Who will the Lynx face in the first-round of the WNBA playoffs, which open this weekend?<\/p>\n
In an odd twist, Minnesota has a major say in that answer.<\/p>\n
The Lynx long ago clinched the No. 1 seed and home-court advantage throughout the postseason. But their first-round opponent will be determined \u2026 by Minnesota\u2019s regular season finale.<\/p>\n
Should the Lynx beat Golden State, they will meet the first-year expansion team again in Round 1. Should the Valkyries knock off Minnesota, Seattle will then be the No. 8 seed and come to Minneapolis this weekend.<\/p>\n
Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve could\u2019ve wanted to use the regular season finale as a chance to get others more minutes and allow her stars some rest just days before the postseason begins. But should the Lynx have a significant preference between Golden State and Seattle, any potential plan may change Thursday at Target Center.<\/p>\n
So \u2026 who should the Lynx want to play in Round 1?<\/p>\n
About Golden State: Minnesota is 3-0 this season against the Valkyries, who lack all-star level talent and lost their leading scorer, Kayla Thornton, to injury in the middle of the campaign.<\/p>\n
But Golden State has won five of its last seven games and has been elevated by the ascension of rookie French forward Janelle Salaun,\u00a0 who\u2019s shooting 45% from deep since July 31.<\/p>\n
About Seattle: The Storm are flush with established players like Skylar Diggins, Brittney Sykes, Ezi Magbegor, Gabby Williams and Nneka Ogwumike, who won\u2019t shy away from a raucous arena such Target Center.<\/p>\n
Seattle proved that two weeks ago, when they walked into Minneapolis and scored 93 points to secure the season series split.<\/p>\n
The Storm endured a six-game losing skid in early August to put their playoff position in jeopardy, but won six of their final nine games to secure their spot.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: September 10, 2025 at 3:49 PM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who will the Lynx face in the first-round of the WNBA playoffs, which open this weekend? In an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1077,99,434],"class_list":["post-147447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-minnesota-lynx","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}