Minnesota’s missing the player most people would circle for MVP, and it hasn’t mattered in weeks. Napheesa Collier hasn’t played all season while recovering from surgery on both ankles, and the Lynx enter tonight tied for the league’s best record anyway, riding a rookie who’s rewriting the stat-pace record book. The Call has this as the most lopsided game on the board tonight — not because it’s ignoring Portland, but because the gap between these two rosters was never close.
What The Call sees
The Call gives Minnesota 88.2% to win, the “strong” tag and the widest margin in tonight’s slate. The Elo spread does almost all of it: Lynx 1715 (2nd overall) against Fire 1449 (9th), a 266-point gap that dwarfs anything home field alone could close. The form numbers back it up — Minnesota’s won four straight and sits 21-6, Portland is 11-16 and just snapped a rougher stretch with a single win. The only factor that moved the number at all was a rest edge for Minnesota, which nudged the model’s base read of 88.0% up to 88.2% — a rounding error next to the Elo gap itself, and proof the model didn’t need to reach for anything extra to get to this number.
What could break the pick
Minnesota’s blowout ceiling might actually be underpriced here. Rookie Olivia Miles has been the story of Minnesota’s season without Collier — she’s the fastest player in WNBA history to hit 350 points, 100 rebounds and 100 assists, and Reeve has leaned on her heavily as the offensive hub. If Collier’s long-teased return lands on a home date soon, this Lynx roster’s ceiling goes up from a number that’s already this one-sided — but as of the latest reporting, Reeve still won’t put a date on it, so don’t book a trip around seeing Collier play specifically.
Portland’s own injury math works against closing the gap. Karlie Samuelson has been fighting a recurring left middle finger injury for weeks, missing multiple games and questionable in others — one more piece missing from a Fire roster that’s already shorter on name-brand talent than almost anyone else in the league. A depleted Portland squad walking into the league’s best home record, missing role depth on top of a 266-point Elo deficit, is the kind of setup where “strong favorite” undersells the actual blowout risk.
The trip
Target Center sits in downtown Minneapolis, plugged into the skyway system that lets fans move hotel-to-arena without ever stepping outside — genuinely useful for a Saturday night game if the weather doesn’t cooperate. It’s an easy one to build a full evening around, win margin aside. Our Target Center guide covers transit, parking, and the downtown hotel cluster that puts you closest to the arena.
