MINNEAPOLIS — As August fades away and the WNBA calendar turns towards September, the Minnesota Lynx have all but wrapped up the league’s No. 1 seed and the certainty of home-court advantage through the 2025 postseason. At 30-8 with six games left to play, the Lynx will soon be met with the common end-of-season dilemma frontrunners face in competitive leagues around the world. Keep your foot on the gas pedal, or take it easy and make sure you go into the playoffs as healthy as can be.
“Twenty-five years in the league, and I’ve seen a lot,” Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve said after practice on Tuesday. “Ten years as an assistant, obviously my time here, you’ve seen the NBA, other sports, whatever, you try to learn from those scenarios. Certainly, if you’re playing for seeding, it’s obvious what you’re doing. We had a group — you know the dynasty years — where we had a lead and we made some choices about what we were going to do. I’ve watched other teams sort of go into rest mode.”
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Since the days of Plutarch, the wisest philosophers of our time have never ceased wrestling with the age-old debate of rust vs. rest.
“[The] 2001 [season] comes to mind,” Reeve added. “The Cleveland Rockers ran away with the league, and the Charlotte Sting, where I was, we eked in in fourth [in the East], and we beat them in the first round. The balance of, we want to keep our edge ready to go, and obviously we want to go into playoffs healthy. It’s definitely a delicate thing to consider, even as we practice. You can’t take your foot off the pedal. You can’t have slippage. So all those things will be on our minds each day as we prepare.”
The ‘01 Rockers finished as the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed with a record of 22-10, but dropped four of their last five games, including a 55-53 thriller to Reeve and the Sting that served as a bit of foreshadowing for the first round of the playoffs. The Sting, owners of the 8th best record in the league with a record of 18-14, took two out of three from Cleveland to send the favorites home early. They pulled off another upset by the same margin against the New York Liberty in the Eastern Conference Finals before ultimately falling to the Los Angeles Sparks in the WNBA Finals.
It’s not an exact science. It never has been.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Lynx assistant coach and four-time WNBA champion Lindsay Whalen said after Thursday’s shootaround. “I always said the goal is, ‘Win your home games and you win a championship.’ It’s always been the goal since I’ve been here. I think it’s a team effort between the coaches, how everybody’s feeling, and the training staff as far as how things go, but you want to be playing well going into playoffs.”
The current format differs from the last two Finals runs of Whalen’s playing career when a No. 1 or No. 2 seed punched a one-way ticket to the semifinals and ensured more than a week’s rest no matter what.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Whalen repeated, “and worry about that when it comes for sure.”
Perhaps the biggest piece of evidence in favor of not resting your players is the very reason the Lynx don’t have home-court advantage 100% wrapped up just yet. A victory over Seattle would have settled just that, and there were moments on Thursday night where another Lynx victory appeared inevitable when they led by as many as 21 points. Then they looked like the furthest thing from a championship contender as Seattle charged back and completed the 2nd-biggest comeback in their franchise’s history with a 93-79 victory.
The Lynx might be in the best position for postseason success of anyone in the league, but Thursday night showed they’re far from a finished product, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. Minnesota still holds the league’s best defensive rating of 100.0, but by less than a total point — the Atlanta Dream own the second-best rating of 100.8. That gap was more than three full points a matter of weeks ago. Since beating the Liberty 83-71 on Aug. 10, the Lynx have only allowed fewer than 80 points one time, doing so in a 75-73 loss to the Dream in Atlanta on Aug. 21.
“Play some fucking defense, man. Play some defense,” Reeve said after the loss on Thursday night. “Act like that end matters. We have not done that in a long time, and so that was the focus. You play one quarter of defense. That’s it. We understand, we told them how [the Storm] was going to adjust. We told them what Seattle was going to be looking for. We had 12 deflections on the game. That tells you everything.”
Minnesota had a prime opportunity to clinch home-court advantage on their home court on Thursday night. Letting the opportunity slip away hardly diminishes their chances of being the team with the numeral one prefix ahead of their name come playoff time — they could very well have that distinction even before they step on the court Saturday in Connecticut. But the Lynx didn’t set out to clinch home-court advantage just for the heck of it in 2025 — they set out to raise a banner above their home court. In that regard, there is much work still to be done no matter who clinches what.
“I think we just need to lock in and make sure we’re playing all four quarters of Lynx basketball,” MVP candidate Napheesa Collier said after the game. “We did a great job in the first half, but it was the second half that we let slip. We can never get comfortable. Everyone in this league is here for a reason. Everyone is good. It’s not even about seeding anymore. Cheryl said this — we want to make sure we’re playing our best basketball going into playoffs. … It’s about making sure that we are good in our team, so not thinking about other teams but making sure that we’re tightened up in all our areas.”
Following a one-game trip to Connecticut, the Lynx host the Dallas Wings on Monday night. After that pair of games against teams eliminated from playoff contention, they head out on the road to play the red hot Aces in Las Vegas, and the Valkyries and Fever fighting for their playoff lives in front of their home crowds. Clinching a playoff fairytale ending for the expansion Valkyries could very well come down to the final game of the year when Golden State comes to the Target Center.
It’s still August and the air still feels thick and heavy like it’s the middle of the summer, but the stakes and the pressure will only increase day over day from here until one team in the WNBA is left standing. The regular season may not yet be entirely in the books, but rest-be-damned — the playoffs are knocking on the door and the Lynx need to start playing like it.
