MLP Playoffs Quarterfinals – 5 Takeaways – Flash Mogging

This past weekend was just about everything we could have hoped for from the MLP quarterfinals. The matchups ran the entire gambit from sweeps to nail biting series tension. We had Anna Leigh Waters mocking Dekel Bar’s “bang” celebration, Lea Jansen getting into it with the St. Louis Shock, and social media managers locked and loaded with saved posts doubting their team’s chances. After a relatively sleepy regular season, the playoffs are living up to the hype as things come to a head in Central Park at the end of the month.

1. Flash Mogging – When we wrote our “Where NML Was Right and Where NML Was Wrong” column after the regular season ended, we did not provide a full mea culpa of our skepticism of the Flash’s retooling efforts. The reason for that, frankly, is that we still weren’t believers. While the potential to build around JW Johnson and Danni-Elle Townsend for future seasons was something we believed in with the expectation of an incoming franchise tag, we didn’t see this team as a true contender despite their late season success. 

Where NML Was Wrong needs a new heading and it is that we were wrong about the Dallas Flash’s championship aspirations. We were wrong that a team without two higher end women could beat one of the elite teams in a best of 3 series. The mixing and matching of their lineup to put Alix Truong with Townsend and Brooke Buckner with JW has paid major dividends as the entire team has stepped up their level. They took down the LA Mad Drops in 3 games and saved their season in a Dreambreaker, despite being underdogs on paper. 

It’s hard to know exactly when good chemistry will be created, but it is evident that the Flash have played with a freedom and togetherness that might only be brought out through the unique circumstances by which their roster was created.

Danni-Elle Townsend’s personality was built for MLP and it has been a big win for her development to be put in a situation where she could be the alpha female. The energy of Alix Truong, the stoicism of Augie Ge and the quiet fire of Brooke Buckner has brought the life back into this Dallas team on the back of a rejuvenated JW Johnson, who has been in full put this team on my back mode. 

It is a team that is operating as greater than the sum of its parts and that’s a beautiful thing in team sports. They seem to genuinely like each other and harnessing the nobody believes in us mentality to the maximum extent. 

From a team building perspective, this isn’t a full capitulation from us because we still don’t think the process was right in how Dallas went about their business. They had no plan B on Jorja Johnson, did nothing in the draft for about an hour, paid a crap ton of money for Brooke Buckner and traded for Alix Truong before making the big swing for Townsend. It’s not often that quick fuse retool efforts pay dividends in professional sports. However, if recent history has told us anything, it’s that anything can happen in the MLP playoffs.

The most ironic part of the Flash’s run is that the Columbus Sliders traded for Tyra Black as a win-now move and they are going to be sitting at home as Dallas finds itself 4 wins away from their 2^nd championship in 3 years. You have to wonder how Columbus must be feeling having paid for the services of Tyra as a rental, only to end up falling well short of their ultimate goal. 

The Dallas Flash made a massive mistake picking the Columbus Sliders in the quarterfinals last season, which seemingly put them on a path to irrelevance. Instead, the Flash are back and maybe better than ever, mogging on any opponents, doubters and talking heads that may have questioned them along the way. 

2. Death of the Singles Specialist – If you want to talk winners and losers from the weekend, the biggest loser might have been the singles specialist. In back-to-back Dreambreakers on Saturday, there were 3 singles specialists who performed well below expectations as Alex Crum, Judit Castillo and Samantha Parker wilted under the pressure as their respective teams lost crucial Dreambreakers.

One of the biggest questions coming into the season was how teams would operate with the ability to insert singles specialists into the lineup for Dreambreakers. Many teams built their benches to have essentially singles only players, who would only be called into action if a match went to a Dreambreaker. When push came to shove, though, would teams opt for the cold singles specialist in lieu of the warm and battle tested starter? 

If you had asked us before the season, we were generally pro singles specialist where the gap was relatively wide.. For example, Chris Haworth definitely needs to be in for Riley Newman but taking out Hayden Patriquin for John Lucian Goins felt more dubious. If you had asked us prior to the season if we would have put in Sam Parker for Jade Kawamoto, we would probably have said yes, we would have. The logical thing, in our view, is that you improve your odds incrementally relative to how much better your bench player is than your starter in singles. 

