The Minnesota Lynx entered the 2024 season with a wave of new faces on the roster, adding seven players to the squad who didn’t appear with the team in 2023.
Some might think that would result in a slower start to the year as players learn how to play together and the coaching staff figures out what rotations will look like. For Minnesota, that hasn’t been the case. In fact, it’s been the complete opposite with the Lynx having the chemistry of a team that has played a full season together.
The Lynx have started the season as one of the top teams in the WNBA now over the quarter mark in the 2024 campaign. That early-season success could be credited to a multitude of things, including the team’s improvement defensively and from three, as well as the quickly established chemistry.
But another thing that has fed into the success of the Lynx, and will continue to play a large role in their success moving forward, is the depth on the roster—something Minnesota hasn’t necessarily had the luxury of featuring to this extent the past few seasons.
“If you saw our free agency, we got so many good people,” Napheesa Collier said. “We have so much depth too, it’s not just our starting five. We have (Olivia Époupa) coming off the bench, (Cecilia Zandalasini) … we had Bridget (Carleton) before, Diamond (Miller) when she comes back (from injury). We just have such depth. It goes down the line where, if you take someone away, there’s someone right behind them to make up for that.
“It’s so hard to play against teams like that. I saw this coming, it’s just really exciting to see it play out. We’re going to get better as our chemistry grows,” Collier added.
If you ask any player or coach on the Lynx, they will say things were different on the team right out of the gate in training camp. The chemistry was forged quickly, the energy was there from the get-go and everyone understood their role while attempting to thrive in whatever role they held.
“Since day one, the energy was just kind of different,” Kayla McBride said. “The chemistry is just so organic. There’s nobody forcing or trying to do anything outside of themselves, everybody is just coming into the gym as themselves and it just works. We have great communication. Yeah, we have hard times and we hold ourselves accountable for things and so does the coaching staff. But everything is so internal, our connection. Those are the best defensive teams I’ve been on, when we have chemistry off the court. I think you see that.
Love the Lynx starters losing their minds over Alissa Pili pic.twitterp>— DFAntastic (@PhillyTradesman) June 1, 2024
“Everybody on our team is very confident in who they are as players. Whatever their story is, whether they’ve been in the league six years or if it’s their first year,” McBride continued. “Everybody who is here, t…
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