Sinking to streaking: Napheesa Collier, now-hot Lynx win fourth in a row

The Lynx's worst start in the Cheryl Reeve era seemed to cue the word "tank."

Some suspected that top college prospects Caitlin Clark or Paige Bueckers superseded wins in what appeared to be another rebuilding year for coach Cheryl Reeve. As of late, her team has done a horrendous job of losing on purpose.

"I get that's interesting," Reeve said. "I would invite anybody that would suggest that we were tanking to walk in to either our practices or during the course of a game. We are trying to win every game that we play. I don't believe in that. No one has come to me and asked me to tank. I believe this group that you're with, they don't deserve that. I mean, that's embarrassing that that gets thrown around. … It's probably going to be a case that I suck if we win too much, and then I suck if we lose and we're in the lottery. So that's not going to control anything that we do."

Now 8-9 after opening 0-6, Minnesota outlasted the Indiana Fever in a 90-83 win that extended its winning streak to four games, with minority owner Alex Rodriguez in attendance for his first Lynx game at Target Center since he and Marc Lore first purchased ownership stake last July.

By the time they become majority owners in about a year, Reeve may not need another top pick on her roster.

Rather surprisingly, her Lynx didn't even need much from No. 2 overall pick Diamond Miller to pull off a favorable outcome Wednesday. Miller had one point, three rebounds, two assists and zero field goals in four attempts after three quarters.

Minnesota still led 71-64.

"You've never arrived as a rookie, you've never arrived," Reeve said. "You know, three great games, you enjoy it. Now the next game is going to be a different journey. And tonight's game was a little harder for her — short-term memory, just like when you had good games."

Everyone else picked up the slack. By game's end, Napheesa Collier led the way with a game-high 32 points on 11-of-23 shooting, as Kayla McBride and Lindsay Allen added 21 and 16 respectively. Not to mention: Dorka Juhász was 3-for-6 from the field, Nikolina Milic converted her two field goals and Rachel Banham also sneaked in two makes.

"We want to do well for each other," Collier said. "It's not I out there, it's we. So if someone has a turnover, it's not just like, 'Oh, that person did wrong.' It's a team thing."

The Lynx finished with 20 assists that surely factored into their 46.6% field-goal percentage and 35% three-point percentage.

But Reeve wasn't concerned with Minnesota's offense as much as its 104.2 defensive rating that ranked eighth in the WNBA entering Wednesday.

"You look at the last, I don't know, eight games, where our offensive rating is — we're north of 100, pretty decent," Reeve said pregame. "But our defense remains north of 100. I'm not confident that our defense is going to be able to get it done. We have to play really good offense."

To her players' credit, they stifled each Fever player not named Aliyah Boston for much of the game and held Boston to only six second-half points.

So while the top pick went for 22 points on 8-of-9 shooting, with six made free throws in as many attempts, she and her frontcourt partner, 6-4 forward NaLyssa Smith were Indiana's only double figure scorers. Smith contributed 18 points, but on 8-of-18 shooting.

All-Star guard Kelsey Mitchell, who took a 16 points-per-game average into the matchup, had a season-low seven points with just two field goals in 10 attempts. Reeve said she was "a handful," regardless. McBride and Allen alternated as Mitchell's on-ball defender throughout the evening.

"It felt like there was a lot more action run for their post players," Reeve said. "... They had 40 points in the paint going into the fourth quarter. That's 10 above what our goal would be going into the fourth quarter with 10 minutes to play. We were fortunate that we were able to keep them to 46.

"But overall defensively, we were pretty locked into what we were trying to get done."