What that perspective obviously failed to account for is the different arena that a PPA singles event is compared to the MLP Dreambreaker gauntlet. Alex Crum performed well in the playoffs but, by his own admission, he was “extremely tight” in his first playoff Dreambreaker. Surely, the same would be said by Judit Castillo and Samantha Parker, if they cared to share their thoughts on social media as well. 

The numbers also don’t account for the players who have nerves of steel in the Dreambreaker setting. CJ Klinger and Jackie Kawamoto have shown time and time again that they are unbothered by the bright lights of the Dreambreaker spotlight. The clutchness is not a fluke. 

On the other hand, one thing that the singles specialist discussion fails to account for is that this is literally the first time we have had singles specialists show up in a playoff Dreambreaker. If we play this out for future seasons and singles specialists become more accustomed to their role, will they be less nervous the next time around?

The problem is that you don’t get many reps as a singles specialist to get used to the pressure chamber. There are only 3 weeks of the MLP playoffs in the best case scenario for a team. It’s unclear whether a singles specialist like Alex Crum, who has relatively few high pressure reps as a professional pickleball player, will get the opportunity to have enough of those reps in an MLP or even a PPA setting. 

The overall reaction to the failure of the singles specialists over the weekend partly resulted from the extreme end of the results on both sides of the spectrum. Alex Crum got decimiated, Jackie ‘not a singles specialist’ Kawamoto bested Judit Castillo and Danni Townsend pickled Sam Parker. Conversely, CJ Klinger and Tyra Black went back into the lineup and the Sliders won, including CJ, with some wind assistance, somehow outplaying the best singles player in the world. 

It would be a classic overreaction to say that the singles specialist should be dead based on a few Dreambreakers in a single playoff weekend. We saw the singles specialists have some good success in the less pressure packed regular season. Of course, like most everything in this world, the question of the singles specialist is much more nuanced and context dependent. 

Columbus almost certainly doesn’t need to be replacing Tyra for Judit when Tyra might be a better singles player anyway. It is going to have to be a significant upgrade before taking out a fearless CJ Klinger or Kawamoto twin from a Dreambreaker. Hunter Johnson is a prime example as one of the best and most battle tested singles players on tour and is someone whose singles prowess is likely worth the risk to throw out there in that #1 slot. Surely, St. Louis won’t overreact and keep Hunter on the bench for a Dreambreaker in New York this weekend.

At the end of the day, it seems like the losers in this process will be the less proven singles specialists. We likely won’t see players like Alex Crum or Samantha Parker’s taking the big stage in the playoffs barring a Rachel Rohrabacher type of injury. 

What we have learned from the weekend is not that the singles specialist is dead. Rather, it is that the fascination with the singles specialist is likely diminished and they will be utilized more selectively in the most important moments of a team’s season.

3. Parity is Not Dead – Score another one for the parity is not as bad as you think crowd. We had 2 very competitive quarterfinal matchups, 1 relatively competitive matchup and 1 terrible matchup. That’s not a bad weekend. 

The Palm Beach Royals proved as a #7 seed that they were not a pushover. They took New Jersey to the brink in game 1 and took down ALW in consecutive mix d games. Obviously, the Dallas Flash toppled Ben Johns and the LA Mad Drops, which makes the Flash season a success no matter what happens next. Brooklyn was able to sneak by Columbus in the best series of the MLP playoffs so far. 

The quality of the quarterfinals does not completely diminish the need for change to the structure of the league, which we expect will be coming in the offseason. At the same time, we can’t ignore the fact that there is more parity in the league than we gave Ross Chaifetz credit for when he began going on his crusade against changing the league rules. We did not expect that teams like the Flash and Royals would be able to compete with the league’s best. As we have said before, equality is not the goal, competitiveness is. And we got some very competitive matches over the weekend. 

4. Playoff Benny – After being ousted in the quarterfinals and losing both of his games in the series clinching match, Memes of Pickleball took a couple of shots at Ben for his lack of playoff success, poking fun at his propensity to mail it in. 

Although the jabs were funny, we don’t think they were accurate this time around. We have been very critical of Ben Johns and the lack of care that he has shown for MLP in the past, but any criticism of him from an effort standpoint is largely unwarranted. There have been occasions in the 2026 regular season where Ben looked like he was only on the court so he didn’t get fined, but that was not the case despite the sub-par results in the quarterfinals. 

