Williams Arena (now known as The Barn) in Minneapolis was packed to capacity on 4 October 2017, when Cheryl Reeve sent Sylvia Fowles into Game 5 of the WNBA finals and watched her take off. Reeve, chasing her fourth championship after losing out in 2016, had learned her lesson the previous year, when she put Fowles back into a finals game too late. Fowles answered the call.
She racked up 17 points and broke her own WNBA rebounds record with 20. Her effort was matched by that of Maya Moore, with 18 points and 10 rebounds; Lindsay Whalen, who had 17 points and eight assists; and Seimone Augustus, who added another 14 points, six assists and six rebounds. The Lynx showed out, clinching the franchise’s fourth title, with Fowles named finals MVP.
The 2017 team brought the energy because there “was a chip on everybody’s shoulders”, recalls Natasha Howard, a forward on that championship-winning squad. That finals matchup between the Lynx and the Los Angeles Sparks was a repeat of the 2016 edition, when the Candace Parker-led Sparks took home the crown. She looks back on that game and more in her memoir The Vision Through My Lens: My Life in Basketball and Beyond, out this month.
We was hungry because we kind of felt some time away when we lost against, in 2016, against the Sparks. So we were like, ‘It’s payback time.’ And the whole season, that whole season, we were just giving every team the business.” Ten seasons later, Howard is back with the Lynx, having returned this season as a free agent and earning All-Star honors. Drawing the parallel from 2017 to 2026 isn’t difficult to do.
Just as they were then, the Lynx are hungry. And just as they did then, they are giving everybody in the league “the business”. Minnesota have been virtually unstoppable this year, having led the league for nearly all of the season and sitting in first place at 31-9 with four games left in the regular season.
They can clinch the top playoff seed as soon as Friday. But there’s a question that hangs over the head of the roster, the coaches, the front office, even the fans: can they take things all the way? Minnesota have been here before.
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