The Minnesota Lynx won the Women’s National Basketball Association championship, sweeping the Atlanta Dream 3-0 in a best-of-five game series. “It’s the best thing since sliced bread,” biology teacher Jeffrey Krause said. The road to victory was a long one but one that did not throw anything at the team that they couldn’t handle. The Lynx held the best regular season record winning twenty-seven games while only dropping seven. They then went on to win two best-of-three game series, first against the San Antonio Silver Stars, and then the Phoenix Mercury. Those victories set up a Lynx vs. Dream final series.
“Why is it that the men’s teams are playing like girls, and the [women’s] teams are playing like men?” asked senior Willis Klatt. The Lynx’s win could not have come at a better time with other Minnesota teams being stuck in a rut: the Twins performed poorly this year, the Vikings got off to a pitiful start, and the Timberwolves aren’t even playing unless the NBA lockout is resolved. The Wild, however, is showing potential.
This tremendous accomplishment went relatively unnoticed in Minnesota. “Wasn’t there that one girl who scored a bunch of points? Sarah I think her name is,” senior John Lagorio said. The woman Lagorio was alluding to is Seimone Augustus, who led the Lynx in scoring and received MVP honors for her part in the title victory. To say Seimone’s basketball success had been foreshadowed would be an understatement. She was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated for Women while in high school with the headline “Is she the next Michael Jordan?” above her picture. In college, she led her LSU Lady Tigers to three straight Final Four appearances. After college, she was the first overall pick in the 2006 national women’s basketball draft.
Though Augustus was the headliner, she had help in the form of rookie Maya Moore. Moore was drafted first overall by the Minnesota Lynx out of the University of Connecticut. She exploded onto the court, becoming the Lynx’s third highest scorer during the regular season and second highest scorer during the postseason. This level of play earned her Rookie of the Year honors, and she became the second player in WNBA history to win both a national title and Rookie of the Year.
Not only did they win the title, they won in style. It was this thoroughness that has led some experts to begin talk of them becoming a sports dynasty. It would be nice to finally have one of those in Minnesota, wouldn’t it?
