The best team in the WNBA won by four Wednesday night, and if that sounds like a compliment, it was a 29-point lead first. That's the Minnesota Lynx news out of the 85-81 win over the Portland Fire: not the result, the shape of it.
Napheesa Collier finished with 20 points and nine rebounds. Kayla McBride added 19. For a long stretch this looked like exactly what the standings say it should be, the league leader taking an expansion-era roster out behind the woodshed and getting the starters some early rest. Then Portland stopped losing the game. Twenty-nine turned into single digits, single digits turned into a one-possession building, and Minnesota had to actually finish something it had already put away.
Here is the honest read on that. Blown leads are usually two stories wearing one jersey: the team ahead relaxes, and the team behind stops caring about the scoreboard and starts playing free. Portland is 13-20 and 4-11 in the West. There is no version of this season where they are protecting anything. That's a group that can throw a fourth quarter at you with nothing on the line and no fear in the room, and Wednesday they did, against the best record in the league, on the road. Losing 85-81 after being down 29 is not a moral victory. But it is information.
Checked the almanac: this is a franchise name with a real Portland history, the Fire of the early 2000s that came and went before the league grew into what it is now. Watching that jersey walk into Minnesota, where four titles hang from a seven-year run between 2011 and 2017, and come within a bucket of stealing it, is the kind of thing that makes a Wednesday in August feel bigger than a Wednesday in August.
What comes next is quick. Portland is at Seattle on Friday night, 10:00 ET, against a Storm team sitting at 7-28 and 1-15 in the conference, and the reporting out of Seattle notes Malonga coming off a 26-point night. Two teams out of the race, both with something to prove about who they are in fourth quarters.
I'm watching whether Minnesota's closing minutes were a one-night nap or a habit worth writing down.
