Lynx credit chemistry with return to WNBA championship contention

The Lynx were right around 50-1 odds to win the WNBA championship at the start of this season.

Which added up. Minnesota was a sub-.500 team a year ago that was bounced out of the first round of the playoffs. The pieces were present on the roster to have a good year in 2024, but certainly not to compete with the league’s “super teams” like New York and Las Vegas.

But then the Lynx won the Commissioner’s Cup — beating the Liberty, no less — and downed the Aces in convincing fashion in Vegas. Minnesota opened the season 13-3.

And, since coming out of the Olympic break, the Lynx have been even better. Frankly, they’ve been the best.

Subtract their loss in the season finale Thursday, in which they heavily managed minutes with their playoff seed secure, and the post-Olympic Lynx went 13-1 with the WNBA’s second-best offense (108 points per 100 possessions), third-best defense (97) and second-best net rating (11.0, which trailed only New York).

It was exactly the push Minnesota (30-10) needed to lock up the No. 2 seed heading into the WNBA playoffs, which open at home at 4 p.m. Sunday for Game 1 of a best-of-3 first-round series against with Phoenix.

Should the Lynx simply take care of business at home over the first two rounds of the postseason, they would find themselves in the WNBA Finals.

How did they get here?

Minnesota has just one superstar player — and an underrated one at that in Napheesa Collier, who might be the game’s premier two-way player.

But all of the surrounding pieces have perfectly snapped into the puzzle, from the shooting of Kayla McBride and Bridget Carleton to the playmaking of Courtney Williams and the toughness of Alanna Smith. Everyone on the roster defends at a high level, and everything else seems to fall into place.

That’s a beautifully rare occurrence in basketball, one made far more plausible by the relationships established within the roster.

“It’s really fun to be on this team,” Collier said.

More specifically, it’s the most fun the 27-year-old forward has had in the WNBA. She quickly realized upon her arrival in the pros that “hangouts” wouldn’t be nearly as frequent as they were in college, when those types of gatherings are all-but mandatory. Nothing is forced in Minnesota, but the bonding this season is similar for Collier to the experience garnered at the amateur level.

“With us, we’re always going to dinner or we have barbecues or we’re just hanging out together,” she said. “I think that just shows how much we genuinely like each other.”

Those off-the-court relationships translate onto the court. McBride can feel it in the team’s connection in the huddles and within the flow of the games. If a problem arises, players solve it together.

“There’s never anybody pointing fingers or anything like that. Everybody is very selfless, we’re all here for the same mission, which is to go out and win each and every game we play,” McBride said. “That becomes a lot of fun, because you’re just competing your (butts) off for 40 minutes, and hopefully you come out on top. That’s what we’re doing, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it and enjoying playing with each other, and that’s the best part.”

Both McBride and Collier believe it’s that chemistry that’s allowed the Lynx to exceed outside expectations and insert themsolves smack dab in the center of championship contention.

And it’s also what could potentially help the Lynx navigate what they anticipate — and hope — will be a marathon WNBA postseason run that awaits them.

“We want this so bad for each other,” Collier said, “because we genuinely just really love and like each other.”