The sprint to the end of the regular season is officially underway for the Minnesota Lynx and the rest of the WNBA.
Minnesota opened up the 2020 regular season on July 26, wrapping up the first week of action right at the top of the league standings heading into another week full of games this week.
In four contests to kick off the year, the Lynx finished that stretch with a record of 3-1 overall. Minnesota took down Connecticut twice and Chicago once, falling in its only game of the year so far to Seattle in the second game.
Following that first week, the Lynx sit tied with Chicago, Washington and Seattle in a four-way tie for first place despite not looking their best during those first four games.
During the second week of games, Minnesota will face off against the New York Liberty on Wednesday, the Indiana Fever on Friday and the Los Angeles Sparks on Sunday.
Before the Lynx try and continue their winning ways early on in the shortened regular season schedule, let’s answer some questions readers submitted surrounding Minnesota and the WNBA in general.
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Melissa Schreifels: Do you think they will bring back KCK?
In the second game of the regular season last Tuesday against the Seattle Storm, Lynx forward Karima Christmas-Kelly ruptured her Achilles in her right foot, ending her season before it really had the chance to begin.
A few days after, Minnesota announced it waived Christmas-Kelly while adding forward Erica McCall off of the waiver wire.
RELATED STORY: Minnesota Lynx “Hope It’s Not The End” for Karima Christmas-Kelly, Add Erica McCall Off Waivers
The news of Christmas-Kelly suffering yet another season-ending injury was a devastating blow to the veteran forward and the Lynx, given the fact that Christmas-Kelly has played in just six games in both 2018 and 2019 after undergoing knee surgeries in both seasons. A year ago, she suffered a knee injury early on in the season that ended her season early while immediately beginning to rehab to get back in the 2020 campaign.
Even though Minnesota did end up waiving one of its three captains in Christmas-Kelly, you get the sense that Cheryl Reeve and company would like to bring back the veteran forward if she is able to bounce back and recover ahead of the 2021 season.
Reeve even noted that she hopes it’s not the end for Christmas-Kelly, who has her contract guaranteed through 2021.
“We all feel badly about it. We talked about how she did everything right and that we support her,” Reeve said. “We advised her, from a roster standpoint, that we would probably need her position and talked through what that would look like so she was in the know in making room for Erica.
“It’s one of those things that you hope it’s not the end, meaning her relationship with the Lynx. That’s what we talked about, this is about now. We know she has rehab ahead of her and we’ll see what happens when we get to the other side of that.”
I would not be surprised to see Christmas-Kelly remain with the organization at least until she is done rehabbing her injury, and she could very well end up back in a Lynx jersey next summer if she’s able to get back to full health.
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Corbitt Harrell: With Crystal Dangerfield being such an important piece through these first handful of games, where might this leave Odyssey Sims’s role when she eventually makes it into the Wubble?
Through the first four games of the season, Lynx rookie point guard Crystal Dangerfield has seen a decent amount of playing time both in the starting lineup and coming off the bench for Minnesota. And it’s perhaps more playing time than she or the organization had originally planned.
In the season-opening win over the Connecticut Sun, Dangerfield was a spark off the bench for the Lynx while playing a large role in her WNBA debut to help her team come back and get the first win of the year. In her second game, she took a bit of a step back against a tough Seattle squad.
The last two contests, however, Dangerfield has stepped into a starting role at point guard, that mainly due to the fact that Lexie Brown (concussion protocol) has missed the last few games. Dangerfield has stepped up in Brown’s absence, averaging 9.0 points, 2.0 assists, 1.5 rebounds, 1.0 steals and is shooting 32.4 percent from the field in 25.8 minutes per game in a total of four contests.
RELATED STORY: Crystal Dangerfield Already Making Her Mark for Minnesota Lynx Early in Rookie Season
With the rookie gaining some more playing time, that brings up the question of where Sims fits into the mix of things when she ultimately returns to the court for Minnesota this year, something Reeve said recently is “imminent.”
“We talked with Odyssey about a departure date and there’s a lot of things we have to do for the league in terms of medical protocol to make sure that we check those boxes,” Reeve said of the timeline of Sims’ arrival. “Then, she’s got a week of quarantine. At best, you’re looking at a couple of weeks. Obviously, we’ll be happy to have her when she joins us.”
