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(Photo credit: Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images)
The Minnesota Lynx are playing to save their season against the Phoenix Mercury in Game 4 of their contentious WNBA semifinal playoff series Sunday, and they will do so without star forward Napheesa Collier and coach Cheryl Reeve.
Collier was declared out because of a left ankle injury, and Reeve was suspended for her conduct after the play that caused it.
Collier rolled her left ankle when Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas swooped in to steal her dribble and turn it into an uncontested layup, the decisive basket with 21.8 seconds remaining in 84-76 win Friday that gave the host Mercury a 2-1 edge in the best-of-five series.
Reeve ran onto the court and confronted referees. She was restrained by members of her staff and unleashed an expletive-laced critique of the officiating in the postgame press conference.
The Lynx’s climb to their second straight appearance in the WNBA Finals has become exponentially steeper.
‘You leave it where it’s at, right?’ Lynx guard Courtney Williams said after Game 3, ‘and you stay locked in.
‘We’re still here, and we’re still a great team. Man, when it comes to the playoffs or any game, you can’t get too high. You can’t get too low. We still got a game we have to win.’
The Lynx, who won a franchise-record 34 games this season, played 11 games without Collier, who missed most of that time with a right ankle injury. They were 27-6 and averaged 88.2 points per game with Collier this season were 7-4 while averaging 79.5 without her.
Minnesota has lost the last two games of the series. It has not lost three in a row this season.
Collier, the runner-up in the MVP voting this season, was the first player in league history to shoot at least 50 percent from the floor, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the free-throw line while averaging 20 points per game.
She averaged 22.9 points and 7.3 rebounds per game in the regular season and has 49 points and five threes in this series. She did not score in the fourth quarter of Game 3 when the Mercury outscored the Lynx 21-9.
Williams (19.0 points, 6.2 assists) and Kayla McBride (18.0 points) are the Lynx’s other double-digit scores in this series. Guard Natisha Hiedeman had 19 points off the bench in Game 3.
‘We just won one game,’ Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts said after taking the series lead. ‘But the one thing that we are is … we are tough, and we’ll fight and compete.’
The Mercury are attempting to reach their first WNBA Finals since 2021, when they fell to Kahleah Copper and the Chicago Sky. Game 5 of this series would be in Minneapolis on Sunday.
Copper, now with the Mercury, has been one of the Mercury’s bright lights in this series, which included the Mercury’s record-breaking comeback from a 20-point deficit in an 89-83 overtime victory in Game 2. The Mercury scored the final nine points in Game 3.
Thomas neared her second playoff triple-double with 21 points, nine rebounds and eight assists Friday. Satou Sabally had 23 points and Copper had 21, her second 20-point game in the series while working against a smaller Lynx backcourt.
The Mercury, re-made in the offseason when they added Thomas and Sabally, have rallied around an identity as a disrespected underdog. It began when they were not ranked highly in the preseason
‘ESPN, all of them, they ranked us really low,’ Sabally said. ‘To me, it’s a disrespect toward those two (Thomas and Copper). That just fuels us. We’re the underdogs. We have something to prove to ourselves more than to others, and I think this is really what bonds us.’
The Lynx, who led the league in field-goal percentage at 47.2 in the regular season, are shooting 43.9 against the Mercury and are 22 of 81 (27 percent) from distance.
–Field Level Media
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