Break up the Lynx

The Minnesota Lynx won the WNBA championship ... again.

Lynx capture 4th title with 85-76 win over Sparks in Game 5

It was a close series, going to five games, the maximum.  But still, the best team (and the team that everyone recognized as the best team) won.

That's not good.  Even if upsetting a repeating champion is big news and big excitement (as when Connecticut was defeated in the NCAA tournament this past season), having so much talent on one team in a game where top talent usually wins (not enough elements of chance) -- well, it's just nigh to boring.

No argument that they're good, and the town with the dominant team is usually pretty happy about it.  But part of sports fandom is being able to hope your team has a chance -- maybe a small one, but a chance nonetheless.  In this era of dominant basketball teams, too many towns with teams know the season is probably over, championship-wise, before the first game is played.

Now, the English Premier League (soccer) has a few repeatedly dominant teams, as we well know -- but they do seem to mix up who actually wins each year, and there is a small chance, as Leicester City proved, that the element of uncertainty in soccer can play a part and let a long-shot win.

So, back to the WNBA -- it was a surprise that Elena Delle Donne actually moved from Chicago to Washington, giving the Mystics a chance to advance in the playoffs.  But the series against the Lynx showed that they really didn't have a chance to win the playoffs.

Perhaps if Tayler Hill hadn't torn her ACL in July, then the Mystics might have been able to make the series more interesting.  But in reality, a team like Minnesota has to lose talent to let the rest of the league catch up.  Who knows?  Maybe one of the Lynx will get pregnant.  That's one aspect of the women's pro sports that isn't quite the same as for men.  And of course, somebody vital to the team could get seriously hurt, which is always possible.

But unless something like that happens, we can expect the Lynx to be favored to win it all again, next year.