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Michael Voepel
The Minnesota Lynx will get the chance to defend their Commissioner’s Cup championship after they advanced to the final with Tuesday night’s 76-62 victory over the visiting Las Vegas Aces.
But there is concern about Lynx star Napheesa Collier, who left the game early with a back injury.
The Lynx will represent the West for the second year in a row in the WNBA’s in-season competition between the two conferences after finishing 5-1 in Cup play. They will host the July 1 final against the Indiana Fever, who advanced earlier Tuesday after a contentious 88-71 victory over the Connecticut Sun. The Fever were 4-1 in Cup play, as were the New York Liberty, but the Fever won the tiebreaker with their head-to-head win over the Liberty on Saturday.
Collier, who leads the WNBA in scoring and is the early MVP favorite, exited at the 7:57 mark of the third quarter and didn’t return. Coach Cheryl Reeve said there was no update after the game.
The Lynx trailed 39-32 when Collier left, but they rallied without her, led by Courtney Williams‘ 20 points. Minnesota also got 12 points off the bench each from Natisha Hiedeman and Diamond Miller.
Williams said the Lynx knew they had to step up their performance without Collier.
“Once Phee went out, I was like, ‘Everything that feels good has got to go up,'” Williams said of looking for her shot. “That ain’t hard for me. We’ve got to win. So whatever that looks like, that’s what I am going to do. I don’t think I take bad shots, so if I’m open, I’m going to shoot it.”
The Lynx won the Commissioner’s Cup trophy last year over the Liberty, who hosted that game at UBS Arena because their normal home, Barclays Center, was hosting the NBA draft.
Minnesota will be the host this year because the Lynx have a higher season winning percentage at 11-1 compared to the 6-5 Fever, who have won twice with Caitlin Clark back after she missed five games with a quad injury.
“I think the players are excited about that,” Reeve said of the Lynx getting to play the Cup final at Target Center in Minneapolis. “For our fans, I think it’s exciting. We know our opponent in Indiana is someone we haven’t seen yet. It’s great, but we have to put that in the drawer for now. We have other games we’ve got to work through.”
The Lynx will have four regular-season games before the Cup final; the Fever have five. Minnesota and Indiana won’t meet in the regular season until August, when they face off twice, and then play once in September.
The Commissioner’s Cup began in 2021 and has been won by Seattle, Las Vegas, New York and Minnesota. This year, the Cup schedule ran from June 1-17 with each team playing the others in its conference. With expansion team Golden State‘s addition this season, the West had six Cup games and the East had five.