February 5, 2023
Lynx add guard Tiffany Mitchell, bring four players back to solidify depth
Lynx re-sign Allen, Carleton, Dantas and Milić in addition to adding Mitchell
The Minnesota Lynx have confirmed the previously reported news of the return of both guard Lindsay Allen and forward Bridget Carleton to the team. Additionally, Minnesota has re-signed forwards Damiris Dantas, Nikolina Milić and also signed free agent guard Tiffany Mitchell.
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The depth of the Lynx roster is beginning to take shape as the team has doubled the total number of players under contract as of Thursday morning.
Mitchell, as the sole newcomer of the group, will bring plenty of experience and scoring to the Twin Cities. The No. 9 overall draft pick in 2016, has spent all seven seasons of her WNBA career with the Indiana Fever and has made 95 starts across 209 games in that span.
Her 2022 campaign featured career lows in points per game (6.5) and minutes per game (16.3), but also career highs in field goal percentage (45.1%) and three-point percentage (38.7%). The South Carolina product has routinely finished towards the top of the league in free-throw shooting and holds a career mark of 89.5% from the charity stripe.
In five previous seasons with the Lynx, Dantas has averaged 8.2 points and 4.8 rebounds per game across 117 appearances and 106 starts. In 2022 Dantas started all 15 games she appeared in for Minnesota and collected 5.1 points and 3.8 rebounds per game.
Dantas was selected with the No. 12 overall pick by the Lynx in the 2012 WNBA Draft and has spent most of her WNBA career in Minnesota, though she did play 2.5 years in Atlanta. She ranks sixth in franchise history with 134 makes from three, 12th in minutes played with 3,009, and 12th all time in win-shares at 8.3 (all leaderboard rankings from Basketball Reference).
Milić played in 31 games and made four starts as a 28-year-old rookie for the Lynx in 2022. The native of Bosnia & Herzegovina averaged 6.0 points and 3.0 rebounds per game while shooting 54.8% from the field after arriving to the team on a hardship deal early in the season.
The Next‘s own Lucas Seehafer reported last season that Lynx President of Basketball Operations and Head Coach Cheryl Reeve had had her eye on Milić for some time after coaching against her in international Olympic play.
Milić had the type of up-and-down campaign in 2022 that can be expected of any WNBA rookie, but her promising moments provided some of the silver linings of an otherwise black cloud season in Minnesota. If she takes another step forward in her second WNBA season under Reeve, her signing could prove to be one of the steals of this offseason.
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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.
