Hello, hoopheads! A quick reminder before I start waxing lyrical: you can find the first two installments in my WNBA preview series at these links, covering the Las Vegas Aces and Phoenix Mercury. This is the first Friday of the Post Presence era, which means it’s the first one I’m writing to you a little after midnight in the throes of early love with a just-released album. This week’s obsession is the second record by the indie rock band Friko, and it happens to be a perfect thematic fit for my next subject. That would be the Minnesota Lynx, who are certainly hoping that the 2026 season will be “Something Worth Waiting For.”
What happened last season?
This story actually begins in 2024, when the Lynx roared back from consecutive losing seasons to go 30-10 (.750) and make their first appearance in the WNBA Finals since 2017. That series went to a decisive Game 5 against the New York Liberty, a game which went to a controversial overtime before New York came out on top. As a Liberty fan who was in attendance, I am not going to apologize for any of it. That bitter loss fueled Minnesota — and in particular, ascendant superstar Napheesa Collier, the MVP runner-up in both 2024 and 2025 — to a runaway first place finish last season with a 34-10 (.773) record. The postseason was a different story, however, as the Lynx fell to the Mercury in four games in the semifinals. That extraordinarily contentious series will probably be best remembered for Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve going apeshit on a referee after a play late in Game 3 that saw Collier injured, and then for both Reeve and Collier launching verbal nukes at the league in subsequent press conferences. Ultimately, with the WNBA entering a new era of labor peace and fairer compensation while Collier is sidelined, the on-court part of the whole episode feels like it might have more of a lasting impact.
What’s the roster going to look like?
Back in my TV days, that would’ve been a banger of a segue, which I am now ruining by acknowledging it. Collier’s injury in the 2025 postseason looms large over the 2026 Lynx’s outlook, as she’s not expected to return to on-court activities until early June while recovering from March ankle surgery. I’m not going to hazard a guess as to how many games Phee will play this season or what percentage of herself she’ll be when she gets back, but the Lynx will be a significantly worse team until then. That is unfortunately just how it works when you’re missing a player who just had the league’s second-ever 50/40/90 season.
Minnesota will also have to go on without several other contributors to last year’s squad after losing two players to the expansion draft (Bridget Carleton and Maria Kliundikova) and four others in free agency (DiJonai Carrington, Natisha Hiedeman, Jessica Shepard and Alanna Smith). Those departures leave Collier and backcourt stars Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams as the only returning players among the nine who saw significant minutes in the playoffs, and leave the Lynx particularly thin in the frontcourt until Phee is back in the mix. That isn’t to say the cupboard is entirely bare, but incoming veterans Natasha Howard and Nia Coffey are both at the point in their careers where they’re much better suited to be complementary pieces supporting a player like Collier. The Lynx’s best hope for replacing Collier’s production is probably 26-year old former UConn and Ohio State star Dorka Juhász, who didn’t play in the WNBA in 2025 and hasn’t made much of an impact in the W yet, averaging 6.0 points per game with the Lynx in 2023 and 4.8 in 2024. She was, however, just named EuroLeague MVP, the youngest player to win that award, and there should certainly be an opportunity for her to step into the Phee-sized void in the early going.
I couldn’t wrap this up without also mentioning the Lynx’s freshly-selected point guard of the future, if not the present, Olivia Miles, the No. 2 pick in the recent WNBA draft. It remains to be seen just how much Reeve is going to put on the rookie, but I imagine the TCU superstar (by way of Notre Dame) will make an impact. She certainly did during her one season wearing my favorite color, which just saw her join my favorite hooper Sabrina Ionescu and Caitlin Clark on the very short list of players in the Her Hoop Stats database to average 19 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists per game during a college season (Clark did it three times lmao).
What’s the Marvel Snap deck?
The first two editions in this crossover-series-within-a-series were about how the Aces’ A’ja Wilson and Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas had direct analogs in their respective decks’ key cards. Today’s is more of a spiritual connection between the way the Lynx want to play and the way Marvel Snap decks built around the card Supergiant want to play. In both cases, the gameplan is to put points on the board efficiently in order to build a lead, then to leverage that lead to snuff out whatever the opponent might have in mind as far as mounting a comeback. I could torture the metaphor by pairing former WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Collier and Supergiant specifically, but I don’t really think it works as well as the Wilson and Thomas pairings with Zombie Galacti and Fantomex. More importantly, I don’t think Phee’s absence is going to change how Reeve wants her deck to function. It’s an approach that won her four WNBA titles in the 2010s before Phee arrived, after all.
Deck code is in the alt-text
What’s the expectation?
Given all of the talent Minnesota lost and the fact that Phee is going to miss some significant portion of the season, it’s hard to see the Lynx running away with the top seed in the playoffs again. Even home court in the first round might be off the table if Phee’s return to game action comes late enough. That said, if Phee is at the peak of her powers come the postseason, Juhász’s EuroLeague success carries into the WNBA and Miles’ transition to the pro game is smooth, I think there’s a title contender here. I don’t think the best-case scenario Lynx look as strong as the Aces or at least one other team I haven’t previewed yet, but the strongest team on paper doesn’t always come out on top once the tournament starts. Just ask the 2025 Lynx.