“It’s Tangible to Her Now”: Lynx HC Cheryl Reeve Describes How 2024 WNBA Finals Changed Napheesa Collier

The Minnesota Lynx are arguably the most successful franchise in WNBA history. They’re tied with the Seattle Storm and the since-disbanded Houston Comets with four WNBA titles and if the way this season has gone so far is any indication, they’re on track to win their fifth.

The Lynx are 28-5, 6.5 games clear of the next-closest team and 8.0 games up in the Western Conference. With just 11 games to go, they could have the top seed in the playoffs wrapped up by the end of this week.

Minnesota has been powered by MVP frontrunner Napheesa Collier, but they’ve shown lately that they’re much more than a one-woman show. They’re currently riding a six-game winning streak, and four of those wins have come with Collier on the bench as she nurses an ankle sprain. Two of those wins came at the expense of the defending champion New York Liberty, the team that beat them in the WNBA Finals last year.

Collier is expected to return soon, which is bad news for the rest of the league. Her 23.5 points per game lead the league, and as her head coach Cheryl Reeve recently said on the In Case You Missed It podcast, after coming so close last year, now she’ll stop at nothing to win her first title.

“She has this immense talent,” Reeve said of Collier. “Really the last two years … I’ve seen this step in her mindset in that the older she’s gotten, the more she’s thinking of herself in a championship space … She’s kinda gotten to this space where she’s now been in the Finals and has tasted it, has felt it. It’s tangible to her now. And I’ve seen a difference.”

“Phee has voiced what that difference is. She’s like, ‘I want it, I wanna win it.’ And not to say that that wasn’t a feeling she had before, but it’s different when you get to the Finals. So her first trip to the Finals, and now she understands that championship space, and she’s on a mission,” Reeve added.

Reeve knows that championship mindset when she sees it. She’s coached Maya Moore, Sylvia Fowles, and Lindsay Whalen to all four previous Lynx titles. Before that she was an assistant under Bill Laimbeer on two Detroit Shock championship teams.

According to FanDuel, the Lynx are currently a +140 favorite to win the title, and Collier is far ahead of Alyssa Thomas and A’ja Wilson as a -350 MVP favorite. If she comes back soon, it seems like a lock that the Lynx will break the 2023 Las Vegas Aces record of 34 wins in a season.

Even if they do, all that matters this time around is winning a championship. Some teams that lose in the Finals fade the following season, but the Lynx, and Collier, have only gotten better. It feels like their year.