As the Lynx kept stacking wins after the Olympic break, Napheesa Collier kept piling up the stats.
Scoring, shooting, rebounding, dominating.
Which brings us to Minnesota’s 89-76 victory Wednesday night at Phoenix, the start of a 10-game stretch to end the season, seven of which will come on the road. The Lynx won their seventh straight game, the team’s longest regular-season winning streak in three years. The Lynx (23-8) moved past Connecticut into second place in the WNBA, 2½ games behind New York.
And they did it on a night when Collier was … OK: She played strong defense and had eight rebounds and five assists. The forward scored a relatively modest 12 points on 5-for-13 shooting.
But it didn’t matter.
The Lynx got 19 points from Kayla McBride. Ten of those came in the third quarter, when the Lynx turned a nine-point halftime lead into a runaway. The Lynx led by 23 points at one juncture and by 22 early in the fourth before the Mercury (16-16) made the final score a little more respectable.
Minnesota started both halves strong. McBride finished with five rebounds and three assists to go with those 19 points. Courtney Williams had 16 points and five assists. Myisha Hines-Allen (11 points and five rebounds) led a bench that scored 27 points.
“Road wins are what we talk about,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said on a video call. Before the game, noting all the travel the Lynx will do down the stretch run, Reeve said the team had to approach each game as if the playoffs had already started.