This is it – the one for all the marbles. A remarkable WNBA final will finally be decided on Sunday in New York.
Minnesota seeks its first title after the dynasty. New York is aiming for its first-ever championship.
The top two teams in the WNBA for much of the season will do one last dance and see who will still be standing when the music stops.
Here’s what needs to happen to make sure this team is indeed the Lynx:
-Bottle Ionescu: Sabrina Ionescu owns the shot of the series – her game-winner at the end of Game 3. But other than that, the star point guard has been largely ordinary through four games of these Finals. She was 5 of 15 from the field with four turnovers Friday. She shot 8 for 26 from the field in the first game. Even in that third game, Ionescu had seven points before sinking two triples in the final minute.
His only good performance in this series came in Game 2, which was New York’s best team performance to date.
When Ionescu is bottled up — something Kayla McBride has done masterfully over the course of four games — the pressure mounts on Breanna Stewart to do much of the team’s creation, usually having to manufacture her own shot. Faced with this responsibility, she herself had difficulty. Slow down Ionescu, piss off New York’s typically powerful offense.
Keep moving – Minnesota has been difficult to guard at different points in this series. But these stretches systematically depend on the movement of the ball. When the Lynx share the ball and get going, they tend to find open looks.
New York still hasn’t found a way to systematically cover the Lynx pick and rolls. But too often in the first four games, Minnesota stagnated offensively, stopped running, dribbled too much and settled for long, contested jump shots. This almost ended the Lynx’s title hopes in game four.
Minnesota needs to play at least 35 minutes of good offense if it wants to win the title on the road on Sunday.
Rotation Dominance – Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve made a wise adjustment to her rotations Friday – No. 1, not sitting Napheesa Collier for even a minute. But the real change came in switching to Dorka Juhasz over Myisha Hines-Allen in the backup center minutes. Juhasz is more mobile and allows Minnesota to maintain its spread defense. The Liberty struggled to score when on the floor Friday.
Reeve also extended Cecilia Zandalasini’s minutes to 16, and she responded with some key buckets and the best plus-minus of any Lynx player.
Reeve’s lineup choices put Minnesota in the best possible position to win Friday. More will be needed in Game 5.
