MLP St. Louis 2025 – 5 Takeaways – Columbus and Brooklyn in the Mix

It wasn’t the best event in pro pickleball as it was promised to be by St. Louis Shock owner, Ross Chaifetz, but the effort should be commended. St. Louis was the first time that pro pickleball has been held in a legitimate stadium, Chaifetz Arena, and it appears as though the Shock organization did everything they could to make the event a success. 

They were running up against a number of hurdles – first pickleball event in St. Louis, no simultaneous amateur tournament, following the very successful Beer City Open, trying to fill stadium seating. It is hard to bring people out to a pro pickleball event on its own, especially on a Thursday or Friday morning, and the downside of larger capacity venues is that it can look empty even if there are more people than what is typical for pro pickleball. Seeing all the effort the St. Louis Shock franchise put into the event and the solid, but not spectacular, results makes the Beer City Open that much more impressive. Keeping in mind, the Beer City Open has years of foundation that it has been building upon, and it wasn’t a one-shot event out of nowhere. 

You can’t expect the events to all be a massive success at this stage in the game. The effort and somewhat successful outcome are a win for the sport as these very invested teams continue to do their best to make this unique product work. 

1. Columbus and Brooklyn in the Mix – This was the first weekend where there has been a clear sign that the top teams are not immune to being upset come playoff time. Although Columbus gave Dallas a run for their money in Grand Rapids and Brooklyn put up a fight against the 5’s in the backdraw, it was hard to conclude that either of these teams could be ready to make noise without seeing an actual winning result. Things changed in St. Louis. 

On the heels of a second consecutive win against the Dallas women, the Columbus Sliders men were unable to take down the underdog Dallas men as they continue to struggle. Parris/Andrei were able to win their mixed match and Columbus won the Dreambreaker. On top of the win, the previous day the Sliders put up a really good fight against the Shock. Parris/Andrei were unable to win their mixed to get the match to a Dreambreaker, but the Sliders women steamrolled the Shock women. 

Interestingly, Brooklyn was able to beat the Sliders later in the weekend in regulation as they won both gender matches and their first mixed with Riley/Jackie against CJ/Lea. Brooklyn also took the women’s game off the Dallas Flash. Remember, they are doing this without Dekel Bar. If Dekel is healthy for the playoffs and has some runway to get his timing back, Brooklyn has the capacity to be as scary as the Sliders to those top opponents. 

One thing we should note is that these teams have been playing a ton of pickleball over the past few weeks. It is impressive to see Columbus and Brooklyn bring some of their best stuff at the tail end of a very long stretch of play, but it could be fatiguing all around for their opponents to also be having to deal with this condensed schedule. As we head towards the home stretch of the season, it is difficult to say how much of a win or loss might be due to mental and/or physical tiredness of a given team. 

Everyone is dealing with this so it’s not an excuse. It is a reality of professional sports, but it is a new reality for team based pickleball. You just don’t know how much Brooklyn getting Saturday off before playing Sunday helped them with their win just as we won’t know how Columbus playing so many big matches on the weekend factored into their result against Brooklyn on Sunday. 

What seems to be clear is that the women of Brooklyn and Columbus playing so well against the women of the Shock and the Flash has provided a road map to a playoff upset. It will still be an upset if it happens, but it won’t be as surprising as it may have sounded a couple of short weeks ago. 

2. Is the Condensed Schedule Working? We can only speak to this from a fan’s perspective, and the answer is a hard maybe. On the one hand, this is more of what professional sports should look like. A consistent flow of games without interruptions so that fans can follow the storylines of the season, leading to the ultimate battle in the playoffs to crown a champion. 

But man, it is a lot of freaking pickleball. When it is 4 consecutive days of pickleball, it is sometimes difficult to figure out what to follow. Pickleball is quite unique in that we are often asking fans to spend a whole day watching the product.  

Outside of the NFL, other team sports are mostly asking their fans to watch their team’s games and then some of the nationally broadcast games that fall on certain evenings. This problem resolves itself many years down the road if team based pro pickleball ever gets big enough where you start having home and away games, and there are fans that focus primarily on their home city team. 

Despite the shortcomings of a condensed regular season, this appears to be the most logical path to forward to create a viable and sustainable product. It might not be working perfectly, but it may be giving MLP the best chance of success. 

