Lynx lead WNBA at 31-9 and pursue title redemption
The Minnesota Lynx lead the WNBA regular season and are pursuing title redemption as the playoffs approach, sitting 31-9 with four regular-season games remaining as of 16 September 2026. The club has positioned itself atop the standings after a season in which it has led the league for nearly all of the campaign.
A decade earlier, Minnesota captured its fourth franchise title at Williams Arena (now known as The Barn) in Minneapolis on 4 October 2017, when coach Cheryl Reeve sent Sylvia Fowles into Game 5 of the WNBA finals. Fowles scored 17 points and broke her own WNBA rebounds record with 20; Maya Moore had 18 points and 10 rebounds; Lindsay Whalen recorded 17 points and eight assists; and Seimone Augustus added 14 points, six assists and six rebounds, with Fowles named finals MVP.
Natasha Howard, a forward on that 2017 roster who has returned to the Lynx this season as a free agent and earned All-Star honors, recalled the mindset that carried the team then. “It was a chip on everybody’s shoulders”, she said, adding: “It was like … we came out hungry. We was hungry because we kind of felt some time away when we lost against, in 2016, against the Sparks. So we were like, ‘It’s payback time.’ And the whole season, that whole season, we were just giving every team the business.”
Minnesota’s recent postseason history includes a loss in the 2024 finals to the New York Liberty that Reeve later described as “stolen” from her team by bad officiating, and a 2025 postseason exit after the Lynx entered as the top seed but bowed out in the conference semi-finals when Napheesa Collier injured both ankles and the Phoenix Mercury won three games in a row.
Clare Duwelius, who was the Lynx basketball operations coordinator in 2017 and is now executive vice-president and general manager of Unrivaled, emphasised how injuries affected the 2017 campaign and why the title then mattered. “Whalen went through her hand surgery, and we were rolling at the beginning of the season, and then that was our first kind of turbulence,” she said, and she noted Seimone Augustus “had a long kind of runway of having knee problems, and she was battling that all season long.” Duwelius added: “So I think that’s why the regular season was kind of a microcosm of what we wanted to produce ultimately in the playoffs and in the finals.”
Duwelius also offered firm praise for Reeve, calling her “one of, in my opinion, the best to ever do it. Not because of being the winningest – it is because she’s the winningest coach, but it is what she’s able to do with whatever roster she has. That’s what sets her apart,” she said. “She just is really special and unique in the way that she can maximize their output. And I think that’s what sets her apart.”
Rookie Olivia Miles has been a driving force this season; she was drafted as the No 2 overall pick by the Lynx this year after spending one season at TCU and four at Notre Dame, and she leads Minnesota in points (19.7) and assists (6.0). The article notes Miles has shattered several league rookie records, is the runaway favorite for rookie of the year and is even being mentioned in MVP conversations. Duwelius described Miles as “the person that was like the adult in the room,” and added: “Whenever we sat down, I knew I could trust what she was telling me. … She’s kind of wise beyond her years and really smart. She comes from a really smart family, and her parents [Yakubu, a software developer who immigrated to the US from Jamaica, and Maria, a chemical engineer] are obviously very accomplished, [and] she just has that maturity to her.” Duwelius also said Miles and Reeve “have such a special relationship”, and concluded: “It also could be what takes the Lynx exactly where they want to go.”
The immediate milestone for Minnesota is securing home-court advantage: the Lynx can clinch the top playoff seed as soon as Friday. The central question for the roster, the coaches, the front office and the fans is whether that seed will translate into the championship the franchise and its supporters are seeking.