Happy Basketball Wednesday, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. Alanna Smith is my Defensive Player of the Year, by the way, though feel free to email me at hmegdal@theixsports.com and convince me otherwise.
Continue reading with a subscription to The IX
Get unlimited access to our exclusive coverage of a varitety of women’s sports, including our premium newsletter by subscribing today!
Already a member?
Login
Basketball Wednesday
But that is just one part of what makes the 2025 Minnesota Lynx story so fascinating to me. This is a team that played as well as anyone last season, but ultimately did not win the 2024 WNBA title. (No, they haven’t forgotten this.) Nor did they have previous title wins to rely on for their confidence here in 2025. Their head coach, Cheryl Reeve, obviously has the title pedigree, but this group has yet to win that final game.
(Editor’s note: Basketball Wednesday will be off next week, though we have a special Wednesday featured planned for you instead. We’ll keep it a surprise for now.)
But once again on Sunday afternoon, the Lynx didn’t look like worthy challengers to the New York Liberty. They looked like a team setting the pace. The Lynx took command in the third quarter with a 16-3 third-quarter run and won by double digits on New York’s home floor, 83-71, looking every bit the part of the champion, not the challenger, in the process.
None of what we’ve seen over the past two meetings tells us very much about how these two teams will match up should they meet again in the playoffs. The Liberty are without multiple significant players, including but not remotely limited to Breanna Stewart, while the Lynx played Sunday without Napheesa Collier, who would need to miss the remainder of the season for me to even consider not voting her the league’s MVP. (To be clear, her timetable isn’t anything like this.)
So I asked Reeve following Sunday’s win just what we’ve learned so far about how these two teams match up.
“I think it’s still gathering information,” Reeve said. “I think both the games looked very different. And so I think going through a full complement of games, I think we will both feel like we have a better handle on things. So we’re still learning.”
She’s right, of course, and the universe of these two teams could look very different as soon as next week, following another two matchups, one in each home, by August 19. But what struck me so far is that, unlike last year, it appears to me that the Lynx have more answers to potential questions as two masterful coaches, Reeve and Sandy Brondello, move around pieces of the two most talented rosters in the league.
Smith matters in all Lynx games, but perhaps most in games against a team featuring Jonquel Jones. At full speed, there are few players with the size and defensive skill to neutralize Jones both when she finds herself around the perimeter or parks near the post. That forces other teams into doubles which open up a world of additional problems. The Lynx can leave Collier to attack and battle her Unrivaled partner Stewart instead at both ends. Neither player can ensure that Jones and Stewart won’t get their share of production, but both will make it harder than it is against any other team.
That all leads to knock-on effects further down the roster. The Lynx frustrated Sabrina Ionescu all day on Sunday, holding her to 4-for-15 shooting. Much of that came from a defensive scheme that forced Ionescu to either give up the ball or force the action, the former stagnating the offense, the latter… stagnating the offense. Leo Fiebich remains an exceptional talent, but she is not someone who creates her own shot. And the Liberty have not yet learned to feature Emma Meesseman, nor is the current lineup one which is built to do it.
The Lynx, too, have more Plan Bs right now than the Liberty do. There is no answer to how the Liberty are to guard Kayla McBride if Fiebich isn’t on her. (Kennedy Burke‘s absence was felt, acutely, on Sunday.) Natasha Cloud proved to be the most effective counter to Courtney Williams. But deploy them both at once, and Ionescu can either be present and the Liberty can play smaller than Brondello prefers, or Ionescu can sit on the bench and the Liberty are without their most effective perimeter playmaker.
As for the Lynx, with Jessica Shepard still clearly less than 100% healthy, Maria Kliundikova stepped up and provided much of the defensive resistance to Meesseman.
When Williams hit the bench with her fourth foul, Reeve just popped Natisha Hiedeman into the mix and, if anything, Hiedeman was more efficient than Williams typically is.
On a day Bridget Carleton was uncharacteristically passive, DiJonai Carrington, one of the best midseason pickups in terms of talent and fit we’ve seen in recent years, entered and looked like she’s been in Minnesota since Lindsay Whalen roamed the floor. Carrington brushed off the idea that fitting seamlessly into a new team’s defensive scheme is an accomplishment, telling me it just comes down to effort, which, maybe it is for someone as talented as DiJonai Carrington. But it mattered Sunday and it’s really going to matter come playoff time.
“I just know that the difference in the game for us today was our bench,” Reeve said. “And it’s stating the obvious, but that’s how you win hard games. So everybody’s locked in on the key players and how hard it is for the key players to try to get some stuff done. So no question about it, T and Masha and DiJonai gave us a big lift in that third quarter.”
