The Minnesota Lynx and Golden State Valkyries drew the opening slot of the 2025 WNBA playoff schedule. Come high noon at Target Center, the No. 1 seeded title contenders will tip off against the best expansion team in league history. A pair of foes, who are more than familiar with each other, will begin a best-of-3-game series after playing each other twice in the last week.
“For us, basically, the playoffs started the last time we played [Golden State],” Minnesota Lynx head coach and President of Basketball Operations Cheryl Reeve said to the media after the Lynx practiced on Saturday. “We just played each other a week or so ago, it’s our third time in a short period of time. So I don’t think there’s any surprises. We’re each gonna try to execute a little better. We’re each gonna find some things that we feel like can give us an advantage.”
Minnesota won both of those two games and also took the first two meetings of the season, going 4-0 against the Valkyries in 2025. The Lynx and the Mercury would be the only two teams the expansion darlings couldn’t land a win against in their remarkable inaugural WNBA season.
The four previous meetings may have ended up in the win column for Minnesota, but they were hardly blowouts. As The Next’s Michelle Smith documented in our Golden State preview, underestimating the Valkyries will come at your own peril.
Reeve and the Lynx don’t plan to overlook anything about Golden State head coach Natalie Nakase and her upstart team. After all, entering the playoffs means beginning a new season, one where every team has the same record entering Sunday.
“It’s a well-coached team that will absolutely exploit the hell out of our weaknesses,” Reeve said after Minnesota’s 72-53 win against Golden State in the regular season finale on Thursday. “We’ve got to make sure that we clean up the hustles areas, and the desire, the want-to areas.”
While the Lynx allowed a new season-low 53 points in their final game of the season, Reeve made it clear that despite the score, Minnesota’s defense fell well below its championship standard.
“That was the end result, what the box score says, but we had a number of breakdowns with open shots, especially with offensive rebounds,” Reeve said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we repeat [that] and give these guys those open threes. I appreciate that the statistics show that defensively we were good. We were very good in some areas and very bad in others.”
Across their four meetings in the regular season, Golden State averaged just 67.8 points per game against the Lynx, by far their lowest total against any team in the league. If Minnesota wants that trend to continue, they will have to make life much more difficult on the perimeter than they did for the Valkyries on Thursday night.
Is DiJonai Carrington back?
A positive development for the Lynx, especially on the defensive end of the court, has been the improved health of DiJonai Carrington, who was elevated to ‘probable’ for Game 1 on the official team status report. Carrington missed the last four games (including both of the last two against the Valkyries) of the season due to a subluxed left shoulder.
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“She has, yeah, getting more confident,” Reeve said to the media Saturday when asked if Carrington had been progressing. “That’s all it is. It’s a matter of kind of going like, ‘Am I confident to use it? Am I confident to be in situations, you know, that obviously are going to be pretty intense and physical?’ So, yeah, she certainly has progressed.”
Carrington played in 11 games for the Lynx after they acquired her from Dallas via trade at the beginning of August. She has made a difference all over the court, but particularly with her perimeter defense and her rim-running. Reeve referred to her as ‘a competitor times 10,’ after the trade.
If Carrington is healthy and available her presence will make a world of difference in Minnesota’s efforts to slow down the Valkyries, especially their perimeter offense.
Good things come to those who wait
It’s hard to imagine anyone on the Lynx more excited to hit the playoffs hardwood than Jessica Shepard.
Shepard arrived in Minnesota after the Lynx selected her in the second round of the 2019 WNBA Draft, making Shepard one of the most senior players on this Lynx squad. The Lynx made the playoffs in four of the first five seasons of Shepard’s career, but due to a litany of injuries, Shepard did not play in a any of them. She also missed the entire 2024 season due to playing commitments overseas.
In total, the Notre Dame product has played 125 regular season games in a Lynx uniform. On Sunday, she’ll wear the Lynx jersey in a playoff game for the first time.
