The Lynx opened the 2025 campaign with a 28-5 mark and had the look of the clear best team in the WNBA.
Their net rating through 33 games was 14.3 – double that of the second-best team.
They finished the regular season 6-4 and were bounced in the semifinals by Phoenix.
In contrast, when Minnesota reached the WNBA Finals in 2024, it closed the regular season with 14 wins in its final 16 games (including a loss in the regular season finale in which Napheesa Collier didn’t play).
It’s hard to peak twice in a basketball season. Teams hope to play their best hoops at the season’s conclusion. Synergy in this sport requires an exact blend of high-talent players competing with the necessary force and patience to get the best out of themselves and one another.
Once the foot comes off the gas, can you re-apply the pressure on the pedal?
It’s a question for the Lynx to attempt to answer yet again this postseason – starting with Game 1 of Round 1 on Sunday against New York.
Minnesota again motored out of the gates this season, going 31-7 through mid-August with the league’s clear-best net rating.
But the Lynx have played just six games since then – thanks to the FIBA break – and gone 2-4 in that span with a minus-4.7 net rating. Minnesota coach and basketball boss Cheryl Reeve lamented the slippage in performance at seemingly every turn. She knows it matters.
It’s easy to understand the “why” for the dip. There can be rust when coming off a lengthy break, and Minnesota had a high seed sewn up and little for which to play in the post-break portion of the regular season.
But now it’s go time. Can Minnesota simply flip the switch and revert to the dominant force it established itself as over the first 80% of the season?
Thursday’s regular season finale had to be reassuring, as Minnesota’s tenacious defense suffocated a motivated Inidiana team that blitzed the Lynx two nights prior.
“Happy for us just to get that feeling back of what it takes to be successful,” Reeve said. “The leadership was there, the want to, the connection.”
Reeve also highlighted the team’s shotmaking on Thursday. When you score, you can set your defense and limit the opponent’s pace.
Ultimately, the defensive the side of the floor will determine Minnesota’s ceiling in these playoffs.
A unit featuring the likes of Kayla McBride, Collier and Natasha Howard should be able to limit any opposing offense.
But such performances require nastiness on that end – an intense focus on detail and the willingness to relentlessly exert endless energy to defend every inch of the floor.
Those traits are traditionally habits instilled over months of repetition. Minnesota did that. The work was put in over the first four months of the campaign.
Then it let a lot slide. Now it’s time to return to form.
Ideally for the Lynx, the game against Indiana was the first major step forward in that process. Because it has to be a quick one. If it is, the end-of-regular season swoon will be but a blip on the radar.
But if it’s not, another magical season could end far, far sooner than expected.