Mitchell Hansen
Web Editorial Associate
Twitter
The Minnesota Lynx began the 2017 regular season as good as any team could have imagined.
The Lynx opened the year winning 20 of their first 22 games, jumping out to a commanding lead in the WNBA standings and reminding everyone just how dominant they can be.
Minnesota has hit a bit of a bump in the road as of late – as does any team throughout the course of a season – going 3-4 in the last seven games.
Although this may be unlike the Minnesota team we saw earlier in the season, I think this is a good time for a reminder that the Lynx have only lost six games this season and are the best WNBA team with a little over a week remaining in the regular season.
They are 23-6 overall, in first place in the league standings.
They are one game away from clinching homecourt in the semifinal round of the WNBA Playoffs for the second straight season.
They are two consecutive wins away from securing themselves as the top team in the standings for the fifth time in the last seven years.
The Lynx are still a scary good team.
“It think the media has been freaking out. . . For us, it’s just an adjustment. We have so many moving parts (with Lindsay Whalen and Rebekkah Brunson out with injuries), but we are still playing hard at all times,” Lynx guard Renee Montgomery said. “We’re not hitting the panic button, we are in first place.”
Led by MVP front-runner Sylvia Fowles, Minnesota is still atop both the league standings and many statistical categories.
The Lynx rank first in offensive rating (108.0) and defensive rating (93.8), and are in the top five in the WNBA in field goal percentage (3rd, 46.9 percent), three-point percentage (3rd, 36.4 percent), free throw percentage (5th, 80.4 percent), total rebounds (4th, 35.4), assists (2nd, 20.3).
Just wait, I’m not done yet.
They are also in the top three in the league in steals (3rd, 8.2), opponent field goal percentage (2nd, 42.3 percent), opponent three-point percentage (3rd, 32.0 percent) and opponent rebounding (1st, 30.1).
“We don’t look back. It’s funny that everyone says that, we’ve only lost (six) games,” Fowles said. “It’s kind of hard to put it into perspective, but at the end of the day, we know what we have to do. Those games that we did lost, we know what we have to do to get over that hump.”
The list displaying how dominant Minnesota has been this year goes on and on.
And although they may have hit a little bump in the road throughout the lengthy journey that is the WNBA regular season, let’s not forget how scary good this team actually is.
The Lynx are back in action on Friday when they travel to take on the San Antonio Stars at 7 p.m. in San Antonio. The game will be live streamed on Twitter and aired on 106.1 BOB FM and TuneIn Radio.