Kansas City — The headline on the marquee was one that could cause a second glance. The Minnesota Lynx taking on the Nigerian national team at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri. A club team from the states, playing against a national team from Africa, playing in a place neither calls home.
This is the nature of neutral site games in professional sports.
The Target Center in Minneapolis and the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City are separated by 439 miles and just over six hours by car. A straight shot on I-35 could get one from the first arena to the next practically without using the steering wheel.
A few fun facts: Kansas City is a hair over two hours away from Napheesa Collier’s hometown of Jefferson City, much like Minneapolis it’s a city on a river that loves its sports teams; unlike Minneapolis it doesn’t have a WNBA team (yet), but does have way better BBQ (this one is unlikely to change).
“We have a pretty good track record,” Lynx head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve said with a laugh in her pregame press conference. “Seems like if we come to your city, you’re going to be a professional team. So hold onto this date and when it happens, let’s talk again.”
Reeve was referring to the preseason game the Lynx played in Toronto in 2023 against the Chicago Sky. The league then announced Toronto as the WNBA’s ‘14th Franchise’ almost exactly one year later.
Monday night’s game marked the first WNBA contest of any kind in Kansas City since 2005 in a game that included the Detroit Shock and the Minnesota Lynx.
WNBA ambitions and a state of the art and available downtown basketball arena aside, Kansas City ticked several boxes to be a meaningful neutral site host, including one that Minneapolis and no other city can claim.
“Let me first start by saying, I’m thrilled to be in the city that has the only facility built for a women’s professional team, I mean I’m thrilled to be here,” Reeve said pregame, referring to CPKC Stadium, the home of the Kansas City Current in the NWSL. “As we’ve seen women’s sports grow, obviously they’re successful when you treat it well. It pays dividends. I think it’s important to know, yeah they’re successful, they’re winning, but that’s not the standard for men’s sports. There’s lots of stadiums built for teams that weren’t successful.
“It’s worthy of investing in women’s sports,” Reeve continued. “Obviously, the ownership of the Current, kudos to them. I’m a big fan.”
Ground broke for CPKC Stadium in 2022 and the project was completed in time for the Current’s 2024 season, in which they sold out every single match. In addition to Current games, CPKC has hosted international women’s soccer matches, collegiate women’s soccer tournaments and women’s rugby and lacrosse games, making Kansas City a true hotbed of women’s sports.
The T-Mobile Center sits about two miles south of CPKC and opened almost 20 years earlier. The construction manager for the project was Minneapolis-based M.A. Mortenson Company. While it may not be as brand spanking new as its NWSL riverfront counterpart, Kansas City’s basketball arena is aging like a fine Bordeaux and would already qualify as a top flight arena in the WNBA.
“The facility we’re in [right now] is a pretty nice one,” Reeve said when asked about the growth of WNBA facilities pregame. “I’d love to see Kansas City stick with it as they grow as a city. I have a few people that live here in the area and they were excited to show me around a little bit yesterday and talk about all the things and the ways it has grown. It’s not a city that’s growing too fast. It’s growing right at the right time and adding the right things. It’s a great art city, and I think it would be an absolutely fabulous professional sports city whenever that time comes.”
Of course, the Lynx didn’t travel all the way to Kansas City to pay it compliments and pleasantries. Minnesota had a game to play, and as Reeve also said prior to tip off, the Lynx “are in full-on evaluation mode.” A neutral site game against Nigeria provided the Lynx with three bites at the preseason apple, as opposed to a standard two-game preseason slate.
“We wanted this third game and I wanted the opportunity for our training camp players to be evaluated in game situations …” Reeve said. “Players are going to get the opportunity to show what they can do.”
There were plenty of highlights and plenty of things for the Lynx to take back to Minneapolis and work on after the final buzzer sounded on an 88-79 Minnesota win. Olivia Miles looked even more comfortable than she did in preseason game No. 1. Crafty veteran Nia Coffey helped ignite a second-half run for the second game in a row, and Courtney Williams provided some first-half offensive fireworks with 15 of her 17 points coming before the break.
More roster decisions loom for the Lynx as players with overseas commitments return and the days of training camp start to wind down. The team waived Amaya Battle, Ra Shaya Kyle, and Sakima Walker on Wednesday morning and have several more moves to go before a roster is finalized.
The Lynx have one more preseason game to go and will host the Toronto Tempo at Target Center on Friday night, their first preseason action in Minneapolis. It would have been understandable for the Lynx to be eager to get back home after a rare two-city preseason road trip; however, even after her team’s victory, and as the T-Mobile Center emptied out into a brisk Monday night in Kansas City, Reeve emphasized that the passion and investment in women’s sports in the city is something that should not be taken for granted or ignored.
“We should keep talking about how [Kansas City] built a facility for a women’s professional sports team,” Reeve said during her postgame press conference. “That doesn’t happen. We build facilities for every possible men’s sport, including esports, gaming, we build facilities … despite losing money over and over again. That’s what we do for men’s sports. So it is incredibly meaningful, I believe it is the only one, not just in the country, that’s ever been done. So being here in Kansas City, like I said, I’m giddy about it. I like being here and I hope this is a sports town that gets professional sports if they want it.”
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