Cheryl Reeve, Lynx not feeling championship pressure after latest WNBA playoff exit: 'It is what it is'

· Yahoo Sports

Cheryl Reeve is well aware of the historic nature of the Minnesota Lynx's loss on Tuesday night. 

But she's not dwelling on it.

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"Yeah, it sucks," she said. "We're not going to focus on s*** like that. It is what it is."

Reeve and the Lynx were swept by the New York Liberty in the opening round of the WNBA playoffs, with the Liberty closing out that best-of-three series with an 87-71 win at the Barclays Center on Tuesday night. That officially made them the first No. 8 seed to upset a No. 1 seed in WNBA playoff history. 

While the current playoff format is only a few years old, the impact is still the same. The Lynx went 33-11 in the regular season and looked completely unstoppable at times — at one point, they won 16 out of 17. But they were terrible in the playoffs. They led for less than three-and-a-half minutes in their two postseason games. 

And it's not just this season, either. The Lynx earned the No. 1 seed in the playoffs last season, too, but were knocked out in the semifinals. They were the No. 2 seed in 2024 and made it to the WNBA Finals, but fell to the Liberty in a series that went the distance. 

"I don't know [why we can't win a championship]. I feel like if we knew the answer to that we would translating it over," Napheesa Collier said, via Zone Coverage's Andrew Dukowitz. "That's something that obviously we have to figure it out. We play really well in the regular season — I mean, the game is hard."

The Lynx were once the dominant franchise in the WNBA. At the beginning of the Reeve era, they won four titles and reached the WNBA Finals six times in a seven-year span. But since their last championship in 2017, they've only been back to the Finals once. 

Even though it's seemed like they've been good enough to make that type of run again lately, they've come up short every time. But that feeling, Reeve said, is not necessarily felt within the Lynx organization. Any thought that they have to win now or the season is a "bust," she said, is just an external thing.

"There wasn't an expectation internally that, 'Hey, championship or bust,'" she said. "I understand the Lynx franchise, because we've been successful and we've won championships, everyone thinks it's championship or bust. 

"There's sometimes when you have that team, and that would be the case that you should feel that way. I have not felt like we've had that team over these three years."

The Lynx have a lot to be proud of in their regular-season run. Olivia Miles, after being selected No. 2 overall in the draft, averaged 19.8 points and six assists per game while earning unanimous Rookie of the Year honors. Reeve won the league's Coach of the Year award, too. And for a while, it looked like the Lynx were going to be the team to beat.

In the end, they simply weren't.

"We became a great regular-season team this year," Reeve said simply. "And we ran into the wrong team."

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