It’s just like old times for Minnesota and the Lynx — Target Center WNBA Final Game 3 reaction
The IX: Basketball Wednesday with Howard Megdal, Oct. 16, 2024
MINNEAPOLIS — Happy Basketball Wednesday, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. The New York Liberty appeared to have just found their equilibrium midway through the first quarter after an early onslaught by the Minnesota Lynx, keyed primarily by Kayla McBride, when Sabrina Ionescu fed Breanna Stewart just outside the lane. Stewart held the ball aloft, her impossibly-long wingspan a deterrent to anyone trying to reach it. But Courtney Williams flies when she jumps, swatting at the ball at her apex and knocking it away for a fast break the other direction. Williams took off from what felt like the free throw line, finishing over Ionescu and ultimately, knocking down her and-1 free throw as well.
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Basketball Wednesday
The roar that followed was ungodly loud in the Target Center. It was an appreciation of the moment, leavened by a history of what has come before. So much of what’s excited the world of women’s basketball this season has been unfamiliar, large crowds in new places. But for all the justified enthusiasm around what is a new world with dramatically different outcomes, and a matching set of increased expectations for what’s ahead, this year’s WNBA Finals have been a delightful renaissance of already-laid foundations.
To a certain extent, New York is new — I’ve seen plenty of the social media videos comparing Barclays to Westchester, and friends, let me tell you, they undersell the difference in feel. I vividly remember interviewing Jonquel Jones in a tiny stairwell, each of us crouching down to fit in that cramped corner of the arena as we chatted.
Still, New York had a long pre-Westchester era, and it’s been delightful to interact over these past two seasons with original Liberty fans who are struggling to recall whether now, or the best of The Garden years, qualifies as the best it’s ever been. (The general consensus? The best is yet to come.)
Stathead Stat of the Week
Breanna Stewart had 21 points, five assists, seven steals, and eight rebounds in the Liberty’s Game 2 victory. She’s just the second player in WNBA history to have 20-5-5-5 in the Finals.
Stathead is your all-access pass to the Basketball and College Basketball Reference databases. Our discovery tools are built for women’s basketball fans like you. Answer your questions in a matter of seconds.
But Minnesota feels like a fan base who waited many years to return to past glory — which Lynx fans are. This is a WNBA team with massive success in its history, long enough ago that the gathered, amped-up crowd spent Tuesday evening letting out pent-up emotion, but recent enough that everyone assembled remembered precisely how to make the Liberty feel them. In this league of change, underfunded and folding franchises littering its history, how beautiful to behold this Lynx team, which never stopped drawing fans — thank you, Carley Knox — and rebuilt an entire roster, under fundamentally different principles, particularly on offense, spearheaded by the same Cheryl Reeve.
Things are the same, in other words, just turned up a bit, volume-wise, from those Lynx championship years of 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. Reeve called those battles with the Los Angeles Sparks “a glimpse into the future”, and that phrase captured precisely how it feels to cover the WNBA now, having done so during the height of that rivalry.
“People loved those teams, but we didn’t necessarily have the full on commitment around us, ” Reeve said when I asked her what had changed. “You know, whether it was a city taking notice, but I do think it goes back to where the women’s game has come, the excitement.”
The signage is in every mall, every corner, little QR codes – buy playoff tickets! – but just enthusiasm, too. On every bus, the marquee across the front — Go Lynx! The league, willed to be impossible by a collective effort, is now impossible to ignore. And nobody wants to! Not in Minneapolis, especially.
For all the early joy, the crowd, veteran observers, all understood the danger posed by Breanna Stewart deciding to impose her individual will on this game in the third quarter, hair-trigger cheers from 19,521, a Lynx record, tinged with worry as Stewart’s arms were seemingly everywhere on defense and no shot was too tough to sink as New York erased a double-digit Minnesota lead.
The 2024 Liberty are always a moment away from an 8-0 run, and their final one of the night came in the last two minutes, a Ionescu three extending New York’s lead to four. The Minnesota crowd was quieter now, but no one left. Few people even sat down. Same when Ionescu hit the three to win it. No one, not a soul, was going anywhere, wanted to be anywhere else.
They were shocked, sure, but eventually filing out, they’d seen this happen. The Nneka Ogwumike shot to win the 2016 title for the Sparks. (Ask them about the missed call with 1:14 left sometime!) This shot reminded me of Chelsea Gray’s rainbow to win Game 1 in 2017, just from 28 feet out.
The Lynx won the title that year. So there was no panic amid the shock. A lot of institutional memory filed out of Target Center Wednesday night. And the wins and losses forged a bond that will bring them back Friday night, and for many, many years to come. A lot of people arrived in women’s basketball this year. A huge number of the 19,521 who packed Target Center Wednesday have been here for a long time.
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This week in women’s basketball
Noa Dalzell on Courtney Williams’ dad, Don.
Jonathan Tannenwald on the Breanna Stewart-Napheesa Collier axis.
This oral history of the Liberty is worth reading for the Westchester shade alone, but so much more.
Danielle Lerner on the Houston Angels is terrific.
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Five at The IX: Game 3 WNBA Finals reaction
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Written by Howard Megdal
Howard is the founder of The Next and editor-in-chief.
