3:54 PM ET
Mechelle VoepelESPN.com
CloseMechelle Voepel covers the WNBA, women’s college basketball, and other college sports for espnW. Voepel began covering women’s basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996.
Minnesota Lynx forward/guard Karima Christmas-Kelly suffered a ruptured right Achilles tendon in Tuesday’s loss to Seattle and will miss the rest of the WNBA season. It was the first serious injury thus far in the WNBA season, which began this past Saturday.
Christmas-Kelly, 30, is in her 10th season in the WNBA, but has now been plagued by injuries three years in a row. She was limited to six games in 2018 while with Dallas because of knee surgery. Then after signing as a free agent with Minnesota in February 2019, she also played just six games last season with the Lynx because of a knee injury.
She was chosen one of the Lynx team captains for this season, and Tuesday was her second game of the league’s abbreviated 22-game season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Christmas-Kelly was a second-round draft pick out of Duke in 2011 by Washington, and has played with the Mystics, Tulsa, Indiana, Dallas and Minnesota in her career. She was part of Indiana’s 2012 WNBA championship team.
Her top season scoring-wise was 2016, when she averaged 12.4 points per game for Dallas. For her WNBA career, she has averaged 7.9 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.3 assists.
Christmas-Kelly is married to former Duke football player Austin Kelly, who is now director of recruiting for Vanderbilt’s women’s basketball team.
With Christmas-Kelly out, the Lynx still have 11 players on their roster, which has a maximum of 12. Coach Cheryl Reeve said in a recent Zoom call that guard Odyssey Sims, who has been out after giving birth to a son in April, would be joining the team at some point this season, but didn’t give a specific date. Sims led Minnesota in scoring (14.5) and assists (5.4) last season.