The Minnesota Lynx announced Wednesday that the organization has finalized its roster ahead of the 2019 WNBA season opener this weekend.
With the deadline to cut down the final regular season roster taking place Thursday, teams around the league were required to narrow down their rosters to no more than 12 prior to the start of the year.
Heading into the day on Wednesday, Minnesota carried 14 players on its current training camp roster, with that number needing to be cut down by two by Thursday.
Ahead of that deadline, the Lynx announced Wednesday morning that they waived forward Erlana Larkins.
Larkins, who played a total of 13 minutes and recorded two rebounds, one steal and one block during the preseason for the Lynx, re-signed with the organization prior to training camp after playing in 13 games in Minnesota in 2018.
Later on Wednesday afternoon as the team finished up practice in Minneapolis, Lynx head coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve told the media that Temi Fagbenle will start the year on the temporarily suspended list.
Fagbenle, who is entering her third season in the WNBA in 2019, averaged 3.1 points, 2.0 rebounds and 0.6 assists in 9.4 minutes per game in 2018. She put together a nice stretch at the end of the summer a year ago in a backup role behind Sylvia Fowles in the Lynx rotation.
With those pair of moves, the roster is officially set and is down to the required 12-player total.
It will be interesting to see if the roster will continue to change as the year progresses, especially with the expected return of wing Cecilia Zandalasini at some point and the possible return of forward Rebekkah Brunson yet this summer.
When it comes to the return of Zandalasini at some point in the future, you would think that Shao Ting — who has made the final roster after taking part in training camp for the second time with the Lynx — will be the player Minnesota would waive to make room for Zandalasini.
When it comes to the potential return of Brunson, which is still up in the air as if she will even return at all this summer, the Lynx could waive one of the newcomers they traded for on Tuesday — that being Alaina Coates and Stephanie Talbot — to add Brunson to the roster.
This is the first time in the last few years at least that Minnesota has entered the regular season with a full 12 players on its roster. Typically, the Lynx have gone into the year with 11 players and have added a player in the latter portion of the summer as postseason play comes closer.
With the start to the season inching closer and closer, the roster for the Lynx is officially set (for now). And it’s definitely a different look than what we’ve been accustomed to in years past.
Below is the full 2019 Lynx regular season roster:
Minnesota will get the regular season underway at 7 p.m. Saturday at Target Center when it takes on former assistant coach and newly-hired head coach James Wade and the Chicago Sky in downtown Minneapolis.
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