The Lynx host Golden State on Monday night (7:00 PM Central, USA Network, Target Center) at 31-7, three results from the No. 1 overall seed. The team walking into Target Center is the one doing the chasing.
The math is why this one matters. Golden State is 25-11 with eight games left, which caps the Valkyries at 33 wins and puts Minnesota’s magic number at three. A Lynx win Monday knocks off two at once — a Minnesota win and a Golden State loss in the same game — and the number goes to one. Nothing clinches Monday, but everyone in the building will know exactly how close it got.
Three, then one, then done.
Nakase’s redraw started early
Tuesday’s preview closed on the idea that Natalie Nakase would spend Monday redrawing everything. She got a head start. In Friday’s 73-70 loss at Chicago, the bench erased a 21-point deficit while Gabby Williams sat: the AP has her leaving two and a half minutes into the second half and never returning, with 2 points on 0-for-6. ClutchPoints reported it as a coach’s call, the starters watching the fourth while the reserves ran it. Laeticia Amihere went 7-for-7 for a career-high 16 and Janelle Salaün added 13.
Gabby Williams finished with two points on 0-for-6 in 14 minutes.
The blunt read afterward came from guard Veronica Burton: “We can’t put them in that position. We can’t continue to ask our bench to save us.” When the players are saying it out loud, the redraw is already underway.
Golden State owns the league’s best defensive rating at 101.3, a full three points clear of second. It has also scored 66 and 70 in its last two games, and the 66 came at home against this Minnesota team on Aug. 19. The defense travels. The offense clinched a playoff berth on Aug. 17 and has gone 0-2 since.
What Minnesota does not know yet
Courtney Williams left Friday’s win in Washington with an apparent lower-body injury in the final seconds, per the AP, and no team update has been reported through Sunday. Napheesa Collier sat that game for rest, her first absence since July 20, with no word yet on Monday. Olivia Miles settled her own ankle question by playing 29 minutes and scoring 24 on it.
Monday’s injury report is the whole answer. Anyone telling you more than that on a Sunday is guessing.
One number to carry in: Minnesota is 14-5 at Target Center and 17-2 everywhere else. The best team in the league, riding six straight wins and 16 of its last 17, is measurably worse at home than on the road.
Golden State has never beaten this franchise: seven regular-season losses plus last year’s two-game playoff sweep makes nine, three of them this season by three, six and eleven.
Prediction: Lynx by 10, and Nakase’s redraw arrives a game late.
