Lynx/WNBA

All 12 WNBA teams are represented with 2016 U.S. Olympic Women’s Basketball Team finalists. Four Minnesota Lynx players — Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen — are …

Tori Rule is waiting for just one phone call. “I want to go overseas, because that is what I’ve been trained to do,” she said in an MSR interview after her scheduled work shift at the Lake Street YWCA.

Laurel Richie’s announcement last week of her stepping down as WNBA president caught nearly everyone by surprise.

The WNBA announced Wednesday that League President Laurel Richie is stepping down, effective November 9. More on this from Charles Hallman in next week’s MSR sports section.

“It was amazing. We know we care about each other but you can’t say it too much,”said Moore. “This is a team that really cares about each other. We want to be there for each other. It shows when we play.”

“It was 18,000 people?” asked Seimone Augustus, when told of the franchise-record sellout crowd to watch Minnesota win its first pro basketball championship at home since the NBA’s Lakers back in the ’50s. “I’ve been here 10 years [and] I never seen the [arena’s] upper deck full of people in my career. It means a lot to be the longest tenured Lynx and see this amazing environment that we created over the last few years.”

Not since 2009 has the WNBA championship series gone the distance. But what a fitting conclusion for America’s longest running women’s pro league, “a very long and definitely exciting series,” proclaimed President Laurel Richie.

Maya Moore perhaps has swished two of the biggest shots in her illustrious career. The second one, a game winning three at the buzzer of Game 3 Friday that lifted the Lynx to a 80-77 victory over the Indiana Fever.

For those who originally thought this year’s Minnesota-Indiana WNBA Finals would be a rematch of 2012, the last time the two clubs met for the championship, we borrow one of the top all-time movie lines: “Rematch? We don’t need any stinking rematch.”

Game Two of the WNBA Finals was different than Game 1: Unlike Sunday’s contest, where the home team were seemingly looking for a jump start — as well as a jump shot — the Minnesota Lynx on Tuesday found something a bit more lasting — intensity.

If it was up to her, Carolyn Peck would be in Minneapolis in person for Game 2 of WNBA Finals on Tuesday.

“I would love to be at the game,” admitted the ESPN studio analyst Monday in a MSR phone interview. “Are you kidding me?”

It’s not so much what happened in Game 1, but instead what adjustments the team — now down a game in the best-of-five championship series — will do for Game 2.

From 1969 to 1977, the Minnesota Vikings played in four Super Bowls. In 1987 and 1991, the Twins won two World Series Championships thanks to Hall-of-Famer Kirby Puckett. Lately, it’s the Minnesota Lynx showing the big boys how to get it done.

This year’s West finals, based on the first game played Thursday in Minneapolis, is Ali-Frazier like. “[Like] two heavyweight fighters going blow by blow,” remarked a relieved Seimone Augustus after Minnesota’s 67-60 win over Phoenix to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three semi-finals series.

The MSR got a quick analysis from two coaches in the closing seconds of Minnesota’s two-point win over Los Angeles Friday in Game One of the Western conference semifinals.