This offseason already wasn’t going well for the Minnesota Lynx. The team lost both Alanna Smith and Jessica Shepard to the Dallas Wings, putting the frontcourt in an iffy situation. That situation is now even iffier.
That’s because the team’s best player, Napheesa Collier, is currently sidelined with an ankle injury. It’s been unclear when she would return, but the team has finally issued a timeline for Collier, and it isn’t great!
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Napheesa Collier injury update
Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier | Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images
In late March, Collier underwent surgery on her left ankle. This is in addition to surgery on her right ankle back in January, which caused her to miss the entire Unrivaled season.
Now, the Lynx are saying that Collier won’t resume on-court activities until early June, and since “on-court activities” doesn’t necessarily mean “playing basketball games,” the question becomes how much time Collier will need to ramp back up to actually competing for the Lynx.
The WNBA regular season starts early this year, with the Lynx playing their first game on May 10. Being out for all of May already has Collier sidelined for the first eight games of the season. If we were generous and said she could play by the second half of June, that’d still be an additional six games missed, and there’s no guarantee she’d even be ready to return by then.
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It’s a messy situation for the Lynx, because Collier is vital to the team’s hopes of contending this season. The longer she’s out, the worse the outcome for Minnesota.
What now for the Lynx?
Minnesota Lynx forward Dorka Juhasz | Matt Krohn-Imagn Images
Here’s my best guess at what a Collier-less starting lineup looks like for the Lynx.
That’s not the worst starting five in the WNBA, but it’s also not great, and the only bench player really worth even mentioning here is rookie point guard Olivia Miles. I sincerely don’t know if this is a playoff roster without Collier. If she was out the full season, I’d heavily lean toward “no.”
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I can’t imagine a world where Cheryl Reeve is content with tanking, and the fact that the WNBA draft lottery is based on two-year records means that even if the Lynx missed the playoffs, they’d likely end up with worse lottery odds than every other team, but I do think the team needs to have some perspective here about what this roster is doing.
You don’t need to actively tank, because the chances you land a pick high enough for JuJu Watkins, Madison Booker or Hannah Hidalgo aren’t going to be high. But at the same time, you don’t need to rush your franchise cornerstone back at the risk of re-injury, because even with Collier in the lineup, this doesn’t feel like a championship-contending team. The downgrades in the frontcourt are too great, and the team is basically hoping Juhasz is going to have a breakout season after finding major success in Europe this past season. But that’s not a guarantee, and offseason additions Howard and Coffey likely have their best days behind them.
The New York Liberty and the Las Vegas Aces are the clear best teams in the WNBA this season. Even once Collier is back, it’s hard to see the Lynx competing with them, so why not just view this as a reloading year? Let Collier sit until you’re 100 percent sure she’s as close as humanly possible to 100 percent, and in the meantime, just see what happens. Not tanking, but also not panicking if you do lose a lot of games, because a deep 2027 WNBA Draft class can help this team bounce back quickly.
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This article was originally published on www.fansided.com as Napheesa Collier injury update makes this a gap year for the Minnesota Lynx.
