due to the court https://t.co/5rvYZngsuP

— Real Clear Stats (@statsrealclear) August 25, 2025

Real Clear Stats posted a statistic showing a discrepancy between the average success of speed-ups off the bounce versus those speed-ups on the weekend. There are other factors that may play into those numbers, but it is glaring to see the disparity as it was presented.

One final thought is that we don’t intend this to mean that tournaments should never be played on rollout courts. We expect these types of courts will improve with time, and the bad bounces are part of the growing pains of the sport. As long as the bounces are consistent and safety isn’t an issue, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for there to be different surfaces that pros have to adjust to and favor one style over another.

The more important part of this discussion for right now, from our perspective, is that the broadcast should not pretend that these realities don’t exist.*

*We have had some people point out that the broadcast did point out the low bounces at times. Our issue was really that some errors were not being acknowledged as due to the court and were chalked up as unforced errors.

Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com! You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @nmlpickleball