April 14, 2025
Instant reaction: What trading for Karlie Samuelson means for the Minnesota Lynx
Minnesota makes a pair of trades leading up to the 2025 WNBA Draft
It’s been a busy couple of days for head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve and the Minnesota Lynx. In a draft eve trade on Sunday, the Lynx sent their first round pick (No. 11 overall) in the 2025 WNBA Draft to the Chicago Sky to ensure they received Chicago’s No. 1 pick in 2026 outright (the Lynx previously owned the rights to a first-round pick swap with Chicago). About 24 hours after completing that trade, Minnesota sent its own pick in the 2026 draft to the Washington Mystics in exchange for Karlie Samuelson.
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There’s much more movement across the league to come over the ensuing hours of the 2025 WNBA Draft, but with these two trades, the Lynx have already made waves for both this season and the looming 2026 offseason as well. Minnesota still holds picks Nos. 15, 24 and 37 in Monday’s draft. Reeve and the Lynx could try to move those picks and secure more future draft capital, or add to this year’s roster, which swelled to 15 total players with the addition of Samuelson.
Samuelson fits the mold of Minnesota’s team identity. She’s a career 39.7% 3-point shooter and set career-best numbers in points per game (8.4), assists per game (2.1) and steals per game (0.9) last season playing under current Lynx assistant coach Eric Thibault in Washington. She also converted 49 of 123 3-point-attempts to finish just a hair under 40% for the season (39.8%) and posted a true shooting percentage of 57.8%, which would have ranked third on the Lynx behind only Bridget Carleton (62.0%) and Kayla McBride (61.1%).
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To only highlight her shooting ability would shortchange the rest of Samuelson’s game. In our Jenn Hatfield’s feature on Samuelson playing against her sister, Katie Lou Samuelson, last season, her then-coach Eric Thibault told reporters “that her all-around game, including her basketball IQ and her defense on the wing, might be better than he’d realized in free agency.”
Minnesota has had to think about how it would fill the void left by veteran Italian sharpshooter Cecilia Zandalasini, who left by way of the expansion draft to the Golden State Valkyries in December. Zandalasini was one of three Lynx to shoot north of 40% from beyond the arc in 2024 (Carleton and McBride) and provided a calming veteran presence off the bench. Samuelson, a veteran of six WNBA seasons with five organizations, had to fight through 12 different seven-day, hardship or rest-of-season contracts between 2018 and 2023 before getting the reward of her first two-year protected contract. A similar story to a couple of her new teammates like Carleton and Alanna Smith, who arrived as impact players for the Lynx by taking a long, winding and less-traveled road.
Samuelson is a natural fit to fill the minutes left by Zandalasini’s departure and provides the experience of 42 starts across the last two seasons in case Minnesota’s depth is tested.
Samuelson, like just about all the veterans on the Lynx and in the league, is a free agent after this season. The preceding trade with Chicago ensures the Lynx will hold at least one first-round chip in next year’s WNBA Draft. It also allowed them to make the move for Samuelson. Without the Chicago trade in place, Minnesota’s own first-round pick in 2026 was tied up in the previously agreed-upon pick swap from the trade they made on the eve of last year’s draft.
Talks of a new CBA, a possibly significant jump in the league salary cap, another expansion draft and a free agency period that promises to be the Wild West all loom large just beyond the conclusion of this season. The pressure to win now without sacrificing team-building capital for the future is undeniable. Mere hours before the Dallas Wings are officially on the clock with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, the Lynx pulled off a pair of trades that tick both of those boxes.
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Written by Terry Horstman
Terry Horstman is a Minneapolis-based writer and covers the Minnesota Lynx beat for The Next. He previously wrote about the Minnesota Timberwolves for A Wolf Among Wolves, and his other basketball writing has been published by Flagrant Magazine, HeadFake Hoops, Taco Bell Quarterly, and others. He's the creative nonfiction editor for the sports-themed literary magazine, the Under Review.