“I think this is what every kid dreams of, you know, growing up and playing in the WNBA Playoffs,” Shepard said after Saturday’s practice. “I’m just really excited to be out there. Obviously, we know how important every game is, so [I’m] excited to finally get to play in the playoffs.”
Shepard has had an incredible 2025 season in Minnesota. She finished the season with the highest FG% in the league by a wide margin at 63.8% (Dearica Hamby finished in second place with 57.2%) and set career-best marks in points and rebounds per 36 minutes.
Shepard has teamed with Carrington, Maria Kliundikova and fellow 6th Player of the Year candidate, Natisha Hiedeman, to give the Lynx a deep and versatile second unit. When they’re all healthy, Reeve’s rotation can be up to nine players deep. Shepard (and the rest of the bench) will play a significant role in her first WNBA playoff action.
“It’s really important, to me the bench is actually the strongest part of a team,” Napheesa Collier said after Thursday night’s game. “Because the things that they give you, like the different change of pace, or Jess with the rebounds, T [Hiedeman] getting downhill, Nai [Carrington] with her aggressiveness, whatever it is, the way that we’re able to not have that drop off when the bench comes in is so important. It’s like you have eight starters instead of five. I think that is what allows teams to get to the promised land, which is where you want to get. The fact that we have such a strong bench is part of what makes us so great.”
Even better than last year
The Lynx pushed last year’s playoff run to the brink, making it to the last possible moment of the last possible game. The 2024 Lynx came as close as one can to winning a title, without actually taking the trophy home.
“I do think we’re a better team just because we have that year of experience,” Collier said during Thursday’s post-game press conference. “Experience always makes better teams, better players, we know what it takes to get there. We got there to the very last possible game of the season last year. We know what it takes, so I think that experience did make us better. It made us hungrier. Obviously that’s something that we’re thinking about going into the playoffs this year is, you know, it didn’t end the way that we wanted it to. To have a different outcome you need to approach it differently. I think we’re super excited for the playoffs to start, to show everything that we’ve been working on the whole year, and there’s not a better group of people that I want to do it with. We’re sisters at this point. The closeness, we’ve talked about this for two years, I mean the way that we go to work for each other, I’ve never been on a team like this and so I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else.”
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Kayla McBride, Collier’s co-captain and back-to-back Lynx All-Star, echoed Collier’s sentiment after the team’s first official playoff practice on Saturday.
“I just think it’s the confidence too, I think we have a lot of belief in one another and knowing and feeling what it takes to get to that mountain top and get to that spot, it builds resilience,” McBride said. “It builds that callus of ‘we’ve done this shit before and we know what it takes.’ We know how hard it is, and we have a lot of belief in one another. We’re very confident in one another. It’s grown obviously, we’ve been in a lot of adverse situations over the last two years. We brought in great people, bringing Jess back, T is playing at a really high level, Nai, we have a lot of weapons and a lot of ways we can do it. This is who we are. We don’t have to change who we are to move forward and that’s the biggest thing.”
Not looking too far ahead
If the Lynx have done one thing in 2025, it’s been focusing one game at a time and not letting heartbreaking moments of the past affect the present. Governed by a mantra of ‘letting the main thing be the main thing,’ Minnesota has responded well to adversity all season long. They only lost back-to-back games on one occasion and went 20-2 on their home floor. By simply winning their home games, the Lynx have a chance to lift their fifth WNBA Finals trophy.
But first, they’ll have to beat the Valkyries to turn that dream into a reality. It’s a task that will take the killer instincts and respect for their opponents that has defined Minnesota’s 2025 season.
“They’re a really hardworking, scrappy team,” Collier said after the game on Thursday night. “[Temi Fagbenle] said it best, ‘they are a team made up of sixth men,’ and what are qualities of sixth men? Really hard working, they grind, 50/50 balls, things like that and they all do that. I expect them to come out and play their butts off, which is what they always do. It’s going to be a good [series]. I don’t expect it to be like tonight. I think it’s going to be a fight. Everyone’s going to bring their A-game. I know that’s what we plan to do and I’m sure they plan to do the same.”
