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Napheesa Collier was matched up against the Atlanta Dream’s Maya Caldwell on the left wing late in the third quarter Sunday in a must-win game for the Minnesota Lynx. Caldwell attempted to throw the ball to a teammate in the paint, but Collier was there. She raised her hands above her head, stopping the ball in its tracks where it bounced lightly off her forehead. Collier collected it and was gone, speeding across half court and into the paint before kicking the ball out to a teammate for a 3-point attempt.
“That’s Phee,” Lynx coach/general manager Cheryl Reeve said about her budding franchise cornerstone. “That’s the kind of stuff that we missed.”
Collier, 25, admits she still can’t do all the things she’s used to just yet, but the 2019 WNBA Rookie of the Year reminds herself that she’s still better than she was the week before, and hopes to be better next week than she is now. After all, just 74 days prior to the game, a 81-71 Lynx win, Collier had given birth to her first child, daughter Mila Sarah Bazzell. Sunday marked Collier’s first appearance of the 2022 season.
Well before Mila’s arrival, Collier knew she wanted to return to the WNBA this summer so that she could play one last time with teammate and future Hall of Famer Sylvia Fowles, who will retire at the end of the season. Collier achieved that goal last weekend less than three months after bringing Mila into the world, following in the footsteps of women’s pro basketball stars like Sheryl Swoopes and Candace Parker — in 1997 and 2009, respectively — who returned to the WNBA hardwood within months of giving birth.
Even Collier took her re-emergence a bit for granted.
“For some reason, I had this really…
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Source : espn
