Minny does not have the option of rotating in players with extra length as they did last year. Adair became a very significant player for them off the bench last year and Amber was starting to give some good minutes this year as well.
Adair had a knee injury in June that set her back hugely and she is visibly out of shape compared to last year. Amber broke her hand(?) earlier this year and now reportedly has mono so I'm not sure if she is available at all. Not that she was dominating but there were games this year where she was able to partially neutralize opposing bigs and get a few rebounds, depending on the matchup. IMO she would have gotten significant mins off the bench against Wauters in this series.
Dev has had good games but is smaller than either Jess or Amber and is not able to fill in at the 5 as well as the other two.
This all results in Taj getting too many minutes and she is showing wear and tear. The alternative is usually a small-ball lineup which can work well at times but which also gets exploited by experienced veteran squads like the Storm.
If Adair had not gone down this would be a much stronger team inside from quarter to quarter. To a lesser extent, same with Amber. As it is, Minny has much longer lapses inside where they get throttled for awhile before recovering.
