It appears as though Maya Moore’s future in the WNBA with the Minnesota Lynx is filled with uncertainty.
According to a report during his weeknight sportscast on Wednesday night, WCCO’s Mike Max reported that Moore is unsure about her future in Minnesota and if she wants to return to the Lynx during the summer of 2019.
Max mentioned that Moore could consider retirement, ask for her way out of Minnesota via trade or consider taking a summer off from playing the WNBA, something we’ve seen in the league as recently as Diana Taurasi doing so a few years ago to focus on playing overseas.
The Lynx organization and head coach/general manager Cheryl Reeve released a statement Thursday afternoon in response to the reports and rumors surrounding Moore.
In the statement, Reeve said, “We have been in close contact with Maya Moore and together, are deciding the best way to approach next season.”
This news comes less than a week after it was announced by the league that Moore had received a core designation as a free agent, which is basically being franchised tagged by the Lynx preventing her to sign elsewhere for the upcoming summer while giving Minnesota exclusive negotiating rights with Moore.
Although the statement from Reeve and the Lynx is pretty vague, the thought of Moore sitting out this upcoming summer or quite possibly even asking for a trade could mean more trouble and roster shifting for Minnesota in 2019 and quite possibly beyond.
Moore, who is set to begin her ninth year in the league in 2019 after being drafted No. 1 overall by the Lynx in the 2011 WNBA Draft, has taken the offseason off from playing internationally overseas to focus on resting her body for the upcoming summer season.
The four-time WNBA champion and five-time All-Star was fairly vocal throughout the 2018 campaign about the busy and condensed schedule that the league had rolled out for the season, adding on a few different occasions that the year was one of the more demanding seasons of her career.
In 2018, Moore averaged 18 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 1.6 steals in 31.8 minutes per game, while shooting 42.3 percent from the field and 36.5 percent from three – both of which were her lowest totals since 2015 – and shooting 83.3 percent from the free throw line, the lowest mark since her rookie season.
Moore did experience somewhat of an up-and-down season while struggling a bit more than had been seen in the past.
With the retirement of Lindsay Whalen — who is now the head coach of the University of Minnesota women’s basketball program — and the organization looking ahead to retooling while thinking more about the future than it has in the last few years, this latest report throws another storyline to an already busy offseason for the Lynx as it prepares to bounce back from a first-round exit in the playoffs last year.
There hasn’t been any news out of the Moore camp regarding whether or not is frustrated with the current state of the organization, receiving a core designation or if she just simply wants to take the summer off to rest her body.
But this latest news is enough to raise some eyebrows surrounding the Lynx and makes the offseason much more interesting and important in Minnesota.
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