It’s Time to Take the Minnesota Lynx Seriously

The team's Commissioner’s Cup win has put the WNBA on notice, with Cheryl Reeve’s squad exceeding early-season expectations.

Collier won the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup Championship MVP award, helping lift the Minnesota Lynx to the title. / Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

ELMONT, N.Y. — The lines are well-worn. No one expected us to be here. They never gave us credit. Everyone was against us. Almost every championship press conference includes invented grievances. But hand it to the Minnesota Lynx: When they arrived at the dais after defeating the New York Liberty for the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup on Tuesday, champagne in tow, none of that grievance seemed particularly manufactured. They had a point.

Coming off two consecutive losing seasons, Minnesota entered this year with minimal national attention, generally expected to improve but not to contend. (ESPN’s power rankings became a talking point for the group: A preseason edition had them ranked ninth out of 12.) While much of the roster turned over this winter, that was done with no flashy signings, and no lottery draft pick. It’s hard to argue when the Lynx say that no one expected them here. But it’s just as hard to argue the contrary with how good they look right now.

“We don’t really care what you think,” said Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve. “Except for right now, where we get to say, You’ve got to talk about us.”

The WNBA’s in-season tournament is now in its fourth year, which is still young enough to be defining itself, feeling out an answer to the question of what it should mean. Reeve pointed out before the game that every team to win the Commissioner’s Cup has gone on to appear in the WNBA Finals: If that doesn’t feel like a guarantee, exactly, it does feel like an opportunity for a litmus test. For players, the most obvious incentive is the money, a collective bonus payout of $500,000. That comes out to a bit more than $40,000 each—a real boon in a league where that represents more than a third of the average salary. “It’s definitely not just another game,” Minnesota point guard Courtney Williams said when asked if the Commissioner’s Cup felt significant. “We’re trying to get that money.” But the tournament can also be a spotlight. If you’d previously been overlooking the Lynx? Here’s a prime chance to start paying attention.

“It’s a testament to where we’re at this season,” said Minnesota forward Napheesa Collier, the anchor of this roster, who was named Commissioner’s Cup MVP. “This is the best group.”

Collier scored 21 points in the Lynx's Commissioner's Cup win. / Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

They looked the part in their 94-89 win over the Liberty. The game was a display of their greatest strengths—a scrambling, intense defense, and an offense predicated on ball movement and three-point shooting. Minnesota finished 14-of-29 from beyond the arc, led by a career night from small forward Bridget Carleton, who shot six-of-eight from three. The Lynx cut off the Liberty’s ability to feed 6’6” center and former MVP Jonquel Jones in the paint, and she finished without a single field goal, her weakest performance of the year. The game remained close down to the end; New York, which won the 2023 Commissioner’s Cup, is simply too good to shut down entirely. But the Lynx knew how to answer every run.

“We knew what we had to correct,” Reeve said. “This is my favorite part about this team: They correct things in the timeouts before I get there.”

Much of this group is new. Only five players remain from last year: After a few seasons of stalled progress, Minnesota spent the winter engineering a modest roster makeover, centered on building around Collier. The approach was piecemeal. The front office targeted under-the-radar free agents, made trades and brought in a few players from Europe. (There were no suggestions of a superteam here.) Yet it worked. A porous defense last year has become one of the strongest in the game this year. (No one limits opponents to fewer points per possession than the Lynx.) And the offense has found its rhythm, displaying some of the best spacing and ball movement in the league, recording more assists than any other team.

“It felt like our defense was kind of ahead of our offense at first,” says Kayla McBride, who has been the biggest piece of Minnesota’s top-ranked distance shooting. “Now we’ve kind of found our stride … Everybody’s being themselves. We’re playing off of that, and that’s where you kind of see everything falling into place.”

Reeve coached Minnesota to four championships between 2011 and ’17. That dynasty run can feel very distant now: “I try to tell stories, and they’re going, Coach, we weren’t here for that,” she said. The Lynx haven’t played for a title since that last championship in ’17. But she believes their Commissioner’s Cup performance is a sign they can do it in ’24. If nothing else—they’ve done enough to put themselves in the conversation.

“You’ve got to talk about us now,” Reeve said. “You’ve got no choice.”