The Minnesota Lynx seized the early lead in Commissioner’s Cup play, going 3-0 in the opening week and building a plus-57 point differential through games played Sunday, June 7. That start put Minnesota alone atop the West as the Cup standings began to take shape during the June 1-17 window that counts toward both the regular season and the tournament table.
The reason the Fever schedule is drawing so much attention now is that every game in this stretch matters twice: once in the season standings and again in the Cup race. The top team in each conference after June 17 reaches the Commissioner’s Cup Championship Game on June 30, and those standings can also matter when tiebreakers get tight.
Olivia Miles provided the week’s sharpest individual headline, breaking the WNBA record for 3-pointers in a game by hitting eight in 11 tries. It was the kind of shooting night that can bend a game on its own, and it arrived in the same week the league’s Cup picture started to separate into early contenders and teams still trying to keep pace.
Not every result fit the clean narrative of a team climbing smoothly. Indiana looked poised to improve to 2-0 in Cup play after taking a 12-point lead late in the third quarter against the Liberty on Saturday, then was outscored 38-18 the rest of the way and fell to 1-1. That swing left the Fever chasing ground instead of protecting it, while the Liberty finished their seven-game homestand with four straight wins and now head into a stretch with seven of their next nine June games away from Barclays Center.
Elsewhere, Atlanta stayed close behind the early leaders with a plus-36 point differential through three games and remains in position to capitalize if unbeaten New York slips. Las Vegas also opened Cup play with wins over the Sparks and the Valkyries, and got its first home victory of the season in an 84-79 result against Golden State. The Wings, winners of four straight and six of their last seven, enter the second week with a showdown against Minnesota in Minnesota, a matchup that could say as much about the West race as any game this month.
For now, the standings tell a simple story: Minnesota has the best Cup start in the league, Miles has the record that will be replayed all week, and the path to June 30 is already narrowing. The next checkpoint is not a debate over who looks best on paper. It is which team from each conference is still standing at the top when the Cup window closes on June 17.
