2026 MLP Playoffs Round 1 – 4 Takeaways – Zane Goes In-Zane

The first round of the MLP playoffs is over after an exciting, albeit chalky, weekend in Dallas. MLP listened to its constituents by extending the very condensed playoff schedule of 2025. The downside of the spread-out schedule is that when none of the four playoff series go to 3 games, it means the weekend is somewhat lacking in total game time.

It was the right move by MLP as the matches were mostly very competitive, with the 3 Dreambreakers all going the way of the favorites. A few points going the other direction could have had any of the four series going the distance, but it wasn’t in the cards for the first round of the playoffs. 

The benefit of pure chalk is that we get what should be the best matchups for the quarterfinals in week 2 of the playoffs. There was a lot of entertaining pickleball in round 1, but these next 2 weeks is what we have all been waiting for. 

1. Zane Goes In-Zane – If you’re reading this column, you have probably seen it by now. Zane Navratil screaming not once, but twice, very loudly right after body bagging Casey Diamond of the Palm Beach Royals. It’s one of, if not the most, in your face example of screaming directed at an opponent we have seen in pro pickleball. 

The moment was very weird. It seemingly came out of nowhere and it was so intentionally directed at Diamond that it was hard to understand. Zane is known for being a bear-poking, shit disturber, but this was an entirely different side of him. The moment led to discussion between Zane and members of the Palm Beach Royals after the match, and we saw Dekel Bar publicly condemned Zane’s behavior on social media as “embarrassing and unhinged”. There apparently was cussing after the body bag scream somewhere along the way too.

Oddly, in Zane’s post-event recap video, there was nothing he offered in the way of an explanation that led him to do that other than being too fired up. He apologized for behavior he said “crossed the line” and concluded by saying “it was not my best moment”.

There are really two aspects of this story from our perspective – the pro side and the fan side. 

From the pro side perspective, we get that Dekel and other members of the roster of the Palm Beach Royals would take offense to the screaming. It was objectively unhinged. 

At the same time, it is hard for us to understand why pros take so much offence to other pros doing things that are more unhinged from a celebration and taunting standpoint. Who cares if an opponent is conducting themselves like a clown? It also isn’t their job to police whether their opponent is being an adequate role model for their teammates or the fans. Everyone is a pro out here so why do we bother getting so worked up about it? 

Unsportsmanlike behavior is such a subjective thing that you’re never going to find 100% consensus on the subject and you can see in the comments that other pros not involved were not offended by Zane’s antics. If Zane thinks that screaming like that at Casey Diamond is going to help his team win or he is simply fired up, he is fully within his right to do that, subject to anything the refs might have to say about it. Of course, the opponents are fully within their right to take offense to it. 

Where the policing of this should come into play is from the fan side of things.  The court of public opinion will hold you in contempt if they don’t like the way you behave, which is likely why Zane apologized. There will be impact on your brand as a player, whether you can get sponsors to support you and if the fans are with you or against you when you’re playing on the court. We expressed similar sentiments when discussing the Kate Fahey screaming controversy last year. 

We continue to believe the league should not police this type of behavior (within reason). There is too much made of pro athletes being role models for kids and if they model the behavior seen on the court because there isn’t a “right” way to act. It is up to the fans to decide whether they are on board with the behavior of the pros and pros have to accept that this is the world that they live in. 

Zane Navratil and Kate Fahey should be allowed to scream all they want, but they also shouldn’t get upset when fans aren’t on board with their conduct. It is part of the job description to be judged and for people to give their opinions on how pros conduct themselves (again, within reason). That’s part of what sports fandom is and that’s part of what being a professional athlete is. Whether you think it is fair that fans gravitate towards a certain player and are put off by another player exhibiting similar behaviors is part of the whole deal. Sometimes people like you and sometimes they don’t. 

Zane put himself out there with some wild conduct by screaming at Casey Diamond. It’s not behavior we would condone, but it made for great theatre. We have seen l differing opinions on whether Zane’s behavior was “acceptable” and that is a good thing from our standpoint. It’s also why the refs should not be in the business of giving out too many blue cards. 

Let the players do their thing and let the fans have their say. That’s what it is all about. 

p.s. We shouldn’t forget the poor handling of the Grayson Goldin situation, to say the least, by the Palm Beach Royals earlier this year. 

2. Dreambreaker Edge – In our now 6^th year of some iteration of MLP, there has been an evolution in how Dreambreakers are viewed. In the early days of MLP, the emotions connected to Dreambreakers led to major emphasis being placed on Dreambreaker team building. As teams realized that you could not forego superior doubles talent at the expense of singles ability, there was a quiet shift to Dreambreakers eventually becoming undervalued from a team construction standpoint. 

Now that Dreambreakers have more or less been optimized from a lineup standpoint (M1, M2, W1, W2) and we have added the ability to have singles specialists on the bench, it appears that most teams have a similar view on the importance of Dreambreakers. It cannot be ignored, but it can’t be prioritized before anything else.

