PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Alyssa Thomas scored 23 points, DeWanna Bonner made two key 3-pointers in the fourth quarter and the Phoenix Mercury overcame a 13-point deficit in the final period to beat the short-handed Minnesota Lynx 86-81 in Game 4 on Sunday night and advance to the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2021.<\/p>\n
Phoenix will face the Indiana-Las Vegas winner in the championship series. Indiana forced a Game 5 earlier Sunday with a 90-83 home victory.<\/p>\n
The Mercury won the final three games of the best-of-five semifinal series. The top-seeded Lynx were playing without Cheryl Reeve, who was suspended for Game 4 because of her behavior and comments toward officials in Game 3. Minnesota also was without All-Star guard Napheesa Collier, who suffered an ankle injury near the end of the Game 3 loss.<\/p>\n
The Mercury trailed 68-55 heading into the fourth quarter but pulled to 70-69 on Sami Whitcomb\u2019s 3-pointer with 4:46 left. Bonner\u2019s 3-pointer pushed them ahead 72-70 and she hit another 3 with 2:03 left for a 77-73 lead.<\/p>\n
Minnesota\u2019s Kayla McBride hit a 3-pointer \u2014 her sixth of the second half \u2014 to cut it to 77-76 with 1:04 left. The 38-year-old Bonner then made a pair of free throws to push the Mercury ahead 79-76.<\/p>\n
Bonner scored 11 points in the fourth quarter. Satou Sabally scored 21 points.<\/p>\n
Phoenix will play in the Finals for the first time in four years and try to win its first championship since 2014.<\/p>\n
McBride led Minnesota with 31 points on 6-of-11 shooting from 3-point range. Courtney Williams added 20 points.<\/p>\n
Phoenix\u2019s Kahleah Copper hit a 3-pointer early in the third quarter to give the Mercury their first lead of the game at 41-38. But the Lynx responded with a 23-9 run, highlighted by a three 3-pointers from McBride.<\/p>\n
The Lynx jumped out to an early 12-1 lead but the Mercury slowly chipped way at the deficit. Thomas hit Bonner for a layup just before the halftime buzzer to tie the game at 38.<\/p>\n
Sabally led the Mercury with 18 points before the break.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/p>\n
David Brandt, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Alyssa Thomas scored 23 points, DeWanna Bonner made two key 3-pointers in the fourth quarter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-179527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}