Collier returns to help Lynx
Former UConn star is seeking ways to boost struggling Minnesota
Napheesa Collier, one of the most exciting young stars of the WNBA, is finally back with the Minnesota Lynx, taking the court for the first time this season two weeks after the start of the 2021 campaign due to overseas commitments.
She’s facing a far different challenge than she probably envisioned for the start of her third year in the league.
On paper, Minnesota has one of the most stacked teams in the league: The Lynx acquired Aerial Powers, Kayla McBride and Natalie Achonwa this past free agency, pieces they’re adding alongside the primary components of a team that made it to the semifinals of the 2020 playoffs. Minnesota’s returners include future Hall of Famer Sylvia Fowles, now healthy after missing the majority of 2020 with a calf injury, and Collier, who last year was a Second Team All-WNBA pick, defensive player of the year candidate and came in fifth in MVP voting.
But Minnesota has struggled out of the gate so far this summer. Its 0-4 start is the franchise’s worst since it went 0-3 in 2007. It hasn’t helped that the Lynx were without McBride (overseas commitments) for all of training camp, Collier until the fourth game of the season and Powers (hamstring injury) over the last
two games.
“We just didn’t have a quality training camp of consecutive days of gaining momentum,” head coach/general manager Cheryl Reeve said. “I know what that feels like and it looks like, and we never got to that.”
The 2019 WNBA Rookie of the Year and an All-American at UConn, Collier is still finding her stride with this new-look Lynx group. She missed the Lynx’s first three games while finishing her season in France with Basket Lattes Montpellier Association and then had to produce six consecutive negative COVID19 tests before she was allowed to officially re-join the team.
“It was so hard to be overseas and to be at home and watch them play — especially when I was at home. I felt like I was so close but so far away,” Collier said last Thursday.
The Lynx had an eight-day break in between games, during which Collier was able to practice with the group for the first time all summer.
“I’m so excited to put everything that we’ve done this week into the game and finally get on court with these girls,” Collier said last week. “I think that this week break was great for us. It felt like we got some really, really great work in, great team chemistry building happening, great practices working hard, working through things that we struggle with during games.”
Collier made her season debut last Friday against the Storm, a 82-72 loss, and then helped Minnesota toward its first win of 2021, 79-74 in overtime against the previously one-loss Connecticut Sun on Sunday. She averaged 12.5 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists across that pair of games.
For as critical of a player Collier is to the Lynx’s success, Reeve said she doesn’t view adding her back into the mix as the answer to all their problems.
“I think Phee’s just got to be Phee,” Reeve said. “She just plays with great activity at both ends of the floor. She doesn’t have to do anything beyond that. I don’t want her to come here thinking that she’s going to do hard things and sort of save us. Just get in there and do what you do.” Collier sees it similarly. “I know what I’m good at, I know what my teammates are good at, and I know what we’re supposed to look like so,” Collier said. “I just need to comein and do things that are within our scheme, things that I know how to do as a player and not try to do too much but try to workin what we’ve been putting in this past week.”
Still, there’s little doubt that for the Lynx to play to their potential, Collier has to be an integral part of what they do, both in the short and long term.
The rest of the league seems to see it that way: Entering the 2021 season, Collier earned the second-most votes for most underrated player in the league in the WNBAGMs’ survey.
“Phee’s natural evolution, I think, is just getting more and more comfortable as a player in this league, knows what’s open, when it’s open,” Reeve said. “You just start to gain so much experience and looking for Phee to use the experience that she has gotten over the last couple of years and be able to continue to hurt defenses and also continue to evolve. She was in a defensive player of the year conversation last year, that’s going to be really helpful for our team this year.”
Collier said she worked on getting off 3-point shots quicker and coming off of ball screens in the offseason. She went 20-for-49 from the perimeter last season, and in the Lynx’s win Sunday sank three of seven attempts.
Though her individual growth is important, Collier has an eye toward ensuring the team’s overall success.
“The number one goal is always to push the team and to help us get as far as we can, so our team goals come first,” Collier said.
And if she continues on the trajectory she’s already made for herself, that can only bode well for the Lynx.
“Just keep on that path because that’s hard to do year in and year out,” Reeve said. “That in and of itself, just keeping being Phee, that’s really what she’s going to focus on and it’ll continue to help our team.”