Pokémon Meets the WNBA In the Nerdiest Off-Season Announcements Ever

The Minnesota Lynx continues to prove that professional sports and video games go hand-in-hand, setting out to make this year’s WNBA free agency the very best, like no one ever was. The team welcomed several of its new players in Pokémon fashion, swapping Pokéballs for WNBA contracts.

WNBA free agency reliably offers a deluge of announcements, with many star players swapping cities or re-upping contracts with their existing franchises, but this news has rarely been delivered in an 8-bit format. Minnesota’s initial social media announcements entering free agency were run-of-the-mill, with a standard thank-you post for the exiting Tiffany Mitchell and a welcome post for former Connecticut Sun guard Natisha Hiedeman cropping up on Instagram. However, the Lynx then dipped into the world of Pokémon to stir up some mystery about an incoming free agent.

The Minnesota Lynx’s first Pokémon post featured only a silhouette and the enticing promise: “THE LYNX are evolving”. The teaser, paired with another vague arrival video, stirred speculation and excitement among fans. The first day of free agency confirmed the suspicion that Chicago Sky guard Courtney Williams would be joining the Minnesota franchise. 8-bit versions of Williams and Alanna Smith were both officially welcomed as new additions to the Lynx roster in clips that followed the Pokémon aesthetic.

These Pokémon-inspired announcements are not the only occasion in which the WNBA has incorporated pop culture into its social media presence. When WNBA teams rolled out their 2024 regular season schedules, the Lynx capitalized on the anticipation surrounding Grand Theft Auto 6 by modeling its schedule announcement after the franchise. The Seattle Storm likewise embraced a current pop-culture franchise when unveiling its 2024 schedule, replicating the Burn Book from Mean Girls. As a whole, the WNBA has often embraced the nerdier side of popular culture, with the Indiana Fever even sporting a City Edition Jersey inspired by Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Though the additions of Hiedeman, Williams, and Smith have been embraced by Lynx fans, no WNBA team can truly catch ’em all in free agency and exits from Minnesota have included Mitchell, Lindsay Allen, and Rachel Banham, with Aerial Powers expected to sign with the Atlanta Dream. This type of roster shake-up is typical during WNBA free agency and, though the biggest story of the off-season concerns the destination of 8-time All-Star Nneka Ogwumike, the Minnesota Lynx have managed to gamify this chaotic off-season period in a truly delightful manner.