MINNEAPOLIS — Well, well, well, look what happens when owners spend a little money.
The 2024 WNBA Finals have set up a decisive Game 5 on Sunday in New York City, after the Minnesota Lynx, with their backs against the wall, held on for a chaotic 82-80 win Friday night in the Target Center. It is the first time since 2019 that the Finals will go to the full five games.
It’s fitting that in a series where three of four games have been decided by a single possession — Game 2 was the only outlier, with the Liberty winning by 14 — we’d get the full Finals experience this season.
It also feels right considering the year the WNBA has had, with record ratings, attendance and merchandise sales, that the two best teams would put on this type of show.
This is what happens when you invest in women.
The Liberty is a super-team created by free agency; a roster so stacked that when New York signed multiple MVPs in Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones, Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said that because they’d scooped up all the talent, the Lynx had to do things differently. So Minnesota constructed a roster full of afterthoughts and role players, centered around an underappreciated star in Napheesa Collier. Reeve coached the hell out of them, and now we’re here.
In many ways, these teams couldn’t be more different. But the commonality between the four-time champion Lynx and the title-less New York Liberty is pretty obvious: They’re run by people who are willing to spend money.
For years, the WNBA was treated more like a tax write-off than a business, with owners refusing to spend money to make money. Teams folded, players were forced to practice and play in pathetically maintained buildings in the middle of nowhere, fans struggled to find jerseys of their favorite players — the list goes on and on.
But then coaches and players started demanding better and (some) owners stepped up to the plate. Reeve told USA TODAY Sports earlier this week that “we dragged this organization to the space that it’s in now. We dragged them.” More than once, Reeve said she was called “difficult” by people within Minnesota’s organization who didn’t appreciate the way she demanded more.
But they listened, and she delivered titles — four of them, with another potentially on the way.
The 2024 season was Reeve’s first as Lynx president of basketball operations, after five years as general manager. Working closely with current GM Clare Duwelius, and with the support of owner Glen Taylor, the Lynx put together a team they believed could contend for titles.
In New York, Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai bought the Liberty in 2019, moving them from purgatory (AKA Westchester County) and relocating to Brooklyn. From Day 1 they promised to invest in their WNBA team like their NBA team — the couple also owns the Brooklyn Nets — and they more than came through. The Tsais were so committed to treating the Liberty like a professional sports franchise that they willingly took a $500,000 fine for chartering the team in 2022 before it was permitted league-wide.
And when they decided to rebuild around 2020 No. 1 pick Sabrina Ionescu and use free agency to go hard after some of the world’s top talent, players paid attention.
The result is two extremely capable teams putting on one of the best Finals series in WNBA history.
As Sandy Brondello said after a record crowd showed up in Game 1, the real winner in these Finals is women’s basketball. Reeve agreed with that Friday, saying that “all of the investments” have led to this point.
Lucky us.
Email Lindsay Schnell at lschnell@usatoday.com and follow her on social media @Lindsay_Schnell
