Minnesota travels to Portland for the very first time, and Portlanders get their first chance to see the best team in the league up-close and personal. The Lynx are as good as advertised, and the scoreboard was showing it, at least in the first half. This ended up being the most thrilling, and maybe most exciting game of the season inside the arena.

Let’s talk about it.

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These are an old set of standardized “only stats that matter”. Here’s a fun explainer video from Molly Brown on Instagram, who is going to be a great follow for any fan of my writing here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXusixFkrAA/

Minnesota is an incredible watch on TV, and they have the largest fanbase outside of Indiana in the country. I have no hesitation saying they have the highest quality fanbase in the league, with their long history of excellence and success. It was great having a well attended game. Sitting through their player intros feels like a bizzaro dream-nightmare: you can’t help but cheer and applaud all five names they rattle off, and you can’t imagine how anyone could beat a team with those players on it. Somehow, it wows me more than Las Vegas, the defending champions.

The biggest crowd-pop of the night belongs to the Portland intros, however, as the first name the Fire called to the floor was none other than Jordan Harrison, who has been a fan darling since day one, and has rocketed into the starting lineup against the best team in the league. Yes, the opportunity comes from an injury to one of the Fire’s best players, but Harrison has played remarkably, given her scenario and her starting point and her long time out of the lineup. She put up a great fight against impossible matchups in this one.

Teja Oblak returned to the lineup as well, taking her usual reserve role after missing two games with an injury.

A competitive first quarter with good Fire defense led into one of the coldest quarters the Fire have played so far, shooting under 22% from the floor and hitting just 3-of-8 free-throws. Minnesota scored 31 in the quarter for a 24 point halftime lead.

Immediately obvious to me, with the lack of Carla Leite and the inclusion of Harrison, and in a game against a team that likes to run in transition, is that this game was fast. Both teams pushed the ball at seemingly every opportunity, and Harrison’s willingness to play without the ball in her hands really enabled the Fire to do this. Leite loves the ball in her hand, she loves to run set plays, she loves to play chess. The Fire want her to push the ball more, and she has become more willing, but the difference between the two styles felt startling in this one.

Then, a few minutes into the second half, everything changed.

The Fire outscored the Lynx 18-11 in the third quarter, keeping fans engaged while playing great defense and keeping the game in theoretical reach. Then, in the fourth quarter, they kept going.

The shot-making was incredible. Bridget Carleton, after an 0/4 1-point first half, scored 15 points on 6-of-10 shooting in the second half, with a steal and a block and two assists, with 11 of her points coming in the fourth quarter. Teja Oblak, who Fire coaches gave the closing group selection to over Harrison, was sensational: 11 points, 9 coming in the fourth quarter, 9 assists, 6 rebounds, 2 steals and a block. Nyadiew Puoch’s defense was essential, and Meg Dileo’s contributions were hard fought but essential, absolutely battling in the paint all night. And, I haven’t given her props in a couple games, and her stats don’t jump off the page, but this team is clearly playing its highest-level basketball when Emily Engstler is on the floor. Her impact is massive, even if it is hard to measure with numbers.

The comeback was 15:00 game minutes long, and inch-by-inch, you could feel the energy in the building rising. Fans were on their feet for the last 7:00 of the game, which was probably 20 minutes of real time. Minnesota looked discombobulated and shaken, and were definitely beatable, if it weren’t for one relatively quiet player’s ice-cold defensive and clutch performance: Kayla McBride. One game after setting the WNBA record for made 3’s in a single game, McBride walked into two crucial steals and two wide-open layups in the fourth quarter that totally iced the energy. While every player was battling for their life, McBride simply ran to her spots, and made brilliant reads of the situations presented to her. It was a perfect compliment to her record-setting night, showing her ability to be anything at any time.

The Fire contain more multitudes than any other team in the league. No one is scoring 10 in a quarter and then outscoring the opponent by 20 in the following two. No one is losing to Connecticut and then beating the Mystics by 20 in Washington two days later. No one is beating the Liberty at home and away and letting the Chicago Sky have the best offensive game in franchise history with a perfect shooting game included. No one does it like us. We’re one-of-one. No one can predict what is next. It is electric.

The Lynx are Sofa King good. It is simple and silly to say, but seeing it in person is unbelievable. They are so poised, and so ready, and have so many ways to beat you. Their hands on defense – swatting at the ball, wrestling it away in small spaces – are the best I’ve seen this year. They are smart, they are crafty, they are classy, they are sharp as hell. They felt more intimidating than Las Vegas, in my eyes.

This was maybe the best showing of what this Fire team is about that we’ve seen this season. Think of how lopsided this matchup was:

And they lost by 4 points! Their rotation system worked wonderfully in the second half, allowing a huge late-game comeback, and their players, all much less experienced than most of this Lynx team, have gotten so much better over the course of just 2/3rds of a season. Their first round expansion pick turned into a monster in the fourth quarter, and their hustle and disruption were front-and-center. This was so fun to see.

You know what? Teja deserves this. Fearless in the face of crazy deficit and incredible opposing talent. Massively clutch, 3/3 from the field and 2/2 from three and 5 assists in the fourth quarter. This is the best game she’s played in the W, and it came against the very best.

A “schedule loss” turns into one of the funnest games of the season and a closer game than anyone expected, showcasing a ton of what is good about this Fire team. The Fire are in 9th place and have a 1 game lead in the standings over two teams; finishing 9th in the league as an expansion team that had a second expansion team to compete for players would be an incredible thing to witness. The Fire go on a three-game road-trip against three beatable teams: Seattle, Phoenix, and Toronto. Winning two of those games would be wonderful, and they are certainly playing well enough right now to do so.

While the Fire are away, I have plans for a couple accessory entries here that I hope to get to.

See you soon.

Have questions? Submit them through the link below, and I’ll answer them periodically!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSehNt8_EhXpWW7nvePd8eL5ZiXFe54l-DTyr74sH6n6l3RaKQ/viewform?usp=header

Points per Possession - how many points a team scores for every possession they have

Effective Field-Goal Percent (eFG%) - field goal percentage with weight added to three-point shots

Turnover Percent (TOV%) - percent of possessions that ended in a turnover

Offensive Rebound Percent (OREB%) - percent of a team’s own misses that they rebounded

Free-Throw Attempt Rate (FTA Rate) - how many free throws a team takes for each Field Goal attempted