The Minnesota Lynx return to the WNBA Finals. Can they live up to their legacy?
MINNEAPOLIS – When Lindsay Whalen’s face appeared on the JumboTron at Target Center to a raucous reception Tuesday night, the Minnesota Lynx PA announcer took some liberties with her introduction. “She’s an avid golfer,” he joked about perhaps Minnesota’s most famous homegrown basketball player… before stating the obvious. “And her No. 13 jersey has disappeared into the rafters.”
From a courtside seat, Whalen watched as the Lynx punched their ticket to the WNBA Finals with an 88-77 semifinal victory over the Connecticut Sun, marking the franchise’s first trip to the Finals since 2017, when Whalen helped lead Minnesota to its fourth championship. seven seasons.
After that 2017 run, the band stayed together for one more season, but by 2019 Whalen, Maya Moore and Rebekkah Brunson had retired. That same year, Cheryl Reeve used her No. 6 WNBA Draft pick to draft Napheesa Collier out of UConn. Collier’s numbers at the time reminded Reeve of Moore and fellow UConn alum Breanna Stewart, who had just won her first WNBA MVP title in 2018.
Six years later, Collier is the face of basketball in Minnesota. So it was no surprise that Collier almost sprinted straight across the court at the final buzzer to hug Whalen, who is enshrined in Lynx lore for what she did for this franchise in the 2010s.
Lindsay Whalen is in the house tonight for Game 5!! @Lindsay_13 #lynxrecognize #wnba pic.twitter.com/GiTJUTtJvk
— Wendell Epps (@epps_wendell) October 9, 2024
Collier said it’s meaningful to have “someone who is such a Hall of Famer and has been through this and done what I want to accomplish.” … I wanted to give her a hug just to say thank you for showing up for us, for showing up for me and the team. Thank you for passing this legacy on to us, because it means a lot, and (I) definitely want to make her proud and continue. The job is not done.”
The next part of the job? A monumental task. In New York, the Lynx face a team built to win titles. The Liberty brought in several former MVPs (Stewart and Jonquel Jones) and they added Courtney Vandersloot, who could play well with Sabrina Ionescu, their own drafted guard. New York got German star Leonie Fiebich (drafted in 2020 but acquired by New York in 2023) to the United States to play in the WNBA.
New York is a team dripping with All-Stars, accolades and expectations.
To be honest, it doesn’t look all that different from Reeve’s last team to make the finals. She had five starters on her 2017 roster, who are now in various (and multiple) Halls of Fame. She had four players win gold medals with the U.S. Olympic team. She had a core core whose jerseys all hung in the rafters next to Whalen’s No. 13.
This year’s Minnesota team? In the preseason it was decided to finish ninth. There’s Collier, a bona fide star and two-time Olympic gold medalist. Her jersey isn’t in the rafters yet, but with her current trajectory it seems like only a matter of time. But she may be the only one whose jersey ultimately hangs next to those of the other greats.
“Becky Hammon in Vegas described us as good players (who make a great team),” Reeve said. “That’s what’s so special about this team: we didn’t scare anyone. I’m not sure anyone at any point in the season said, ‘Yes, they have a real chance to win a championship,’ other than the people who are in our corner.”
No coach has won more postseason games than Reeve (47 – the same number the Phoenix Mercury and Los Angeles Sparks have as entire franchises). She knows that to win in the postseason you need to have talent and a senior guard who you trust and who will elevate every player around her. You need a player like Collier, whose stability permeates the entire team. (It also helps if that leader plays at an MVP level.)
Above all, Reeve knows that teams that reach the finals must be selfless.
After the Lynx win, Courtney Williams recalled a moment after a regular season game against the Dallas Wings. Reeve had pulled Williams aside in the locker room to tell her that among the challenging elements of the game, she thought Williams was crooked.
“From that point on, I invited hard,” Williams said. “Obviously those conversations don’t have to happen with Phee – not that I know of – or any of the other players. I just didn’t want to be the person who let the coaching staff or my teammates down by just giving in hard. We embody that. None of us are giving in hard.”
With a WNBA Finals game against the Liberty and five brutal games against Connecticut, it doesn’t get much tougher. Minnesota might have gone 3-1 against New York during the regular season, but like the Lynx, the Liberty took their game to the next level in the postseason.
“The fact that we have worked so hard and that we really like each other so much makes it even more fun. It makes you want to win for them too. You don’t just want to get the honor of winning a championship; you want to do it for your teammates too,” Collier said. “We want to keep playing because we want to stay together. We know that every year looks different. This team will never be exactly the same again. Not only do we want to win a championship, but we don’t want to leave each other yet. And that is a great feeling.”
Reeve said: “We are happy to be going to the final. But we won’t just be happy to be there.”
(Photo of Courtney Williams and Napheesa Collier: David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)
