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Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier. Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

The Napheesa Collier injury casts a dark cloud over Lynx's 2025 playoff hopes

Originally posted on Total Apex Sports | By David Desa | Last updated Sep 27, 2025 5:54 PM ET

The air in Phoenix was thick with tension, the kind you can only find in a do-or-die playoff game. But for the Minnesota Lynx, and Napheesa Collier, that tension morphed into something far colder: despair. With just 23.8 seconds left on the clock in a gut-wrenching 84-76 Game 3 loss to the Phoenix Mercury, the Lynx’s season didn’t just teeter on the brink — it may have shattered. And it all came down to one sickening moment.

Collier, the heart and soul of this Lynx squad, the MVP finalist who carried them all season, lay crumpled on the hardwood. Her face, usually a mask of fierce determination, was contorted in agony. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she clutched her left ankle. The collective breath of every Lynx fan, both in the arena and watching at home, hitched in their throats. This wasn’t just an injury; it was a potential death blow to a championship dream.

The play itself was a chaotic scramble, a moment of basketball brutality that can change a team’s destiny. As Collier drove, Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas made a play on the ball. In the ensuing collision, Thomas’s body made incidental, yet catastrophic, contact with Collier’s leg. The star forward’s ankle twisted unnaturally. The sight was horrifying, the sound of her cry echoing the fears of an entire franchise.

What happened to Napheesa Collier?

The final seconds of the game devolved into chaos. As Collier was helped off the floor, unable to put weight on her ankle, head coach Cheryl Reeve, a portrait of controlled fire all game, finally erupted. Her fury, directed at the officials over the physical nature of the game that led to this moment, earned her a second technical foul and an ejection. She had to be restrained by her assistants, her face a storm of rage and concern for her fallen star. It was a scene of a team completely unraveling at the most critical juncture.

The box score will say Napheesa Collier finished with 17 points, six rebounds and three assists. But those numbers feel hollow now. They are a footnote to the image that will haunt the Lynx: their leader, their MVP, leaving the court in tears, her season and her team’s fate hanging precariously in the balance.

How long will Napheesa Collier be sidelined?

The silence in the postgame news conference was heavier than any defeat. Coach Reeve, her earlier fury simmering into grim resignation, delivered the words every Lynx fan dreaded. While there was no official diagnosis just yet, her assessment was chilling. “Probably has a fracture,” she stated, the words hanging in the air like a death sentence. A fracture doesn’t just put Collier’s status for Sunday’s must-win Game 4 in jeopardy; it almost certainly ends her season. For a team that entered the playoffs as the top seed and a favorite to hoist its fifth championship trophy, the news is nothing short of catastrophic.

During that same news conference, Reeve was extremely critical of the officiating. The WNBA should have taken her words seriously, but instead, the league decided to suspend her.

The Lynx, who had looked so dominant in their first-round sweep and their series-opening blowout against this same Mercury team, now look utterly lost. They dropped Game 2 in a heartbreaking overtime thriller and followed it up with this collapse in Game 3, a game where they held a lead heading into the final quarter only to be outscored 21-9 when it mattered most.

Now, facing elimination on the road, against a Mercury team surging with momentum and home-court advantage, the Lynx must find a way to win without their best player. It’s an almost impossible task. Napheesa Collier isn’t just their leading scorer; she is their emotional anchor, the player they turn to when the game is on the line.

The question is no longer just about winning Game 4. It’s about whether this team, so carefully constructed for a championship run, can even recognize itself without its brightest star. The playoffs are a cruel theater, and for the Minnesota Lynx, the stage has suddenly gone dark.

This article first appeared on Total Apex Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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