WNBA: Lynx exemplified selflessness, toughness throughout 2024 run

How does one eulogize the journey of a championship runner-up in the WNBA? A team that comes achingly close to the ultimate goal, only to finish second—perhaps an even more hurtful ending than not making the playoffs at all?

The Minnesota Lynx are the team that must bear that title in 2024, having lost in the Finals to the New York Liberty in a competitive and dramatic (and at times controversial) five games. The fact that the Lynx were mere seconds from upsetting the Liberty in the deciding game but ended up losing in overtime may further complicate the narrative for some.

Make no mistake about it, though: The 2024 Lynx were a special team and deserve to be celebrated all the same. It’s not just what they accomplished in their playoff run—taking the favored Liberty to the brink after dispatching the Connecticut Sun in the semifinals—that warrants praise. It’s also how they went about their business, quickly going from a team that seemed to have a patchwork roster with a questionable offensive hierarchy to a well-oiled basketball machine that emphasized modern offensive concepts and hard-working and disruptive team defense, regularly outclassing teams thought to be superior on pape— but, as it turned out, not on the hardwood.

Minnesota’s team chemistry was evident from the beginning

The Lynx went into the 2024 regular season with modest expectations. Most preseason projections ranked them either in the middle of the pack or as a draft lottery team, and while the additions of veterans such as guard Courtney Williams and forward Alanna Smith in free agency did enough theoretically to shore up Minnesota’s depth, the team didn’t acquire multiple All-Stars like its conference rivals in Seattle did, nor did it make big waves in the 2024 WNBA Draft like Indiana or Chicago.

When the games began, however, it quickly became evident that this Lynx team would outperform those lukewarm predictions. Minnesota got off to a fantastic start at 7-2 and just kept winning, improving to 14-4 at the end of June and 17-8 by the Olympic break. The Lynx were near the top of the leaderboards in several statistical categories—most notably, 3-point field goal percentage, assist rate and defensive efficiency—though head coach Cheryl Reeve frequently pointed to several key intangibles as the reasons for her team’s success.

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“We’re always a team that has some level of chemistry. This year’s team has maturity with their chemistry,” Reeve said after a Lynx win in mid-June. “They’re smart basketball players.”

It’s as good of an explanation as any for what Minnesota achieved in 2024. The Lynx finished the regular season assisting on 76.4 percent of their made baskets (a WNBA regular-season record, according to Across the Timeline), which is a surefire sign of an unselfish group of players that’s willing to make the extra pass time and time again. The Lynx also finished second in defensive rating, allowing 94.8 points per 100 possessions—something that’s only possible on a team with excellent trust and communication.

It all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle: a heady guard in Williams, a group of knockdown 3-point shooters including Kayla McBride, Bridget Carleton, Natisha Hiedeman and Cecilia Zandalasini, several skilled bigs such as Smith and Dorka Juhász and one of the most fundamentally sound scorers in the WNBA in Napheesa Collier. Together, these players formed a unit that kept the floor spaced at all times and, despite lacking a traditional, ball-dominant distributor in the backcourt, excelled at the connective areas of the game that separate good offenses from truly great ones.

Collier’s career year led the Lynx to new heights

The formula for success that the Lynx established in 2024 was definitely a scenario of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts, but that’s not to say that the team lacked individually talented players, either.

In fact, Minnesota features one of the WNBA’s best in Collier, who had the best season of her career to date. Ever since she was drafted by the Lynx in 2019, Collier has gotten the job done on both ends of the floor, and as she’s grown over the years from an elite complementary player to a full-fledged star, she’s leaned on the same strengths: defensive versatility and playmaking, efficient scoring and an unmatched grasp of the fundamentals that often makes her seem a step ahead of every opponent she matches up against.

2024 was, simply put, a Collier masterclass. Not only did she average better than 20 points per game for the second consecutive season, but she also upped her rebounding to 9.7 per game and her assists to 3.4 per game, putting together one of the most impressive traditional stat lines of any WNBA player. In true Collier fashion, she also racked up the defensive numbers, averaging 1.9 steals and 1.4 blocks per game and winning the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year award.

“[We had] 12 people who bought into the game plan and bought into what we’re trying to accomplish this year,” Collier said as she accepted the award. “It takes a lot of trust, and that trust is built with putting yourself out there and your teammates having your back.”

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In addition to Defensive Player of the Year honors, Collier was also named to the All-WNBA First Team for the second season in a row. And while “almost” doesn’t typically yield much hardware, Collier’s second-place MVP finish to the Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson spoke not only to how far she’s come as a player, but also to her importance to the Lynx. As the team’s unquestioned leader and go-to scorer, Collier inevitably got the lion’s share of credit for Minnesota’s second-place regular-season finish, and her statistical production put her in conversations centered on the league’s elite players.

The 2024 Lynx’s legacy should be one of selflessness

Ultimately, the Lynx fell just short in the Finals, and the controversial ending put even more of a damper on what was already a heartbreaking result for Minnesota.

Reeve—who took home a bit of regular-season hardware herself with her fourth Coach of the Year honor—stood up for her team in front of the media, making it known that she believed the Lynx deserved better in their final game. Ever the optimist, she also dropped a gem of a comment when asked to describe what kind of message she shared with her players. An emotional Reeve said:

We never got “the disease of me.”No one ever put themselves first. That’s incredibly difficult to find in this day and age … I wouldn’t trade them for anyone.

Reeve went on to mention the number of people who were personally impacted by Lynx basketball and the number of people who had reached out to her to say how much they enjoyed watching the team play. At such a critical juncture in the WNBA’s growth, that certainly speaks for something: both longtime fans and newcomers appreciated what the Lynx brought to the court, very nearly completing a Cinderella story and winning over countless fans in the process. And given how far Minnesota got in 2024, don’t be surprised if the team runs it back next season; the infrastructure is already in place, and as one of the WNBA’s most respected franchises, the Lynx are likely already evaluating how they can get back to the Finals in 2025.