Lynx battle in weekend of sharp elbows on social media

The Phoenix Mercury started it, the Lynx ended it ... and then came back for an encore.

On Friday afternoon, the Mercury posted a photo on Twitter from their arena lobby celebrating the selection of Deandre Ayton as the top overall pick in last week's NBA draft. (If we were going to tell this story with the same attitude as the tweet below, we'd remind you that the NBA is the men's pro basketball league. But we're not gonna go there.)

The "random Lynx player" is Cecilia Zandalasini, the second-year Lynx forward. She decided to let the Mercury know that. First she did it off the court.

Then she did it on the court by sparking the Lynx in the first quarter of their 83-72 victory over Phoenix, which had won eight straight games.

There was more tweaking of the Mercury's tweet. Some of it funny, some sarcastic and some of the "how dare you" variety. Our favorite admonition was from Kacy Sager's Twitter.

Zandalasini, who is establishing herself as a force in the sixth-woman role with the Lynx, had seven points, four rebounds and a steal in 20 minutes against Phoenix.

On Sunday, she followed that up with seven points and a tough defensive presence in 17 minutes against Las Vegas.

Also on Sunday, the Lynx took offense at a halftime interview with Kelsey Plum, who was the first overall pick in the 2017 WNBA draft. During the interview, she mentioned that the Aces needed to keep up the pace of the game and that the Lynx are "old."

The Lynx outscored Las Vegas 32-20 in the third quarter, turning a six-point halftime lead into an 18-point lead going into the fourth quarter.

Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve took note of the interview..

The Lynx' Twitter feed added the soundtrack to Reeve's tweet.

So that was the weekend on Twitter. We felt like these were mostly good-natured dust-ups ... and maybe a couple of people will be called into offices to talk about some best practices.

And we're not denying that the Lynx are old.

In the meantime, we have only one other issue to raise: Our intrigue with the Phoenix play-by-play announcer (We'll refrain from any temptation to call him "some random announcer") casually referring to Diana Taurasi as "GOAT" -- as in Greatest of All Time -- several times during the Mercury-Lynx game.

That's quite a thing to say when Maya Moore is on the floor, right?