The curtain rises on the final act of Minnesota’s regular season

MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly three weeks after their last competitive basketball game as a team, the Minnesota Lynx are ready to hit the floor again. Minnesota hosts the New York Liberty on Friday night as the WNBA world comes back together for one final act of regular season play before the playoff curtain rises and the lights shine brighter. 

It was not a conventional FIBA break for the Lynx in a couple of ways. Most notably, for the first time in more than a decade, head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve did not have any USA Basketball coaching responsibilities. Reeve guided USA women’s basketball to gold medals as head coach at both the 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup and 2024 Olympics, and served as an assistant coach during previous international cycles under Dawn Staley and Geno Auriemma.

Minnesota had plenty of representation in Berlin, which meant there was something of a depleted roster left to compete on the floor once practices resumed. Further depleting the Lynx were injuries to Olairi Kosu and Liatu King on the first day back, leaving Nia Coffey and Natasha Howard as the only available post players in the building.    

“A little bit different than the Olympic breaks,” Reeve told reporters on Monday after the first official Lynx practice following the tournament. “It wasn’t as long. Now, these guys are dying, because we only had seven players and Cheryl wants to try and keep getting better. So we didn’t always see eye to eye on how to do that while you guys were away, but we’re making it.”

Kosu has been ruled out for Friday night’s game against New York as she works her way back from what Reeve called a “plantar fascia issue.” King’s name is absent from the injury report and has been practicing in full. 

“It’ll be nice, you know, we get a couple players back, obviously, by the time we prepare for New York on Thursday we’ll be whole again,” Reeve said on Monday. “Nia and Tashi in particular, are looking forward to it. There’s never enough bigs so they got quite a few reps.”

Did somebody say McDonald?

Aside from Kosu, the Lynx are whole going into their game with New York, but in a different way. During the World Cup, Reeve and the Lynx made the decision to sign free agent guard Aari McDonald, who hasn’t played all season while recovering from multiple injuries to her right foot. McDonald played in 20 games and made 13 starts for Indiana last season before breaking a bone in her right foot in early August. McDonald re-injured the same foot playing with Unrivaled in February of this year. To make room for McDonald, Minnesota waived rookie point guard Eliška Joklová. 

McDonald may still be working her way back into the swing of things, but the combination of her talent and experience made for an opportunity Reeve and co. couldn’t pass up. 

“We were in a space like the last week going into the break where we thought it was like our last opportunity to see if we were at our final roster or if we could do something different,” Reeve said. “Particularly at that position, we had a couple of thoughts — to be honest Aari wasn’t on the list not because she wasn’t capable, but just because most of us thought she was still injured. She is from the standpoint that she’s not at the end of her recovery just yet, but we felt like this break was actually a really good time to kind of see where she was at.

“We still have some time between now and the end of the season. We felt like she was about as good as a prospect we could have to improve our situation.”

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McDonald has spent most of 2026 getting back to her old self. Making it back in time to participate in this WNBA season wasn’t a goal set in stone for her, but now that the opportunity has come she’s ready to contribute to a team with designs of winning a championship.  

“Of course being out for so long you want to land on a team,” McDonald told reporters after practice on Monday. “I didn’t have my sights set to play this season, but I was working my butt off regardless, and I was healthy. I started talking to Cheryl and everything happened so fast and, man, I’m just blessed to be here.”

McDonald averaged just a hair under 10 points per game with the Fever last year and shot a career-best 42.9% from the field. The highlight of her season was a 27-point explosion in a win against the eventual league runners-up in a 107-101 win against the Mercury on July 30.  

“We needed a player that we felt like we could put in the game in playoffs with experience,” Reeve said. “As much as we enjoyed [Joklová], [she] just simply doesn’t have the experience in the W, let alone the playoffs. So it was an opportunity that we felt like it was worth taking a swing on.”

Trending in the right direction

Heading into the FIBA break, Minnesota dropped two consecutive games for just the second time this year. Despite not ending August on a high note, Reeve is confident that Minnesota’s most recent run of play is a sign of good things to come as the team heads towards the playoffs. 

“Yeah, we had that July period that we were just not very good,” Reeve said when asked about the improvements made by Minnesota’s ‘player-led’ defense. “I mean, bad. You can say, ‘bad.’ We have definitely trended in a better place. I think it depends on who’s out there and how long they’ve been out there, etc … If I put in video of our first 10 games and I put in video of our last 10 games, you will see a difference in our sense of urgency and our physicality to compete with somebody for the spot. So those are things that are easy to clean up, just have to get more mindful with it.”

Minnesota can wrap up the No. 1 overall seed, and with it homecourt advantage for the duration of the postseason in short order with a couple of wins over the remaining four games. It won’t be easy as the Lynx kick things off by hosting the currently-No. 6 New York Liberty on Friday night, travel to Connecticut for a Sunday matinee with the Sun, and then finish things off with a home-and-home against the currently-No. 5 Indiana Fever. 

It could be looked at as a daunting slate of games, but the Lynx have seen movies like this one before and are well versed in making sure there’s no problem in accessing their midseason form from the jump.  

“Not with Cheryl, no,” Kayla McBride said with a laugh after Monday’s practice when asked if it’s a challenge for the team to ramp back up after an extended break. “It’s very easy, actually. It was good to get some rest. I slept a lot. We’re usually playing playoffs already. It’s weird timing, but I think with Cheryl and the staff, they’ve been doing a great job working us back in, working on the details, the small things that maybe we can’t work on in normal practices, it’s been good.” 

For a team still chasing its lofty ambitions, playing three out of four against fellow playoff teams presents the kind of challenge the Lynx want heading into the postseason. 

“You have to have a level of compete,” Reeve said. “Ultimately, you either have that or you don’t. You either want to win the possession or you don’t. You want to beat your opponent to the spot or you don’t. You can’t fake that kind of stuff. I think definitely we have trended in a much, much better place. We have a really great opportunity. We feel like we’re one of a handful of teams that can be great both defensively and offensively. If we can achieve that greatness, we have a chance to play for a long time.”