I asked Cheryl Reeve a pretty simple question after practice on Wednesday. What would it take for her to dye her hair pink?
The question is pertinent because Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman are taking over the internet with their StudBudz live streams and signature pink hair.
“Championship,” Cheryl Reeve said immediately. ”There it is, I’ve never told them that. So let them know Cheryl said I’ll do whatever to my hair.”
Reeve doubled down the next day, when I asked if she would livestream the potential hair dying.
“I stand by the willingness to put some version of pink in my hair,” she declared.
Reeve is putting her hair on the line for a record fifth Minnesota Lynx championship, signaling that it’s time to dig into the numbers to see if the Lynx are championship worthy.
It’s an exercise I do every season for the Lynx and the Wolves. I look at the metrics that mean the most to me, as a basketball fan: offensive rating, defensive rating, net rating, assist percentage, assist-to-turnover ratio, and true shooting percentage. In my humble opinion, these five statistics give the best overview of a team by answering the following questions.
How good is a team’s offense and defense by looking at the ratings? How much better are they compared to their peers in net rating? And how good are they at sharing the ball with the assist percentage? Where do they rank as far as playing without mistakes reflected in their assist-to-turnover ratio? Finally, true shooting percentage tells us how well a team performs overall in shooting.
After we determine the team’s ranking in each of the five categories, we can then divide the total of the five rankings by the number of categories to obtain a single number that reflects the team’s overall quality.
Is this method the most scientific? No. However, it provides a comprehensive look at how a team compares to its peers in any given area.
For the Lynx, the math is pretty simple. They have the No. 1 offensive rating, No. 1 defensive rating, No. 1 net rating, the No. 1 assist percentage, the No. 1 assist-to-turnover ratio, and the No. 2 true shooting percentage. A quick tally gives us 7 total. Divide that by 6, and the final answer is 1.167.
This may sound trivial, but the Lynx rating number 1.167 as an average in those categories is historically good. To prove this, let’s look back at the last 15 WNBA champions.
2024: New York Liberty (2.000)
Off. rating: 1
Def. rating: 3
Net rating: 1
Assist %: 3
A/TO ratio: 2
TS%: 2
2023: Las Vegas Aces (2.167)
Off. rating: 1
Def. rating: 1
Net rating: 1
Assist %: 8
A/TO ratio: 1
TS%: -1
2022: Aces (3.333)
Off. rating: 1
Def. rating: 6
Net rating: 2
Assist %: 8
A/TO ratio: 1
TS%: -2
2021: Chicago Sky (5.000)
Off. rating: 7
Def. rating: 6
Net rating: 6
Assist %: 1
A/TO ratio: 3
TS%: 7
2020: Seattle Storm (1.33333)
Off. rating: 1
Def. rating: 1
Net rating: 1
Assist %: 1
A/TO ratio: 2
TS%: -2
2019: Washington Mystics (2.500)
Off. rating: 1
Def. rating: 6
Net rating: 1
Assist %: 5
A/TO ratio: 1
TS%: -1
2018: Storm (2.333)
Off. rating: 2
Def. rating: 3
Net rating: 1
Assist %: 4
A/TO ratio: 2
TS%: -2
I hope that by this point, you trust me to do the math, so here’s the rest.
2017 Lynx: 1.667
2016 Los Angeles Sparks: 2.000
2015 Lynx: 3.000
2014 Phoenix Mercury: 1.833
2013 Lynx: 1.667
2012 Indiana Fever: 3.667
2011 Lynx: 3.667
2010 Storm: 2.167
The numbers suggest that, compared to their peers, the 2025 Lynx are potentially the best team in the past 15 years based on these six statistics. The average championship team over the last 15 years has a 2.559 rating.
It’s worth noting that no team has won the WNBA championship, except for the outlier 2021 Chicago Sky, which had a higher than 3.667 average, and the 2012 Fever and 2011 Lynx won the championship.
This formula allows us to determine if any other team in the league this season has a sub-3.667 rating. Doing so would be an effort to determine if anyone else, at least according to this analysis, could win a championship.
Below are this season’s ratings, listed by the overall record of the 2-6 teams.
Dream: 3.000
Liberty: 3.167
Aces: 9.167
Mercury: 4.833
Fever: 6.500
The data indicate that three teams have a realistic shot of winning a championship: the Dream, the Liberty, the Lynx, and the Mercury. Phoenix has an outside shot, thanks partially to Chicago, the outlier. By this method, every other team doesn’t really have a chance.
However, when examining the three teams that are below 3.667, the Lynx are the best team on paper using this method. It’s hard to see them falling in any of these categories between now and the end of the season because of the commanding lead the Lynx have in most advanced analytics.
Their offensive rating is 2.8 points higher than the Dream’s, and their defensive rating is 3.3 points higher than the Mercury’s. The Lynx’s net rating is nearly double the second-best team at +14.5, compared to the Dream at +7.6.
The Lynx posted a 74.2% assist percentage, which is 1.7% higher than the Liberty’s (72.5%). Minnesota’s 1.83 assist-to-turnover ratio is .13 higher than the second-place Storm in that category. The only category in which they are not first is true shooting. At 57.5%, they trail the Liberty by just 0.3 percentage points for the top spot.
The Lynx have now played three games without Napheesa Collier and haven’t fallen in any of the categories, winning all three games. With her return on the horizon, it might be time for Reeve to pick up some pink hair dye. The 2025 Minnesota Lynx are on track for a historically successful, championship season.
