“Every team needs a Marina,” declares Lisa Leslie. The Connecticut Sun’s hidden weapon, Marina Mabrey was on fire on Sunday. The Sun took Game 1 vs the Minnesota Lynx 73-70, and the mid-season trade Marina Mabrey played a huge role with her threes. Shooting and landing a total of 6 shots from the deep, Mabrey scored a team-high 20 points. And Lisa Leslie believes she is the missing piece that Connecticut has been lacking these last several years.

“She’s an actual weapon. She can hit big shots as she does, whether the clock’s running down or the game’s at the end,” the former pro tells Kelley O’Hara on ‘Just Women’s Sports. Leslie also points out how the Sun is a physical team and have the fight in them to finally win the franchise’s first Championship. O’Hara then says, “But they just needed that one piece of long-range shooting to open up the court.”

The Lynx are known for their threes and moving the ball around, and yet, these are exactly the two things that the Sun used to take Game 1 of the semifinals. “Every team needs a Marina, first off. Every team needs a player who can hit the three ball when you need one but also hit it under pressure. She can do both of those but she is also a very good defender, she’s spicy. She’ll fight you on offense, she’ll fight you on defense. So you can appreciate the fact that her position is sealed, because she really is an All-Star. And they just got the third-fourth piece to the puzzle,” says the WNBA icon.

Since 2019, the Connecticut team has come close to winning their first championship and lost each year. In 2019, they lost in the Finals to the Washington Mystics, then the Aces defeated them in 2020 before they could even get to the Finals. 2021 was a defeat to the Chicago Sky in the semis, 2022 to the Aces again in the Finals, and the Liberty won the semi-finals last year.

This year, the 3rd seeded team is taking on the second seed, but they have their ace in the hole in the form of Marina Mabrey. Leslie agrees, saying that if Alyssa Thomas or veteran DeWanna Bonner can’t get the points, “You kick it out to Marina and a bucket’s happening. I love the way their team is structured right now, she’s really a missing piece for any team.”

The Chicago Sky had traded Mabrey in July and it was one of the best things they could have done for Connecticut. While the Sky themselves just missed out on playoffs, Mabrey is like a blessing in disguise for Connecticut. Even Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve is impressed.

Lynx coach calls Marina Mabrey’s arrival in Connecticut “a huge trade”

Cheryl Reeve winning the WNBA Coach of the Year award was no surprise. After guiding the Lynx to a franchise-best 30-10 (.750) record, it was her fourth, the most by any W coach. Now on the hunt for their 5th championship, Reeve stands at the helm as Minnesota takes on Connecticut. And yet, even she believes that adding Mabrey to the Sun was a trade for the better.

Reeve said before Sunday’s game, “It’s a scorer’s mentality on the perimeter. Ty Harris has been terrific for them in that space, and now you add Mabrey to that, and that’s an additional scorer. That was a huge trade. A huge trade.”

In their last eight playoff appearances, the Lynx have never finished higher than fifth in the league in 3-point attempts. They’ve barely made the top ten and yet, the team has always been good at defending the three-point line when opponents shoot. Now, they’ve got one of their own.

“That’s what they brought me here to do. I’m going to get out there and shoot the ball,” says Marina Mabrey. Seventh in the league in the regular season, this three-point shooter is fearless and adds the option of a much wider court coverage for the Sun. As they go to Game 2 without having dropped a single game so far, the odds are certainly tipping in their favor!