Lynx Mailbag: Hanging Onto a Playoff Spot, Brunson and Season Tickets

Mandatory Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

As the Minnesota Lynx enter a fresh week in the 2019 campaign, now 24 games into the WNBA season, we are officially hitting the final stretch of the regular season.

With Minnesota currently at 12-12 overall while having won two of its last three games, the Lynx trail the first-place Washington Mystics (17-7), who they fell to on Sunday afternoon, by five games. Here’s a full look at the league standings:

With 10 games remaining before postseason play begins, it’s time to talk the playoff picture and where the Lynx stand as they try and return to the postseason once again in 2019.

Although Minnesota is a handful of games back from obtaining one of the top spots in the league, the WNBA standings are still fairly neck-and-neck with less than a dozen games left to play.

If the season ended on Monday, which it obviously doesn’t, the Lynx would grab the No. 7 seed in the playoffs, back five games of the No. 1 seed as mentioned earlier. But Minnesota remains just 2.5 games back of jumping up as high as the No. 5 seed in the postseason picture and could improve its position in the final 10 games.

Although they could jump in the standings, the Lynx are also sitting just a half-game ahead of the Phoenix Mercury (11-12) and the eighth seed.

The good news, however, is that Minnesota is now three games ahead of both the Indiana Fever (9-16) and New York Liberty (8-15) and the No. 9 seed, which means the Lynx will likely be able to at least grab a playoff spot barring any collapse in the final 10 contests.

With a new week and the final portion of the regular season in full swing, let’s take a dive into some questions you submitted surrounding the Lynx:

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Marcie Anderson: Why doesn’t the arena acknowledge Rebekkah Brunson when she is there? The last time they introduced the Wolves player sitting next to her and ignored her. Also how is her concussion? I would love to see her back in a Lynx uniform.

When it comes to Rebekkah Brunson, this has been a hot topic for Lynx fans this season.

Brunson, who has yet to appear in a game or officially sign with a team this season, has continued to recover from a concussion she suffered during the latter portion of the 2018 season.

Although she is not technically a member of the team since she is not under contract and remains a free agent as of now, Brunson has been spotted around Target Center a few times this summer attending games.

When it comes to the acknowledgment of Brunson when she has appeared at Lynx home games, I wouldn’t read into the lack of acknowledging her too much. It could be as simple as the in-arena staff not feeling comfortable doing so with her playing status still up in the air. If she was officially retired, I’d imagine it would be a much different situation.

As far as how Brunson’s concussion is progressing, the organization has kept a lot of that specific information under wraps throughout the season, so her status is still uncertain.

If I were to bet on her playing this season or not, it’s not looking very likely that she will play in the WNBA this year. That of course doesn’t close the door on her returning next summer or even the outside chance that she does come back yet this year.

If she planned on retiring from playing, I’d imagine we would have already heard some sort of announcement regarding that news. I do believe she and the organization have continued to have dialogue on her progress as she attempts to battle back, but my guess is it’s likely we won’t see Brunson appear in a Lynx uniform in 2019.

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Jeremy Hernandez: Hope this question answers itself before your show, but any word on when season ticket renewal rate notices for 2020 are going out? The notices seem late this year. Also noticed most teams are not advertising 2020 season tickets yet either. Hopefully not a bad sign in terms of CBA negotiations.

When it comes to memberships, season tickets and more, most teams — not just in the WNBA — typically start to push out that information and start to advertise for the upcoming season at the end of the current campaign.

Such has typically been the case for Minnesota over the past few seasons. Unless certain teams are guaranteed not to reach the postseason, they generally hold off trying to market the next summer until the tail end of the present one.

As far as renewal information and more, the Lynx have the bulk of that information on their website.

I’d expect we start to hear more about the 2020 season memberships, season tickets, etc., as the 2019 regular season continues to wind down.

That will do it for this week’s mailbag. As always, thanks for submitting your questions and for reading, Lynx fans. Enjoy the week.

Submit Your Lynx Mailbag Question

Our Mitchell Hansen will continue to publish Lynx mailbags every other Monday throughout the course of the 2019 WNBA season here at Zone Coverage.

Have a question surrounding the Lynx that you would like answered? Submit them by tweeting him @M_Hansen13! The next Lynx mailbag will be on Monday, Aug. 26.

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