Reusse: The reason the WNBA is growing more popular is simple — the players are better

The NBA still has the largest influence with the WNBA, owning 42% of the league and a willingness to cover what have been large losses. What has changed dramatically is the impression that for most of the WNBA’s history, the motivation for the NBA was to act interested but get the season over within a minimum of games and time.

When the Lynx won a first WNBA title in 2011, the 34-game season started June 3 and the last of the required seven playoff victories in three rounds was played Oct. 7.

When the Lynx won the last of four titles in 2017, it remained a 34-game regular season, and there was a weird playoff system that seeded the top two teams into the semifinals. That season started May 14 and ended in the Game 5 win vs. the L.A. Sparks on Oct. 4 in Williams Arena.

Only eight years later, this was the first regular season with 44 games and a postseason that now includes a best-of-seven WNBA Finals, largely because of the dramatics of the Lynx-New York Liberty championship fray last season.

This season started May 16 and will end Oct. 17 if the Finals go the distance.

The WNBA added Golden State this season, Portland and Toronto (with Teresa Resch of Lakefield, Minn., as president) will be joining in 2026, and more expansion is on the way.

This league has made the leap from being an opportunity for the NBA to show goodwill to all basketball athletes and take up summer arena dates to an attraction worthy of a major place on the sports calendar, and for this reason:

And this is my proof: The number of times watching a game and saying: “Who is that? She can play.”

There were several of those exclamations in Sunday’s second-round playoff opener against the Phoenix Mercury, the team that knocked off New York in a best-of-three opening series.

The Mercury — beating Breanna Stewart and Co.?

They have Alyssa Thomas; she’s a star player. DeWanna Bonner, a noble veteran. And Kahleah Copper has been around the league.

But a Makani and a Sabally, and Sami Whitcomb, as it turns out a guard from Australia — they helped give the Mercury the look of a smooth operation as they took a 47-40 lead in the first half. And, admittedly, strangers for me as a periodic observer.

Most recently, the Lynx used the same defensive-fueled push in the fourth quarter to shock an opponent when they appeared in trouble. That was Wednesday night, when they were down 14 in the fourth quarter in San Jose, Calif., and came back for a 75-74 victory to eliminate Golden State in two games.

That gave the Lynx a full rest for Sunday’s game, as the Mercury were winning the third game Friday night vs. the Liberty.

Short rest was offered to Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts as an alibi for his team having its doors blown off in the fourth quarter. He went with amazement over his team being held to 22 points in the second half by the Lynx and said: “They did what they had to do. Win Game 1.”

This used to be close to a given in the WNBA, with the top teams with a couple of stars cruising into the Finals, then doing battle for a title.

In a way, the 2024 Lynx were at the forefront of the change that has been coming. They were a preseason pick to finish ninth in the 12-team WNBA.

The Lynx demonstrated that, indeed, the new WNBA can be unpredictable, and after this 34-10 regular season, they are hoping that’s not the catch.

That unpredictability showed up in the earlier semifinal Sunday, when the injured, upstart Indiana Fever blew out the host Las Vegas Aces 89-73.

This came on the same day the Aces’ A’ja Wilson won a fourth MVP award, leaving behind Collier in the voting.

Vegas coach Becky Hammon was ripping her team’s defense after that Fever thumping — only a couple of days after suggesting it was absurd that Wilson was made to share the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award with the Lynx’s Alanna Smith.