Reeve pointed out, before making that point, that nothing about the third quarter sequence was predictive — each game situation demands something different of a roster. But a championship run, because of that very fact, demands a roster which can answer different questions, unexpected ones, on different days. So the variety of answers is itself an important sign for Minnesota’s playoff future.
To be clear: being the favorite in August is not remotely the same thing as declaring the Lynx a certainty to win a WNBA title. But it is striking that without having actually done so, the 27-5 Lynx, with a record through 32 games on par with some of the greatest starts in WNBA history (most of whom went on to win it all), have overtaken the Liberty in proximity to what is necessary to win the WNBA championship.
And I will say this: it’s hard for me to see the path for any other contender other than New York to stop the Lynx, even the talented and impressive groups in Atlanta and Phoenix. I’ll reserve judgement on Las Vegas’ recent burst until I see it against some healthy, contending teams (Friday in Phoenix will be an important one), and I cannot weigh in on Indiana until we know when, and at what strength, Caitlin Clark returns to play.
But New York is now forced to do something greater than what it appeared their task was just a few short weeks ago. Incorporating Emma Meesseman with nearly two full months to do so it one thing. Incorporating her once, then again as Breanna Stewart returns just a few weeks before the playoffs, is quite another. And doing both of these things while getting Nyara Sabally and Kennedy Burke healthy, even without any other major injuries to further complicate matters, makes the task taller still.
The comparison I made when the Liberty acquired Meesseman was to the Lynx adding Sylvia Fowles midway through the 2015 season. And as this young journalist of the time makes clear, that fit didn’t happen overnight, and challenged Reeve to incorporate her, even with a surrounding set of teammates happily ready to buy in and in Fowles, a player very willing to do anything it took to win.
We all know how that turned out: the Lynx figured it out by the playoffs and won the 2015 title. Fowles was the Finals MVP.
But there’s one additional degree of difficulty the 2025 Liberty face that the 2015 Lynx didn’t: the 2025 Lynx.
There were no other dominant forces in the 2015 WNBA, a moment of changeover. A year after the 2014 Mercury (net rating 12.3) ran through the league, Diana Taurasi elected to sit out the 2015 season. So did Candace Parker for much of 2015 — the Sparks who battled the Lynx to within an inch of a pair of titles, one going to each in 2016 and 2017, posted a record of 14-20 in 2015, with a negative net rating. The Lynx posted their worst regular-season net rating of the Maya Moore run of titles and near-titles, 2011-2017 — 5.3. But it still led the league. Indiana and Tamika Catchings, their finals opponent, checked in at 2.4.
So while New York is at 7.0, just below Atlanta’s 7.3, even if they improve significantly as they get healthy, the standard is now in Minnesota, where the Lynx sit at 14.5, north even of the 2024 Liberty’s league-leading 11.7.
The Liberty have a mountain to climb just to get back to last season’s level. But the Lynx waiting for them if they do are stronger than the team they managed to defeat in last year’s finals by the slimmest of margins — we won’t re-litigate what that margin consisted of here.
That’s not impossible. But it sure looks like it is the defending champions who are the ones with ground to make up between now and October.
Order “Rare Gems” and save 30%
Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX, wrote this deeply reported story following four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.
If you enjoy his coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.” Click the link below and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout.
This week in women’s basketball
Regular season WNBA basketball is coming to Canada! (The IX Basketball will be on the scene.)
The Storm need to figure out their bench, but Dom Malonga sure helps them do it.
Bookmark this one for when the Toronto Tempo arrive ahead of schedule.
Sure is great to see Cameron Brink back on the floor.
Maria McIlwain makes the Villanova connection between Lucy Olsen and Maddy Siegrist.
Michelle Obama and Dawn Staley. You’re welcome.
Look at how Naz Hillmon has reinvented herself. What a huge win for that Dream development staff.
Want women’s hockey content? Subscribe to The Ice Garden!
The IX Sports is collaborating with The Ice Garden to bring you Hockey Friday. And if you want the women’s hockey goodness 24/7? Well, you should subscribe to The Ice Garden now!
Five at The IX: Sabreena Merchant
Listen to my conversation with The Athletic’s Sabreena Merchant, and make sure to consume everything she produces.
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is available now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible.
| Mondays: Soccer |
| By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer |
| Tuesdays: Tennis |
| By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer |
| Wednesdays: Basketball |
| By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The Next |
| Thursdays: Golf |
| By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX |
| Fridays: Hockey |
| By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden |
| Saturdays: Gymnastics |
| By: Lela Moore, @runlelarun, Freelance Writer |