As far as where Sims could fit once she comes back to the team, it’s safe to say she would be inserted into the starting lineup as soon as she’s ready and in game shape to handle the minute load. That means two players of the guard trio consisting of Dangerfield, Brown and Shenise Johnson would move to the second unit. If I had to predict who Sims would line up next to at guard in the starting lineup, I would say Brown when she gets healthy again, moving Johnson and Dangerfield to the second unit.
The reason Sims would be placed back into the starting five once she’s ready to do so is her ability to boost the team offensively, which is something we saw often during her first season in Minnesota in 2019 during an All-Star campaign. That offensive lift would greatly help the Lynx moving forward, whenever Sims is actually able to enter the bubble and be cleared to play this season.
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Jeremy Hernandez: With the Wubble being so small, if players get traded mid-season and one or both are in a roommate situation with their now former teammates are they forced to move out into another room/villa or can they stay put?
This summer, the WNBA regular season is just 22 games long, every team is being held in one central bubble location — also known as the Wubble — and there are no fans in the stands for games in Florida.
The 2020 year just keeps getting more and more interesting. We shouldn’t be surprised with anything that happens anymore until the calendar flips to 2021.
Now that we have entered August and the WNBA season is fully underway, the league’s annual trade deadline is already starting to approach quickly. The deadline is a little over three weeks away, hitting at 7 p.m. CT on August 28 for teams around the league.
As the question submitted states, players and team personnel are living in either villas or lodges at IMG Academy in Bradenton, with some teams having multiple players living together in those villas or lodges.
RELATED STORY: Life in the Bubble, COVID-19 Testing and Health Risks: Minnesota Lynx Adjusting to New Normal at IMG Academy in Florida
If a trade were to happen among a few teams, that would obviously made things awkward for a player that would be on the move from one organization to another in the middle of the year.
If that were to happen for any player and team, that player would likely have to move out of that living space to move closer to their new team and teammates, perhaps even moving in with one of the players on the new squad.
Imagine that. Getting traded, and instead of packing up your apartment or home and moving to a new city, you just simply walk like two blocks down the road with your suitcase and just move into another living space while acting like nothing really happened.
Like I said, 2020 just keeps getting more and more interesting.
With that said, I would imagine the trade deadline will be pretty quiet this year while teams are just trying to simply grind through this excelled season as smoothly as possible.
But, it’s 2020. Literally anything can happen.
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Melissa Schreifels: Is Maya Moore still under contract and have they heard more about her coming back for next season?
Earlier this offseason, Maya Moore announced she would sit out her second straight WNBA season to focus on criminal justice issues off the court, mainly the court case involving her close friend Jonathan Irons.
Leading up to the start of the 2020 season, Moore successfully helped free Irons from prison after he was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, achieving perhaps the biggest win of a life that has been filled with endless success on and off the basketball court.
As far as what lies ahead for Moore in terms of her basketball career, she hasn’t ruled out any sort of retirement or permanently stepping away from the game, stating most recently that she just wanted to take some time to enjoy the fact that Irons has been released while worrying about her playing career when things slow down.
This offseason Reeve said the Lynx will continue to support Moore and expect to maintain dialogue with her surrounding a potential return to the team perhaps as soon as 2021, adding the organization wants to allow her time to rest after putting so much time and effort into the Irons case over the years. If she does return to the floor, it could happen as soon as the 2021 season next summer.
Moore is still currently under contract with Minnesota. She has been placed on the Full Season Suspended List this year which carries her contract over to next season. That allows the Lynx to maintain that contract while waiting out the ultimate decision Moore makes for when she would like to return to the floor. If she indeed does choose to do that.
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That will do it for week’s Lynx mailbag. As always, thanks for submitting your questions and for reading. Make sure to check back here at Zone Coverage for coverage of the 2020 WNBA season throughout the rest of the year.
SUBMIT YOUR LYNX MAILBAG QUESTIONS
Our Mitchell Hansen will continue to publish Lynx mailbags every other Monday throughout the course of the 2020 WNBA season here at Zone Coverage.
Have a question surrounding the Lynx or the WNBA that you would like answered? Submit them by tweeting him @M_Hansen13! The next Lynx mailbag will be on Monday, Aug. 17.
