When the Minnesota Lynx’s season ended, their head coach was in a hotel room and their best player left the court on wheels. That’s one explanation for their surprising semifinal loss to the Phoenix Mercury. Game 4 was set up by the chaotic ending of Game 3, in which Alyssa Thomas made a critical steal as she collided with Napheesa Collier, and a furious head coach Cheryl Reeve ran up on the refs, shouting while her staff held her back.
Reeve’s on-court blowup continued for several minutes. In the postgame press conference, she picked up where she left off. The officiating crew in this game, she said, was “fucking awful.” It was a layered and colorful enough performance that when the WNBA announced Saturday afternoon that Reeve had been suspended for the next game of the series—for “aggressively pursuing and verbally abusing a game official on the court, failure to leave the court in a timely manner upon her ejection with 21.8 seconds to play in the fourth quarter, inappropriate comments made to fans when exiting the court, and remarks made in a post-game press conference”—the punishment hardly seemed out of line. Reeve got her money’s worth. And then she really got her money’s worth: The Lynx injury report said Collier would miss Game 4 with an ankle injury. The team’s championship odds, unquestioned all season, were looking slim. They no longer existed by the end of yesterday's 86-81 loss, in which Minnesota surrendered 31 fourth-quarter points.
Game 3 had the drama, but I think I find the second game of this series more explanatory. Their late-game comeback on the road reassured the Mercury that the Lynx are beatable, and that the Mercury, specifically, could beat them. Hope is a dangerous thing to give Alyssa Thomas. For the rest of the series, Phoenix played precisely the game an opponent like Minnesota demands. Compromised by their lack of size and missing their most athletic wing, the injured DiJonai Carrington, the Lynx had few answers for a physical Mercury team.
Phoenix made for an especially demoralizing opponent: The Lynx could perfectly defend a possession for 20 seconds and force a bad shot, only to give up the offensive rebound to a leaping Kahleah Copper. Guarding Thomas takes a toll on one’s body, and on one’s spirit. Over and over, she sprinted past Alanna Smith; such is the magic of the Mercury’s superstar, to make the co-Defensive Player of the Year a liability. The team that won games by controlling the pace and mood of every game was just kind of helpless on Sunday night as DeWanna Bonner—whose shooting percentage in the final quarter of games is probably 70 percentage points higher than her career number—sank three after three.
The Lynx might be the stealthy contract killers of cinema, but the Mercury are the bomb that makes the car go up in flames. Phoenix's early-season injuries, less discussed than New York’s, might have obscured how overwhelming they can be. Around Thomas is a talented network of cutters and shooters, who, crucially, can be relentless on the defensive end. The Lynx—in particular, Kayla McBride—made a valiant effort without Collier on Sunday night, but by the end, their offense wilted under the pressure.
Minnesota’s revenge season departed from the script, and they’re sure to look different next year, as every roster in the league is torn apart by post-CBA free agency. (The Lynx will have some help in the form of Chicago’s 2026 lottery pick.) If the wound isn’t too fresh, they could take some comfort in the Mercury, a team that knows well the virtues of roster turnover. A team of new faces took down the league’s old ones. Now there’s only one team left to beat.
