NEW YORK — The WNBA’s end-of-season awards tour is awkward almost by design. Smack dab in the middle of the postseason, the spotlight momentarily shifts from active games to honor performances and individual honors stemming from the games that have already happened.
There is no individual honor in the world that can tempt the focus of the Minnesota Lynx away from their do-or-die Game 2 against the New York Liberty in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. A pair of coveted trophies were shining in the Target Center atrium on Monday morning, but it is no surprise that the attention turned to Minnesota’s pursuit of the most coveted trophy, which requires a win the next time the Lynx run out onto the floor.
“I just want to win tomorrow,” Lynx head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve said when asked about the future of Olivia Miles in a Lynx uniform, as a shiny new Coach of the Year trophy stood next to her. “That’s the future. So the future for Liv is bright tomorrow.”
Reeve’s WNBA Coach of the Year award is the fifth of her career. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said it was “the most of any coach in major American professional sports history.”
Miles was unanimously voted as the league’s Rookie of the Year. She broke a slew of rookie records including points scored (790), 20-points games (22), and 3-pointers made in a game (eight). She became the 11th player in league history to be named an All-Star starter as a rookie and became just the fourth rookie to earn Rookie of the Month honors in every single month.
Both Reeve and Miles were informed via surprise trophy presentations by their families. Reeve’s 11-year-old son Oliver brought the trophy out at the end of a recent Lynx practice, proudly declaring “Mom! Congratulations, you’re the WNBA Coach of the Year!”
Miles was surprised by her parents, Yakubu and Maria, who pulled off an impressive bit of espionage to keep their arrival to the team’s pre-playoffs dinner with the trophy in tow a secret.
“I was completely surprised,” Miles said. “They kind of tricked me and said they wouldn’t be able to come and I was a little upset. I didn’t know where they were and they came out with the trophy. It was just a special moment on a special night.”
Win or go home
The Lynx will need another special night if they hope to extend their season beyond Tuesday night in Brooklyn — and whether or not they do could hinge on whether or not Miles has a special night. The Liberty have found a way to frustrate the unanimous Rookie of the Year award winner in a way the rest of the league has yet to figure out. In her four games against New York, Miles is shooting 19-of-72 from the field for 26.4%, the lowest she’s shot against any opponent this season. Miles’s second lowest shooting output by opponent this year was 35.3% against the Chicago Sky, and she shot 49.2% for the year.
It’s also the first time in her career she’s facing an extended series with the additional time, even if it’s only a game or two, to make adjustments against the same opponent, something Coach Reeve referred to as a “tremendous growth” opportunity for the rookie.
“What New York does well is defend at the rim,” Reeve said at Tuesday’s shootaround. “And what Olivia enjoys doing is being at the rim. So you have to figure out other ways, right? Reprogramming on short notice and that sort of thing is a challenge. This is tremendous for her growth.
“It may not be tremendous for us in the immediate space,” she added with a chuckle.
Miles going supernova is one way for the Lynx to stave off elimination, but it may not be the way.
“We have four veterans in the starting lineup and it’s about them,” Reeve added. “They have to hold [Miles]. She has to do some things well. She has to play her schemes well, but it’s not about Olivia Miles. We know that she’s been successful for us, it’s why we’re a number one seed, but we’ve got to be able to do other things.”
The emphasis of the assessment Reeve shared with reporters on the Barclay’s Center floor came down to the Lynx running their offense more effectively to put more pressure on the Liberty defense.
“We’ve been pretty damn impatient,” she said. “That has been a thing for us in the regular season. We do find ourselves to be impatient. Our best spaces [are] when there’s a lot more they have to defend for a lot longer and those were our best possessions. [Miles] will find her way, but this to me is not about Olivia Miles. This is about the other four starters and the veterans holding her.”
A bit of silver lining for Lynx fans can be found in the road record that the team has compiled so far this season. Miles, along with the aforementioned veteran starters of Napheesa Collier, Natasha Howard, Kayla McBride, and Courtney Williams compiled a mark of 18-4 (.818) set a record for most total road wins in a single season and trails only the 1998 Houston Comets (13-2/.867) and 2023 New York Liberty (17-3/.850) for road winning percentage over a single season.
Of course, Minnesota’s lone trip to Barclay’s Center this season on July 3 is one of the four blemishes on the team’s outstanding road record.
“I can’t sit here and say that we spend a lot of time talking about how we want to be a good road team, and we don’t,” Reeve said. “We don’t necessarily communicate that, but I think that when you’re good on the road it’s like a tough-minded group that’s not easily broken. There’s a belief in each other. Connectivity, I think that’s usually the common thread for good road teams. Obviously, we’re going to need that. It’s a feather in our caps. I don’t think you can change who you are. That’s the good and the bad. So if we can be who we are, it’s a good road team, and that bodes well for this scenario.”
