The Lynx beat the Aces 92-87 on Saturday night in Las Vegas, and the question I asked in Friday’s preview got answered inside six minutes of third-quarter basketball.
The question was whether the Portland collapse was tired legs or a habit. Minnesota let a 29-point lead shrink to one in the final two minutes on Wednesday, and it took Kayla McBride’s late steals and a driving layup to get out of it. I wrote that a top seed cannot do that to A’ja Wilson and live.
For a half, Las Vegas got the reply it wanted. The teams reached the break tied 48-48 after seven ties in the second quarter alone, Wilson was on her way to 32 points and 11-of-12 from the line, and Michelob ULTRA Arena had the game it paid for.
Then the Aces missed nine of their first 10 shots after halftime and shot .231 for the quarter. McBride’s free throws started an 8-0 run, Minnesota won the period 26-16, and the lead was 62-52. Becky Hammon’s postgame accounting was blunt: “We weren’t scoring the basketball. We were stuck on 52 points.”
The other preview thread was the Collier-Miles stagger, and Saturday stress-tested it rather than confirming it. Collier picked up fouls and sat in stretches Cheryl Reeve would have preferred to schedule herself. Nia Coffey covered the gap with 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting, three of them from the arc, and the margin never turned back into a coin flip. Six Lynx scored in double figures. Natasha Howard finished with 13 and 11, McBride had 13, Courtney Williams 12.
Olivia Miles had 23 points and eight assists a week after hanging 26 and seven on the same team at Target Center on Aug. 8, and Reeve’s read was the correct one: “Liv’s decision-making in the second half was exceptional. I thought she really found the easy pass.”
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Vegas still got it back to three. Wilson is the reason any of these games stay close, and NaLyssa Smith’s 17 points and 12 rebounds, nine of them offensive, kept manufacturing extra possessions. This is where the Portland slide gets settled: Collier answered with a deep three under seven minutes to go, and she and Williams closed it from the line in the final minute. “They went on a couple of runs, but I think we did a good job of clogging the paint, doing what we do, getting stops, and making our own runs,” Collier said.
My mom reads every piece and replies with exactly one emoji. The Portland recap earned the grimace. Saturday got the flexed bicep.
I said Lynx by 9 and collected five, which is the correct price when Wilson shoots 11-for-12 at the stripe. The lapse in Oregon was tired legs, not a habit.
Minnesota is 29-7, three and a half games clear of Golden State, and has won 14 of 15 since July 8. Saturday was the franchise’s 15th road win in a single season, a record, with six weeks still on the schedule.
The defending champions are a measuring stick now. Nothing more.
