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At long last, Napheesa Collier is back on the basketball court. The Lynx superstar made her season debut on Wednesday and looked like she hadn’t missed a beat.
She dropped 24 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in an 86–76 win over the Storm, Minnesota’s seventh victory in a row as it sits atop the league with a 22–6 record. The Lynx will be the only team to hit the 20-win mark before this weekend’s All-Star break.
After finishing second in MVP voting in each of the past two seasons, Collier missed the first 27 games of the year as she recovered from offseason surgery on both of her ankles. Her absence made Minnesota unpredictable heading into the WNBA’s 30th season. The Lynx finished with the league’s best record last year at 34–10, but they were upset by the Mercury in the semifinals and fell short of the ultimate goal.
This year was about getting over the hump and chasing the franchise’s first title since 2017. Without Collier, that goal was in flux initially. Enter Olivia Miles, the No. 2 pick in the draft, who immediately arrived as one of the top players in the league. She’s an All-Star starter and should be a shoo-in for All-WNBA honors in her first season.
Add in two more All-Stars in Natasha Howard and Courtney Williams plus Kayla McBride’s continued excellence and the Lynx remained the WNBA’s best team even without their superstar. Now that Collier’s back, Minnesota is scary good. Plenty good enough to win it all this year.
Napheesa Collier’s return comes at the perfect time as Lynx make postseason push
Heading into the All-Star break, the Lynx will have at worst a two-game cushion on the Aces and the Valkyries who are currently tied for second place. Las Vegas and Golden State are also clear title threats, but what Minnesota has done without its perennial MVP candidate is astounding.
The Lynx have the second-ranked offense and defense, but when you put the full unit together, they are the WNBA’s best team and it’s not particularly close. Minnesota’s net rating of 10.3 sails far past Golden State (6.8) and Las Vegas (6.1). Although on somewhat small volume, Minnesota is the best three-point shooting team in the league—most of which is thanks to McBride—and is extremely effective near the rim, too.
Miles’s dazzling play has made the offense hum as her creativity on the ball created easy looks for her teammates and for herself. As the rookie star continued to impress each game, fans salivated at the thought of pick-and-rolls between Miles and Collier. However, Collier’s return brought a tiny bit of an unknown surrounding Miles’s role. Minnesota’s superstar will take a solid chunk of the volume—although Miles has played well beyond her years and is a top-10 scorer, could she be a victim of the circumstance?
If Collier’s first game back told us anything, Miles will still see her fair share of the team’s shot volume. In Wednesday’s win over Seattle, Miles had 13 points and six assists with two steals. Not the big scoring performance from her that we’ve seen as of recent, but she took 15 shots—just above her season average of 13.2 field-goal attempts per game.
Now, the pair instantly links up to become one of the best duos in the WNBA. With 16 games left in the regular season, Collier and Miles have ample time to gel ahead of the playoffs. While anything can happen in the postseason, which Minnesota learned all too well last year, the sheer roster talent is second to none. The Aces are still out there with their championship experience and the best player in the world in Wilson, but the Lynx look the part of a title front-runner.
That was the case without Collier, too. Now that she’s back, watch out.
"I've been so proud of them," Collier said of Minnesota’s dominance during her recovery via ESPN. "The blood, sweat and tears to get here—I've seen the behind the scenes every day of building the chemistry, the buy-in ... working with the best rookie, who is arguably an MVP candidate. ... For us to be in the No. 1 slot, you can never count us out."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Napheesa Collier’s Stellar Showing in Season Debut Is a Scary Sight for Rest of WNBA.