3. Frisky Chicago Deep Dish –After a fortunate Dreambreaker win over the Bouncers, which included a women’s loss, the Slice proceeded to push Brooklyn to a tough regulation loss, which included a win from their women. The Slice women also had a big comeback win against the Sliders before going down 3-1 in regulation. 

The Slice switched up their mixed pairings on Saturday, which is something we suggested in our EOD Musings. It didn’t lead to any success in a rematch against Brooklyn, but they proceeded to take the Shock to a Dreambreaker, with Glozman winning both her games, and closed out the weekend with a loss to the Dallas Flash in a Dreambreaker, with Ignatowich winning both his games. 

Chicago may have benefitted from some opponents looking past them or having some hangover from bigger matches, but it still felt like much better than a 4-point weekend given the quality of opponents. Showing that they could stay in the same stratosphere as the big dogs could make them a tough play-in out for whoever the 7 seed ends up being. No matter what happens, the Vivian Glozman trade was a win for the Chicago Slice and the upside of the trade showed up in St. Louis. 

There is a path to the 10 seed for Chicago as they sit in 12^th place with a paltry 0.85 points per match behind only the Carolina Hogs at 0.89 and Miami Pickleball Club at 0.95. More good fortune for the Slice was Carolina trading away 5 of their 6 players and Miami trading away two legitimate Premier starters. 

Unfortunately, their remaining schedule is Texas, Miami, Utah, New Jersey and Orlando – they do not see any of the bottom 5 teams in the league. In addition, the Black Diamonds and Squeeze should be significantly better with Etta Tuionetoa and Milan Rane in for Genie Erokhina and Samantha Parker respectively. 

It’s going to be a tough road in the final regular season event in Salt Lake City for the Slice, but they have to be the least desirable opponents of the remaining teams in contention for the final play-in spot. 

4. Flash Mob Mentality – Something we are monitoring is how the Dallas Flash are handling this chase for back-to-back titles. The Flash have been a wagon since game 2 of the 2024 quarterfinals, and have rode that frontrunners mentality to a title as well as an unbeaten season prior to St. Louis. 

As we noted above, a lot of pickleball has been played and that may be wearing on players, so we are curious to see how the Flash show out this week in their hometown event. The loss on Saturday to Columbus may have been a relief not to have to keep carrying the weight of the potential for an unbeaten season, but the rest of the event was not exactly what you wanted to see from a team that just had their unbeaten streak get snapped. 

They got run off the court by the Shock in the Saturday Night Pickleball matchup of the weekend, beat Atlanta (3-1) in regulation and then had to go to a Dreambreaker against the aforementioned Slice. There is no reason to sound the alarm bells yet as there is not a lot of time for this Dallas team to regroup before their Dallas event the starts in a couple of days. 

The question remains as to whether this is a team that will rise together after taking a small step back or will this event be seen as the beginning of a bigger regression for a team that has been performing at an unsustainably high level?

The St. Louis Shock rode the momentum wave of the home crowd to the number 1 spot in the standings. It was a big weekend for them to overtake that #1 spot as it could allow them to dictate their matches going into the playoffs, especially if the Mad Drops end up being as good as they look on paper. Dallas could use a similarly big weekend at their home event. 

5. BJ Trade Follow-Up: One narrative going around in defence of the Ben trade is that it simply wasn’t that bad of a trade. Jimmy Miller posted on X that they are essentially recouping over $800,000 by getting $400,000 for Ben and Etta, and then saving the money it would cost to retain Ben for another season and Matt Klitch essentially seconded this take. As a last place team with no playoff prospects, they can’t trade for draft picks so there undoubtedly is some logic to simply getting cash. 

However, leaving aside any concerns of “orchestrated collusion”, in our view, the trade is only defensible if we are certain this is the best deal the Hogs could have gotten for Ben and Etta. Did the Hogs try to shop Ben around? If this is the best they could get, why not wait until the offseason to see if you they could do better? These are the same questions that were asked when Luka Doncic was traded for Anthony Davis. The Doncic trade was egregious because Doncic had far more value than what the Mavericks got for him, and they did not shop him around. 

We understand that cash is the only currency beyond players for the sake of MLP. However, there is no reason to believe that the Hogs will ever use that money to invest in being competitive in the future, if they even have a future.

While we believe that ignoring the rule shifting and conflict of interest laden nature of the circumstances is a disservice to the overall analysis of the transaction, we also believe that the trade is not defensible without maximizing the value you can get out of one of the best players in the world. 

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