Ben looked frustrated by the end of the 11-2 men’s loss in game 3 against the Flash and there may have been some initial carry over with the Dallas Flash scoring 6 points before giving up their serve to start Ben’s mixed match. But Ben and Jade battled back to tie it at 6-6 and Ben had two very good forehand looks at 6-6-1 and 6-6-2 to give the Mad Drops the lead. For whatever reason, Ben missed on both opportunities and those misses turned out to be pivotal. 

Ben’s inability to bring his team closer to a championship was not due to his lack of trying. In fact, Ben looked like he was giving everything he had to win what ended up being his final mixed game of the season. The margins are slim in MLP and Ben wasn’t able to get it done. That’s sports. It happens sometimes. 

Nonetheless, it was encouraging to see the best man in the world go out and try to be the best man in the world. He was playing at a riduclously high level in that comeback after going down 6-0 early and we would expect that game would have gone the way of Ben and the Mad Drops if he finds a way to finish one of those forehands at 6-6. 

The million dollar question out of all this will be what Ben Johns is worth going into the 2027 season. If there is a salary cap, Ben will warrant the max but he’s an incredibly delicate player to build a team around. He seems easily frustrated with teammates that don’t do what he wants on the court (see: Johnson, Hunter) and may not bring 100% effort if he’s dissatisfied with the roster or other surrounding circumstances.

Energy isn’t the big discussion it once was in MLP, but it is a talking point still when discussing Ben’s value as an MLP player. Ben is a unique circumstance, but energy can still be one of those overrated concepts. The Dallas Flash are a team that has great energy, but there was a time where people felt like JW’s energy was not built for MLP – it is a big part of the reason why he fell so far in the 2024 draft. It’s amazing how a narrative changes when you put the right people around a franchise player, and that is not something Ben has really had since this new era of MLP began in 2024z

You need a strong franchise infrastructure with the right player and personality fits to get the most out of Ben. It is walking a very fine line but the ceiling remains sky high.

Ben was the ultimate MLP player early on in MLP despite not being an energy guy. The game has changed and he can’t carry the team the way he once was able to. In our view, you have to take the shot next year even though Ben hasn’t been able to get it done in the last 3 years. 

5. No Way Noe – Was Newport the last time we see Noe Khlif on the court for the New Jersey 5’s? It was a rough go for Mr. Khlif in the quarterfinals. Much like the singles specialists, Noe appeared to be getting comfortable in his role as the beta male beside Anna Leigh Waters in mixed but they were beaten twice by Dekel Bar and Tina Pisnik (bang!).

It got so bad in the second game that the 5’s resorted to sticking Noe on the right and we saw what might have been the best losing performance from any player in an MLP or PPA setting. Anna Leigh Waters went full beast mode from the left side and almost carried the 5’s to a comeback victory. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Fortunately for New Jersey, Federico Staksrud and Jorja Johnson were able to get their mixed win in both matches to salvage the rare ALW losses. Now that teams have the book on the Noe/ALW situation, we really have to wonder if we are going to see Will Howells back in the saddle playing mixed with ALW. 

We are not fans of overreacting to small sample data points, but there isn’t much time for New Jersey to figure this out. They got their choice of matchup as the #1 seed and Brooklyn’s #1 mixed pair of Rohrabacher and Alshon is no joke. The tough part of the benching Noe consideration is that it would mean throwing Will Howells into the fire at the most important time of the year. 

We have long thought that Will Howells’s best trait for playing with ALW in 2024 and 2025 was that he always believed he was the guy. Howells came into the sport as an irrational confidence dude and it served him well being thrust into ALW mixed duty for New Jersey. The worry that we would have now is whether this 2026 season has knocked some of that irrational confidence out of him. Howells and ALW were beaten in the playoffs last year and Howells was demoted from the ALW mixed spot then to the bench following the Federico Staksrud trade. 

Howells has also played on his less preferred right side in men’s the entire year and is a men’s only player post-Staksrud trade. What does that do to a guy’s confidence? 

Maybe New Jersey stays the course and trusts the investment they have made this entire season in the Noe/ALW partnership the entire year. Maybe they double down and go with ALW on the left so she’s not iced out as easily? We wouldn’t fault them for going with any option in this situation. There is no obvious decision here as the shift away from Noe/ALW does feel like an emotional overreaction. 

If we’d have to make the call, we’d lean towards making some kind of shift, whether that’s Noe on the right or putting Howells back in for mixed. Either way, this will be one of the biggest storylines of the semifinals. 

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