WNBA: Could Napheesa Collier join the 50/40/90 club?

With eight wins and zero losses, the Minnesota Lynx are well on the path to repeat, if not best, last year’s 30-win season. Approaching the end of the season’s first quarter, let’s dive into what’s working for Minnesota.

MVPhee… please?

Napheesa Collier is rightfully praised for a plethora of abilities, but perhaps her most under-appreciated skill is her evolution. For the last three seasons, it’s felt like surely we’re seeing the peak form of Phee. And every following year, she levels up.

Through seven games this season, she’s forcing the hand of MVP voters. At a league-leading 25.1 points per game, she’s practically filling out the ballots herself. As remarkable as it is, her scoring pales in comparison to her defensive dominance. In last week’s win over the Seattle Storm, Phee recorded five blocks and two steals…in the first quarter alone.

Collier is shooting a career-best percentage from 3, 2, and the free throw line. I jokingly referenced the 50/40/90 club in a recent article about the Mystics while talking about rookie Sonia Citron’s shooting splits. Famously, only 11 players across the WNBA, NBA and G-League have ever joined the club. Elena Delle Donne is the only women’s player to ever accomplish those splits, and she did so on less than 20 points per game in 2019. When I joked about Citron’s candidacy after her hot start, I didn’t actually believe she would come close to joining the club; it was more-so a fun anecdote. However, Collier truly has a chance at being the second W player to be crowned in the pantheon of efficiency. Her biggest challenge, similarly to most candidates, will be maintaining a 90+ percent free throw clip.

Return of the M(a)cBride

Making a joke about “Return of the Mack” and Kayla McBride’s return to league play is much, much easier to make orally. I apologize to everyone who had to struggle reading through that section title.

Anyways, Kayla McBride is back! Minnesota’s premier veteran has returned for her 12th season, joining the team a few games late after being granted some much-needed rest following her playing for Fenerbahçe durning the EuroLeague Women and Turkish KBSL playoffs after competing in Unrivaled through the winter. Per usual, she’s been a beacon of consistency. In her first four games, she’s shot 52.4 percent from 3, fourth in the league. She’s struggling with the turnover bug, but four games isn’t nearly enough of a sample size to validate that concern.

Overall, it’s too early to make any claims at all about how she’s playing, but it’s just nice to see Minnesota back at full strength. The Lynx are in this season for the long haul, and depth is the key to prevent exhaustion. With McBride, Collier, Courtney Williams, Alanna Smith and Natisha Heideman at the controls, Minnesota has more than enough to go the distance.

Where’s the worry?

Honestly, there aren’t any real worries about the Lynx right now. Any sustained doubts about their ability to win a championship are due one thing: the New York Liberty.

The Liberty bested the Lynx in last year’s finals, and this year, they’ve refused to afford the Lynx any breathing room. The Lynx are second in the league in points per 100 possessions, assists per 100 possessions, field goal percentage and 3-point percentage. The Liberty are first in each of those categories.

The Lynx also have yet to face some of the league’s top talent. They haven’t played the Liberty, the Las Vegas Aces nor the surging Atlanta Dream. Their only wins worth noting at all were two against the Mercury, who are having a quietly solid start to the year, and the Storm. Two of those three wins were by two possessions or less.

I’m not trying to criticize the Lynx for not winning by enough—winning games is far more important than margin of victory. All I’m trying to show is that the Lynx’s impressive 8-0 record paints a picture of invincibility that hasn’t yet been tested. It may very well not be tested for a while. Their next three games are against repeated opponents. The next time they face a new team will be the Aces on June 17. Las Vegas has been shaky, but they still boast a museum of individual talent that should give Minnesota a new challenge. Until then, a 10-0 start and a few more post-game Electric Slides seems likely.