There are still edges to be had from a Dreambreaker standpoint, and the biggest one available to teams right now is having two elite women. With the inclusion of singles bench specialists, it is harder for teams to get away with having one average or even below average female in their Dreambreaker lineup as the gap between the best women and an average women’s singles player is quite a lot wider than it is with the men.

Anna Bright wrote earlier in the year about how the importance of women has been diminished in Dreambreakers because teams now understand the best way to optimize a lineup is to have the women in the #3 and #4 spots, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.

The Texas Ranchers are the only team in the playoffs with two elite female starters who play singles. The Shock and 5’s both have one elite female and one very capable starting female (Anna and Jorja) while the Sliders and Mad Drops each have an elite female and a female singles specialist (Judit Castillo and Sam Parker). 

The Ranchers undoubtedly have the best two female singles players and it is a separator for them as a flawed overall roster that has high-end male talent but only above-average female talent. It makes them a scary opponent as they demonstrated against Atlanta, who suffered from a roster that featured a decent enough singles specialist and an average at best singles female.

It was very interesting to see the Shock choose the Ranchers after the 5’s took the obvious choice in the Palm Beach Royals. We probably agree that the right decision was to play the team with the weakest doubles group top to bottom (assuming 100% health), but the Ranchers are constructed as kind of a Sliders-lite version in 2026 from a Dreambreaker perspective. They have two men that don’t play a ton of singles on tour but are more than capable of holding their own, and they have two top-end women anchoring their team. Finding two wins in a match is all they need to suddenly be favored to win. 

With Hunter Johnson coming off the bench, the Shock are well equipped in a Dreambreaker but you have to put it close to a toss-up with the Ranchers, should they get to that point. 

Funnily enough, the Ranchers may have inadvertently stumbled into this Dreambreaker edge situation after Layne Sleeth went down with an injury as they traded for Christian as Sleeth insurance. It is now the best recipe for them to be able to upset a big dog team like the Shock. 

Other than Palm Beach, the rest of the playoff teams should all have a good shot to win any given Dreambreaker. However, in a playoff world where the margins are super thin, the Ranchers have a slight edge as the only team left to have two truly elite female singles players.  

3. More Competitive Balance? – It was a good weekend for the no changes necessary to the MLP structure crowd. Looking at you, Ross. Almost all of the matches were competitive and there was good drama for the first round of the playoffs. However, the quarter-finals will be a better test of the parity question in MLP. With only 8 teams left, it will be interesting to see whether these lower seeded teams can be legitimately competitive with the top seeds.

If the bottom seeds can show a good compete level and give these top teams a series, it makes for a better argument that there is more parity than the narrative we have been putting it out as it is really only the bottom 30-40% of the league that is the issue. Considering the 9 through 12 seeds were generally competitive with the 5 through 8 seeds, we can extrapolate that competitiveness from the 5 through 8 seeds against the 1 through 4 seeds would be a good sign for overall league competitiveness of the playoff teams.

Notably, as per Real Clear Stats, the top teams have only played a TOTAL of 6 Dreambreakers since MLP New York (including the meaningless end of season DB for LA) compared to 29 total for the 5 through 8 seeds This directly speaks to the overall lack of parity we have seen between the top 4 teams and the rest of the league, so it will be compelling to see what we get in terms of Dreambreaker matchups in the quarterfinals.

The best teams don’t need Dreambreaker help in the regular season, but it is unlikely they get through the playoffs without having to clutch up somewhere along the way.

4. No Big Deal – Why isn’t MLP making a bigger deal out of the playoff matchup selection process? There are two aspects of MLP that are so uniquely MLP in the context of team professional sports – the annual draft and the ability of higher seeded teams to pick their matchups. Somehow, MLP continues to fumble the bag in terms of promoting two of the coolest off-court features of their sport. 

The social media post from the official MLP account on Monday announced the matches but made no mention of the process or that the higher seeded teams picked their opponents. There has to be more opportunity for the creative social media groups of these teams and the league to find a way to make something of these announcements. Instead, we just get a garden variety social media post of the matchups as if they were predetermined based on seeds. 

We expressed basically the same sentiment at draft time earlier this year about what a missed opportunity it was for the league not to make an event of its draft. Although the playoff matchup selection would not be an event in the same way as the draft, there has to be some fun things that they could do with the process. 

Instead, we are left to speculate on all the interesting storylines of team selection. Outside of Palm Beach, there was a reason for the Shock to pick any of the other remaining teams. The Ranchers are a scary Dreambreaker team but flawed doubles group. Dallas has JW playing his best ball, but a shakier Dreambreaker group. Brooklyn has the bizarre injury situation with Rachel Rohrbacher. 

But no, we get a simple social media announcement with nothing else behind it. 

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