MINNEAPOLIS – Cheryl Reeve will make one thing clear: The Lynx earned this break.
After defeating the Sparks in Los Angeles on Sunday night, Minnesota won itself a week-long respite from playoff games, which this season have been of the most grueling, grinding variety. Yes, they lucked into the fact that their WNBA Finals opponent – either Connecticut or Indiana – will have a far shorter reprieve, through a longer series and a schedule dictated by television, but again, remember this:
They earned it.
For the first time in months, the Lynx have been able to pause. They took two days off, Monday and Tuesday, and still have the luxury of four days of full practices before the Finals begin. So for now, they train. They focus on themselves rather than on picking apart an opponent for the first time in weeks. They relax, just a bit, and joke about ways that their already-great scenario might even improve.
"The other series going to three games and hopefully maybe a triple-overtime, hopefully maybe flight delays and everything else that we can throw in," Reeve said. "It certainly doesn't guarantee anything, but if you can draw up a scenario, this is a pretty decent one."
It might seem like the Lynx have an embarrassment of riches. They're the reigning champions who again hold the league's best record. They have homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs, an all-star roster and a great shot to win it all. But don't hold it against them. Not after the season they've gone through. It's not as easy as it looks, they swear, and as tempting as it might be to write them off as overly humble or even liars, wait one second.
It has not been as easy as it looked, not one bit. Maybe the regular season wasn't so tough, at least on game nights. But that was due not only to the team's bountiful talent but also to its work ethic. With 34 games and a lineup like the Lynx's, no team was going to play spoiler to the point that they wouldn't make the playoffs. Opponents could whittle away at that close-to-perfect record, but after their 10-game winning streak to start the season, the Lynx were virtually assured a playoff spot. They were going to be good, even with that target on their backs.
It's the playoffs where this can be spoiled, where instead of months of games in which mistakes can be corrected, there are just three, three, then five. Those same mistakes that were brushed away in May are magnified here in September and October, where even the Lynx can't be perfect. And now, the target is bigger.
The general consensus around the Lynx is that this time, it's been harder. Of course it has. No longer are they surprising anyone; no longer are they surprising themselves. Championship last year was a vague term, a goal to which the steps were hardly spelled out. But from the moment this season began, it's been repeat, repeat, repeat, perhaps even more so than win, win, win. It's as if now that they've done it once, they can replicate it again – but that's so far from the truth. It's not that they won't be able to repeat, just that it is taking a distinctly different process to get there.
And so as fast as this year might seem for all of them, here they are again, tired and bruised yet still, undeniably, favored. It's been a single journey, these 39 games and counting, but also a continuation, a chance not only at this year's championship but also at building something more off of what they've already accomplished.
The Lynx are just as hungry as they were last year, if not hungrier. Then, they were out to erase the past. Now, they're showing everyone that they can still be the best, even when every other team wants to change that. It's a different chip on their shoulders this year, one of maintaining rather than surprising, and the fact that these über-successful women have any chips at all – that's a testament to their attitudes, which might even trump their skill.
"It's been different," Rebekkah Brunson said of this season. "It's been tough. Nothing's come to us easy, and we've had to grind out a couple games, where I think we caught a couple teams by surprise last year. We were new. We were up-and-coming. But now, everybody knows what we're doing, knows what to anticipate, knows what to look for. They've given us their best games. But we're here. We made it."
We're here. We made it. What fans expected and even assumed, the Lynx still don't take for granted, and that's the key to understanding just how these women can be so great.
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