MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The bitter and crushing end to last season for the Minnesota Lynx clearly hasn’t sidetracked their progress, with a 22-5 record and a four-game lead atop the WNBA standings nearly two-thirds of the way through the schedule.<\/p>\n
Finally, the opponent that delivered that distress in the decisive Game 5 of the WNBA Finals arrives. The New York Liberty visit Target Center on Wednesday night, and the Lynx have been wondering what took so long.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should\u2019ve been the first game of the season. That would\u2019ve made the most sense,\u201d Lynx star Napheesa Collier said. \u201cBut here we are. We can\u2019t control that. We\u2019re just getting ready to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the league’s new 44-game schedule this year, there’s less time to rest. This will be the Liberty’s fourth game in six days. But it’s time to gear up, because the two teams will meet four times in an 18-day span: in New York on Aug. 10 and 19, and in Minnesota again on Aug. 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think common sense would say that these two teams probably should\u2019ve played earlier in the season, but the Rubik\u2019s Cube that is our WNBA schedule I guess is not solvable,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. \u201cI\u2019m not the person who does it \u2014 there are certainly other challenges \u2014 but I think it\u2019s a big miss for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Better later than never. The first WNBA Finals that went the distance in five years was a contest for the ages that resulted in record attendance figures and TV ratings, the first championship for the Liberty, and hard feelings for the Lynx \u2014 particularly around a disputed foul call on Collier late in regulation that allowed Breanna Stewart to tie the game with two free throws and set the stage for the overtime win. Reeve bluntly said the title was stolen from her team by the officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely won\u2019t forget it. But I don\u2019t feel any resentment toward the Liberty team. It\u2019s not their fault. I feel like we really left that in the past. It\u2019s been so long at this point. It\u2019s a new season. We\u2019re a new team. They\u2019re a new team. So just trying to focus more on this year,\u201d Collier said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier, center left, and guard Courtney Williams (10) react during the second half of a WNBA basketball game against the Chicago Sky Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Minneapolis. Credit: AP\/Abbie Parr<\/p>\n
So maybe put the revenge theme on the backburner. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t really feel like retribution for last year,\u201d Collier said. \u201cIt just feels like we\u2019re about to play a really good team.\u201d<\/p>\n
It’s a team that\u2019s not quite right, though, in second place but just two games up on fifth-place Seattle. <\/p>\n
The Liberty have endured a plethora of injuries during this defense of their first WNBA championship, with center Jonquel Jones returning last week from a month-long absence to a sprained ankle. Stewart was ruled out for the second straight game, after hurting her lower leg early in a loss to Los Angeles on Saturday. Stewart is on the current four-game road trip that started in defeat at Dallas on Monday, when the team held a nearly 40-minute meeting in the locker room afterward.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart (30) blocks a shot by Indiana Fever’s Natasha Howard (6) during the second half of a WNBA basketball game Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in New York. Credit: AP\/Frank Franklin II<\/p>\n
The Liberty have also been missing Nyara Sabally, who was instrumental in the Game 5 win last year in the WNBA Finals, for the past two weeks for what the team has deemed rest. <\/p>\n
The Lynx are coming off their first regular-season home defeat this year \u2014 not counting the Commissioner’s Cup loss to Indiana \u2014 after dropping a 90-86 decision to Atlanta on Sunday that’s sure to have them roaring back under the demanding Reeve.<\/p>\n
The Liberty might not yet be a true rival, but the latest move toward reaching that status came earlier this month when Emma Meesseman, the 2019 WNBA Finals MVP who last played in the league in 2022 and has been named EuroBasket MVP twice in the past three years, agreed to come to New York once her visa from Belgium is secured. She also considered Minnesota and Phoenix.<\/p>\n
Asked after practice on Tuesday about Meesseman’s decision, Reeve offered a slight shrug and a smirk: \u201cShe made the wrong choice.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The bitter and crushing end to last season for the Minnesota Lynx clearly hasn’t sidetracked their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":103383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[41807,1519,1520,62,67,132,68,10190,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-103382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-audio_enabled","9":"tag-minnesota-lynx","10":"tag-new-york-liberty","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-wires-bot","16":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114939266684902819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}