‘It’s payback time’: the WNBA-leading Lynx are on the hunt for title redemption

Williams Arena (now known as The Barn) in Minneapolis was packed to capacity on 4 October 2017, when Cheryl Reeve sent Sylvia Fowles into Game 5 of the WNBA finals and watched her take off. Reeve, chasing her fourth championship after losing out in 2016, had learned her lesson the previous year, when she put Fowles back into a finals game too late.

Fowles answered the call. She racked up 17 points and broke her own WNBA rebounds record with 20. Her effort was matched by that of Maya Moore, with 18 points and 10 rebounds; Lindsay Whalen, who had 17 points and eight assists; and Seimone Augustus, who added another 14 points, six assists and six rebounds. The Lynx showed out, clinching the franchise’s fourth title, with Fowles named finals MVP.

The 2017 team brought the energy because there “was a chip on everybody’s shoulders”, recalls Natasha Howard, a forward on that championship-winning squad. That finals matchup between the Lynx and the Los Angeles Sparks was a repeat of the 2016 edition, when the Candace Parker-led Sparks took home the crown.

“It was a good season,” Howard tells the Guardian. She looks back on that game and more in her memoir The Vision Through My Lens: My Life in Basketball and Beyond, out this month. “That season 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.”

Ten seasons later, Howard is back with the Lynx, having returned this season as a free agent and earning All-Star honors. Drawing the parallel from 2017 to 2026 isn’t difficult to do. Just as they were then, the Lynx are hungry. And just as they did then, they are giving everybody in the league “the business”. Minnesota have been virtually unstoppable this year, having led the league for nearly all of the season and sitting in first place at 31-9 with four games left in the regular season. They can clinch the top playoff seed as soon as Friday.

But there’s a question that hangs over the head of the roster, the coaches, the front office, even the fans: can they take things all the way?

Minnesota have been here before. Their loss in the 2024 finals to the New York Liberty was a heavy – and controversial, given how Reeve later said the title was “stolen” from her team by bad officiating – blow. In 2025, the Lynx entered the playoffs as the top seed, but they bowed out in the conference semi-finals after star forward Napheesa Collier injured both ankles and the Phoenix Mercury won three games in a row.

But, Howard says, they’ve been here before.

“I feel like Minnesota could have won the championship last season,” said Howard, who played for the Indiana Fever in 2025. “So right now, it’s a chip on everybody’s shoulders, and for me, I see how Minnesota played last season and what they went through, and so, yeah, I’m going to have a chip on my shoulder as well because I’m on this team now.”

“Everybody thinks Minnesota is just a regular-season team … they think Minnesota is going to fold when it’s playoff time,” she continued. “But this is going to be a different story.”

Clare Duwelius, the basketball operations coordinator for the Lynx in 2017 who is now executive vice-president and general manager of the three-on-three league Unrivaled, thinks the Lynx have what they need to win. While acknowledging the obvious – she previously worked for Minnesota, and Collier is a co-founder and co-owner of Unrivaled – Duwelius also pointed out the 2017 season wasn’t an easy one for the Lynx in terms of that frequent WNBA disruption: injuries.

“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. “Seimone had a long kind of runway of having knee problems, and she was battling that all season long. It was just those kinds of things that were kind of ever-present, and that’s why I think this particular championship was so meaningful, because everyone had to work harder.”

The Game 5 loss in 2016 was tough, and the team didn’t want it to be the focal point for 2017, she added.

“But, definitely, it was in the back of everyone’s mind trying to avenge that heartbreaker,” 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.”

Of Reeve, who is the winningest coach in WNBA history even without a championship in the last 10 seasons, Duwelius was steadfast in her praise and defense. “Cheryl is 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’s 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.”

This year’s roster includes rookie Olivia Miles, who was drafted as the No 2 overall pick by the Lynx this year after spending one season at TCU and four at Notre Dame. To say Miles has infused the Lynx with an unexpected energy is selling her short – it’s fair to credit her as the force who has pushed the Lynx to where they are all season long. She leads Minnesota in points (19.7) and assists (6.0), has shattered several league rookie records as the runaway favorite for rookie of the year and is even being mentioned in MVP conversations.

Back in 2017, Miles was just starting her freshman year of high school at New Jersey’s Blair Academy. There’s no telling what she was doing that October night when the Lynx last won it all, but it wouldn’t be surprising if she was watching the game. It’s certainly not surprising she’s now the leader of a championship-caliber team, even if it is her first season in the WNBA.

Miles “was the person that was like the adult in the room,” when she came down to Miami as part of The Future is Unrivaled college summit, Duwelius said. “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.”

That maturity and trust is why Miles and Reeve “have such a special relationship”, Duwelius added, “knowing both of them and how they operate.” It also could be what takes the Lynx exactly where they want to go.