WNBA Finals: 3 things to know for Lynx-Liberty main event

The New York Liberty know winning the franchise’s first championship is not going to be easy. Now, after ousting the rival two-time champion Las Vegas Aces in an emotional semifinals, the No. 1 seed will have to go through a WNBA juggernaut and the team that gave them the most trouble in the regular season.

Minnesota is chasing a record fifth WNBA title that would break its tie with the Seattle Storm and now-defunct Houston Comets. The No. 2 seed is the only team with a winning regular-season record against the Liberty (2-1) and won the Commissioner’s Cup title over New York in June.

The diametrically opposed franchises will meet in Game 1 of the 2024 WNBA Finals on Thursday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN). New York holds home-court advantage and the benefit of rest after closing its semifinals win against the Aces in Game 4 on Sunday afternoon. The Liberty flew home afterward and had three full days before the Finals.

“This playoff schedule is extremely condensed,” Liberty forward Breanna Stewart said Sunday. “If you go to a Game 5, you have one day to prepare for Game 1 of the Finals. That’s, like, insane.”

The Lynx did go to five games against the Sun and clinched its first Finals berth since 2017 less than 48 hours before the tip-off of Game 1. The team traveled to New York for Games 1 and 2 (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET on ABC). Minnesota will host Game 3 on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) and Game 4, if necessary, on Friday. Game 5 would be back at Barclays Center on Sunday, Oct. 20.

“Obviously, it’s a superteam,” Reeve said Wednesday. “And we’ll see if we have any shot of maybe not letting that superteam get to where they want to get to.”

New York is making its sixth Finals appearance, joining four visits within the league’s first six seasons. The Liberty added Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot in 2023 free agency to bring home a championship, but the superteam fell short to the Aces in the Finals. The Liberty are motivated from the loss, were purposeful in developing an extra year of chemistry and designed one of the largest starting fives in the league to improve defensively.

“Last year, we knew we had some areas we needed to fix up and be better on the perimeter,” Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said during the semifinals. “I think we were [a] way better defense team, and I think we have way better chemistry and how we want to defend.”

Despite their titles and league-record seventh Finals appearance, the Lynx come into the Finals as the underdogs (+220 to win at all at BetMGM). They were overlooked in the preseason after the front office built strategically around Napheesa Collier, their No. 6 pick in 2019, instead of adding the top-tier free agents available. Head coach Cheryl Reeve describes her team as a “collective” rather than using the superteam moniker bestowed upon the Liberty.

The starters from her title teams — Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, Rebekkah Brunson and Maya Moore — are all in or on their way to the Hall of Fame. Many of the Liberty’s starters are on a Hall of Fame trajectory. Collier, who finished a solid second in MVP voting behind A’ja Wilson, is the only one on the Lynx currently en route to enshrinement.

“This team, as [head coach] Becky Hammon in Vegas described us, has good players that’s a great team,” Reeve said after Game 5. “That’s how special this team is that we didn’t scare anybody.”

The Liberty (32-8) and Lynx (30-10) were the league’s best teams from start to finish and had Collier been fully healthy, it might have been more of a battle between the two for postseason home-court advantage. The Lynx went 3-3 when Collier missed six games ahead of the All-Star/Olympic break and took losses to teams they otherwise fared well against.

Here are three things to watch in Game 1:

A congestion of MVPs in the paint

The Lynx run through Collier, the postseason’s leading scorer who’s averaging 27.1 points and hitting at a 54.6% clip, including 45% from 3-point range. She’s top five in rebounding (9.6 per game) and blocks (2 per game). If not for a historic first half of the season by A’ja Wilson, Collier would have been in a tighter race for MVP. She finished with every second-place vote but one.

“When Phee plays like an MVP, we’re a hard team to beat,” Reeve said.

She earned Defensive Player of the Year while anchoring one of the league’s best defenses and strongest frontcourts alongside Alanna Smith. The Lynx pulled off a rare midseason trade for Myisha Hines-Allen to bolster their post depth.

They’ll be tasked with defending two former MVPs in the paint: Stewart and Jones.

Stewart (20 ppg, 8.2 rpg in the playoffs) is back to the playoff standard everyone expects of her, but Jones (13.5 ppg, 8.7 rpg) struggled with foul trouble in the last two games against Las Vegas. A double-double from the 2021 MVP, who is making her fourth Finals appearance but has yet to win a title, typically leads to Liberty victories, and they can’t afford to have her watching from the bench.

“They do a really good job of congesting the paint,” Jones said of the Lynx on Wednesday. “I understand how important it is for me to play well for us to win. I’m coming in really aggressively, trying to play smart and not get into early foul trouble.”

The only time in four tries the Liberty defeated the Lynx this year, Jones scored in double-digits with 21 points and 12 rebounds on July 2. In the other three meetings (including the Cup game), she averaged eight points and 7.7 rebounds. She brought down 12 rebounds in the Cup game, but didn’t have a basket and made three free throws.

Raining 3s and piling up assists

The Liberty and Lynx are accustomed to lighting up the scoreboard with 3-pointers coming from almost anyone on the court. Each team relies on the 3 for approximately 35% of its offense, and both teams are two of the league’s most efficient shooting teams.

Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu (2.8 made 3s per game ranks fourth) and Lynx guard Kayla McBride (2.7, sixth) lead the volume charge behind the arc. McBride is more efficient (40.7%) and teammate Bridget Carleton (2.3 per game, 44.4%) isn’t far behind. Carleton’s clutch buckets led the Lynx to the Cup in a performance that should have won her Cup MVP. An off shooting night could spoil either team.

Those open looks come off crisp ball movement and near-record assist rates.

The Lynx averaged a franchise-best 23 3-point attempts per game and a WNBA-record 76.4 assisted shot rate. Courtney Williams, a veteran two years into primary ball-handling, averages 5.5 assists per game.

The Liberty averaged 22.8 assists per game (74.1 assisted shot rate ranks sixth all-time) and spread out the task with four players averaging at least three assists per game.

Coaching

Reeve and Brondello are two of the best coaches in the league and previously squared off on the playoff stage when the Lynx were in their dynasty years and Brondello was with Phoenix. Minnesota and Phoenix met in the penultimate round three straight seasons from 2014-16. (The format was based on conferences in 2014-15 and switched to an overall seed structure in 2016.)

Phoenix defeated Minnesota, 2-1, in the 2014 Western Conference finals and won the championship in Brondello’s first season. Minnesota won the title the next year and defeated Phoenix, 2-0, in the West finals. Minnesota won again via sweep in the semifinals in 2016, but lost in the Finals and completed its dynasty run with a championship in 2017. Reeve leads the head-to-head matchup, 7-2.

Reeve is the league’s all-time winningest postseason coach, leading the Lynx to 47 of their record 48 playoff wins. Brondello is one win from tying Bill Laimbeer (37) for second and could move into solo position by the end of the Finals.