Kayla McBride scored 24 points, moving into the top 20 on the WNBA’s career scoring list as the Minnesota Lynx beat the Portland Fire 101-93 for their fifth straight win.
Napheesa Collier remains sidelined as she continues her recovery from offseason ankle surgery. Emma Čechová was sidelined with a right knee issue. Minnesota (20-6) leaned on McBride, who scored 24 points, her sixth straight 20-point game, going 9-for-14 with four 3-pointers. She passed Becky Hammon (5,841) for 20th on the all-time scoring list with an 86-76 lead with 5:14 left, raising her career total to 5,846.
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Natasha Howard added 16 points on 7-for-8 shooting to go with 3 blocks. Courtney Williams scored 15 points with 7 assists. Rookie Olivia Miles finished with 14 points and 10 assists for her latest double-double, and she also set a season high with four blocks.
Miles said she wasn’t tracking the numbers as they piled up.
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I saw I had eight assists pretty early and I told Mac, ‘Hit a few more threes for me,’ to get me that double-double,” Miles said. “But no, I just play, and if it comes in the flow of the game, then it comes.”
Dorka Juhász scored 12 points off the bench and played most of the fourth quarter. Anastasiia Kosu, known as Ola, added 4 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals in 13 minutes.
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“In terms of Ola’s influence, it was much more in line with how we want to play defensively. She was aggressive, denying actions, making her player hard to find, and just being difficult to play against,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Dorka had a confident game. We just didn’t even look down the bench toward the trainer, we just kept rolling.”
Miles opened the scoring with a 3-pointer for a 7-4 lead. Minnesota built its biggest lead of the night at 19 points. Portland (11-15) cut the deficit to 53-50 on a Bridget Carleton 3-pointer with 6:11 left in the third quarter, but Nia Coffey and McBride answered with back-to-back 3s, and the Fire got no closer until a late push.
Carleton, first overall pick by Portland in the expansion draft after seven seasons with Minnesota, scored 22 points with six 3-pointers against her former team. Carla Leite scored 21 points with 7 assists, and Sarah Ashlee Barker added 21 points on 9-for-14 shooting, stepping up as Gustafson and Samuelson were out.
Fire coach Alex Sarama stated that missing two rotation players was significant during the final leg of a lengthy road trip.
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“We never like making excuses, but obviously being down two important rotational players was significant,” Sarama said. “This was also the last stop on a really taxing road trip for us, and you could see our starters literally empty the tank. They gave everything they had tonight.”
Sarama said Barker has the green light to shoot when she’s given room.
“It starts in transition. She knows she has the green light,” Sarama said. “A contested shot for her is a good shot for us, and I want her taking those.”
Portland outscored Minnesota 33-26 in the fourth quarter to make the final margin respectable. The Fire made 13 of 30 3-point attempts as a team and scored 46 points in the paint to Minnesota’s 54. Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said her team’s defense still needs to catch up to its offense.
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“Right now, we’re not good enough defensively. We’re outscoring people, and we’ll take those wins when we can get them, but that’s not a recipe for long-term success,” Reeve said. “The best teams combine offense and defense. Right now we’re an adequate offensive team, and on some nights a really good one. But we’ve got to find our way defensively.”
Reeve highlighted transition defense; Sarama said Portland exploited it.
“We had players simply dribble straight through us for layups,” Reeve said. “We also can be much better helping one another. We were resistant to helping because we were worried about giving up threes. Well, when you do that, they score in the paint, and they still took 30 threes and made 13 of them.”
“What hurt us even more was our transition defense,” Sarama said. “Those emergency transition situations where we’re already at a disadvantage, and especially when you’ve got multiple hot shooters on the floor, we have to get back out to the three-point line instead of running into the paint. Minnesota did a really good job exploiting that.”
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Watching Carleton score 22 against her old team carried its own weight for Reeve.
“It sucked,” Reeve said. “I can say I’m happy for her, but we knew she was going to make more shots than she did last time.”
Saturday’s game celebrated Sylvia Fowles’ jersey retirement and Hall of Fame induction, now as Portland’s assistant coach.
“To experience it up close, to see the fans’ adulation for the players, the banners hanging in the arena, and the respect that’s shown, it reminds current players what this franchise is all about,” Reeve said.
The Fire host the Dallas Wings on Wednesday, while the Lynx play at the Seattle Storm on Monday.
