After the Minnesota Lynx convincingly defeated the Connecticut Sun in a winner-take-all game to advance to the WNBA FinalsNapheesa Collier carried her 2-year-old daughter with her to the podium for the postgame interview.
The session was only seconds old when Mila, who had to stay up late on this monumental night, became restless and was taken away by her father, Collier’s husband, Alex Bazzell. Despite her toddler’s protests and repeated cries to return to mom’s arms, Collier remained cool and collected, just as she is on the field.
“What makes Phee special is the consistency and the way she shows up every day,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Phee is always the same: her work ethic, her attitude, her passion to improve. She has gotten better every season. She has just been incredible, and every game how she helps our team goes beyond scoring.”
Collier’s performance in Game 5 of the semifinals on Tuesday was simply vintage Collier. She had 27 points on 10-of-16 shooting, 11 rebounds, four assists, four blocks and one steal in 37 minutes to lead the 88-77 victory that gave Minnesota its first title since winning its fourth title in 2017 sent the final. The Lynx will face the New York Liberty in Game 1 on Thursday.
“She’s a great player. She played on both sides of the ball. She led her team all night. She was aggressive,” said Connecticut’s DeWanna Bonner, who was regularly paired with Collier at the power forward spot. “She’s had a great year all year, so I didn’t see that holding this game back. When she gets into a rhythm, it’s hard to stop.”
Finishing fifth in the league in scoring and third in rebounding, as Collier did during the regular season, is a remarkable achievement. Add in her WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award, and this is a true generational player in an era of the league where star power has never been greater. But what sets Collier apart is how humble and unassuming she is, qualities she possessed long before she became a mother and took most of the 2022 season off.
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She’s a renaissance woman off the court, a Team USA Olympian who’s teaming up with her former college teammate and current Liberty star Breanna Stewart to create a 3-on-3 league, Unrivaled, expected to launch in January with the competition starts and pays six. -figure salaries with stock stakes for players. Still, Collier is often one of the WNBA’s most overlooked stars, having never made it this far in the playoffs and hasn’t played for any of the league’s marquee teams.
“I’ve played with so many great players and Phee is so different, it’s crazy,” Lynx point guard Courtney Williams said. “She’s so coachable, by anyone. It doesn’t matter. She just wants to be great. She shows up every day in her humility and the way she talks to people and the way she carries herself, it’s actually insane. Like that of this girl a bona fide superstar. They don’t act like that. A lot of superstars don’t act like that, and the way she shows up and cares about her is different. When your leader and your superstar act like that, it’s easy to trickling down.”
Sometimes Reeve and her staff have to push Collier to be more aggressive in finding her shot, rather than deferring too much to the outside shooters. After all, there is no bigger fan of theirs than her.
“The fact that we worked hard and we really love each other so much just makes it more fun and makes you want to win for them too,” Collier said. “It’s not just like you want to get the honor of winning a championship, you want to do it for your teammates, and I think that makes the ride a lot more fun. You want to keep playing because you want to stay together. because you know every year looks different. This team will never be exactly the same again, so not only do we want to win a championship, but we don’t want to leave each other yet.”
The 2019 WNBA Rookie of the Year has come a long way since her time at UConn, when she came to the league as a relatively undersized post player without exceptional ball skills. Now she can consistently score off the dribble, knock down three-pointers and do everything else between rebounding and defense. Each season has brought improvement, including this season when she took on Reeve’s challenge to win the Defensive Player of the Year award.
‘She doesn’t need us to tell her. She knows what she needs to get better,” Reeve said. “I still think she has more ways to improve, and that’s what MVPs do, great players. They never feel like they’re there. They just keep getting better and better, and that’s what Phee has done. “
NOTE: The original air date of the video for this article is October 8, 2024.
