How the Lynx's yearlong pursuit of WNBA title ended early in the semifinals

PHOENIX -- Kayla McBride covered her face with her shirt, trying to soak up the tears. A season she and her Minnesota Lynx teammates envisioned would bring a trophy and champagne instead ended Sunday with sadness and frustration.

This wasn't in the script the Lynx had been authoring so diligently for the past 4½ months. They were the WNBA's best team. They won a franchise-record 34 games and had the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. And then Minnesota's season transformed from a feel-good musical to a shocking horror movie.

In the Lynx's must-win Game 4, Cheryl Reeve, the WNBA's longest-tenured head coach, wasn't on the sidelines, serving a one-game suspension for a Game 3 ejection and criticism of the officiating. Napheesa Collier, an MVP favorite for most of the season and by far Minnesota's most important player, had to watch from the bench after an ankle injury late in Friday's game.

The Lynx blew multiple double-digit leads and lost 86-81 to the Phoenix Mercury, ending this playoff campaign and the promise of a season that held championship aspirations. At a somber postgame news conference, veteran guard McBride tried to sum up the heartbreak.

"To be close two years in a row," said McBride, who scored 31 points in Game 4.

"S--- f---ing hurts."

Last season, minutes after a 67-62 overtime loss to the New York Liberty in Game 5 of the WNBA Finals on Oct. 20, the Lynx came to their news conferences with angry comments about the officiating and how they felt it had cost them the championship.

The Lynx vowed then to run it back in 2025, but this time claim the franchise's fifth title. And for nearly five months, it seemed as if they did everything right: They returned their entire starting five, made some key additions, had the league's best regular-season record and clinched home-court advantage for the playoffs with five games still left on their schedule.

They started the postseason with a 2-0 sweep of Golden State in the first round. They won Game 1 of the semifinals against Phoenix and had a 48-32 lead at halftime in Game 2 of the best-of-five series.

Then things spun out of control. For the first time in franchise history, the Lynx lost a game in which they led by at least 16 points at halftime; they had been 61-0 previously. And that 89-83 overtime loss to the Mercury last Tuesday wasn't just a speed bump the Lynx needed to overcome to continue their mission.

It was the beginning of the end.

In Friday's Game 3 in Phoenix, the Lynx had a 67-63 lead after three quarters. But Minnesota lost the fourth quarter 21-9, as well as someone even more significant: Collier, who was injured on a steal by Phoenix's Alyssa Thomas with 23.8 seconds left.

Reeve, seeing her franchise player on the floor in pain, lost her temper. She was ejected from the game, which the Mercury won 84-76, and again castigated the league's officiating in a brief postgame address to the media.

The play on which Collier was injured was just the spark that lit a long-built fuse for Reeve. She is still bothered almost a decade later by a missed shot clock violation committed by Los Angeles in Game 5 of the 2016 WNBA Finals, which the Sparks then won by one point for the championship.

Then, of course, last season's late call against the Lynx in Game 5 against New York prompted Reeve to say afterward, "This s--- was stolen from us."

Reeve thought this season could be a salve for that. Instead, it leaves the Lynx with another wound.

"You want it for the people [you're around] every single day," McBride said. "In pro sports, it doesn't get any better than what we have in our locker room. We lay it out for each other. It's never been about anything else but each other."

To understand the depth of the disappointment, look at how long it has taken to build this foundation. Seven years have passed since the retirement of the three key players from Minnesota's four championship teams from 2011 to 2017 -- Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen and Rebekkah Brunson. The Lynx started a new era in 2019 by drafting Collier, who dropped to No. 6 in what has proven to be likely the biggest draft underestimation in league history.

"She was the type of person who was exactly an extension of the Lynx culture that was built before her," Reeve said during a postgame news conference on Sept. 6. "Without that -- if you have a superstar that isn't somebody people want to be around -- people aren't as interested in coming to Minnesota to play."

In Collier's first three seasons, the Lynx never made it past the second round of the playoffs. In 2022, the team missed the playoffs altogether for the first time since 2010. After a first-round loss in 2023, the Lynx still faced questions headed into 2024. But they answered those, building a team around Collier as the superstar. They won a Commissioner's Cup title in June, then came agonizingly close to the WNBA title in October.

"I call it the honeymoon. People didn't necessarily see us in the space we were in last year," Reeve said at a pregame news conference on Sept. 21. "So we started the season from a much different perception about us. The expectations were much greater."

This season, the Lynx returned their top six players from 2024: forwards Collier, Alanna Smith and Bridget Carleton, and guards Courtney Williams, McBride and Natisha Hiedeman. They brought back forward Jessica Shepard, who had missed the 2024 season because of her overseas commitment.

They also made strategic changes. They added Maria Kliundikova, a free agent signing on June 6, and another 6-foot-4 post player like Smith and Shepard who brings more size in the paint. On Aug. 3, they traded for guard DiJonai Carrington, the league's Most Improved Player last season and known for her high-level defense.

The Lynx appeared to have planned for every eventuality. Even when Collier injured her ankle in August and missed seven games, the Lynx stayed on track. They lost the Commissioner's Cup final to Indiana on July 1, but that only strengthened their resolve to win the season championship.

And Collier, at least publicly, seemed to brush away the disappointment of coming up short in the race for MVP -- A'ja Wilson took her fourth after a fantastic second half -- saying her real goal was the championship.

"I feel like I am still focused on the championship," Collier said Sept. 21, the day the MVP winner was announced. "That has been my main goal the whole season. Of course, I want to win MVP. But the championship is what I really want for this season."

What went wrong? Reeve and her staff will dissect that all offseason. Losing both Collier and Carrington -- who suffered a season-ending foot injury in Game 2 of the first round -- took a big toll.

But the Lynx also saw some of their killer instinct wane. They squeaked by Golden State in Game 2, 75-74. They trailed 47-40 at halftime of their Game 1 semifinal before rallying against Phoenix. Then they lost three in a row. They had not had more than two consecutive defeats in the regular season -- and did that only once, in August when Collier was out.

After a strong start in Game 4 on Sunday, and a 13-point lead going into the fourth quarter, the Lynx seemed poised to force Game 5 back in Minneapolis.

But for the third time in six days, the Mercury took over -- and the Lynx saw their dream season evaporate. They became the 11th team in WNBA history to have the league's best record but not win the championship, and the sixth of those teams to not even make the WNBA Finals.

"I [didn't] look at this season and say, 'Oh, this is hard because we've got a target on our back,'" Williams said Sunday of carrying the favorites tag ever since starting 9-0. "That's what we wanted, right? We got hit with that injury bug, and, you know, it's hard. Shout out to us not giving up."

Because so many of the league's players will be free agents for next season -- a new collective bargaining agreement is needed first -- the Lynx are unsure what their roster will look like in 2026, a fact that makes this season's painful finish even more poignant.

"As a vet, somebody who's older, I feel everything," said McBride, 33. "I just care. But I would feel like this 100 times over to be with the people I've been with. You just want it to keep going."