The Lynx beat the Fire 85-81 on Wednesday night in Portland, and no four-point win has ever worked harder to disguise what it almost was.
For twenty-eight minutes this was the game everyone expected. Minnesota led 64-35 with 8:16 left in the third quarter: a 29-point lead, on the road, against an expansion team, with Napheesa Collier cruising toward a 20-point, 9-rebound night and Kayla McBride burying three of her seven looks from deep. In Tuesday’s preview I said Lynx by 18. For twenty-eight minutes I was being conservative.
Then the Lynx stopped playing, in the most literal sense available to a team still wearing uniforms. Portland closed the third on a surge and opened the fourth with thirteen straight points, a 29-4 run across the quarter break that turned 64-35 into 68-64 and Moda Center into the loudest building in the league. The team that clinched a playoff berth last weekend spent eight minutes getting outworked by one that is 13-20.
Credit where the receipts demand it: Bridget Carleton put 16 on her old team, exactly the revenge night that seven professional seasons in Minnesota earn you, and Teja Oblak nearly triple-doubled the comeback with 11 points, 6 rebounds, and 9 assists. The Fire didn’t luck into that run. They took it.
The escape came down to the two players it was always going to come down to. McBride’s driving layup with 1:25 left made it 80-77, and Olivia Miles, who had a quiet 13 by her rookie-of-the-year standards, iced it from the line with 26.5 seconds to go. Natasha Howard’s 14-and-12 double-double was the night’s quiet load-bearing wall. Final: 85-81, 28-7, thirteen wins in the last fourteen games.
My mom reads every piece I write and responds with exactly one emoji. After the preview promised Lynx by 18, tonight earned the grimace.
How much should this worry anyone? Barely. It was one bad quarter in August, at the tail end of three games in five nights, and the top seed is already banked. The habit is the concern, not the outcome — Cheryl Reeve’s teams don’t usually need a McBride bailout against 13-20 opponents, and the film session before Saturday’s Aces rematch will not be gentle. Good. That’s the version of this team that wins in October.
The Lynx are 28-7. They owe me fourteen points and an apology.
