MINNEAPOLIS — In 2000, the Houston Comets traveled to Seattle to play against the city's new expansion team, the Storm. The Comets were coming off championships in the first three seasons of the WNBA, en route to their fourth. With stars like Cynthia Cooper (now Cooper-Dyke), Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, they were the biggest name in an infant league.
Van Chancellor, the Comets' coach for all four of their championships, remembers that trip to Seattle vividly, less for the game, their third of the season and an easy 77-47 win, than for the crowds. The team would return to its bus to find a crowd of 200 people waiting around it, he said, clamoring for autographs or even just a glimpse of the reigning champions.
"When we won the four championships, a lot of people said there was a dynasty in the WNBA," Chancellor said. "No question in my mind, we had one. That was the talk of every city that had a team."
Since that four-year dynasty and the Los Angeles Sparks' subsequent two consecutive titles, no WNBA team has managed to repeat a championship. The dynamics of the league have changed as it has expanded and improved in talent level, and winning consecutive championships has become the league's white whale after it was so common in its early years. That's why the Lynx's task of repeating is so daunting. Watching them, a repeat seems so realistic, but there are reasons it hasn't been done for a decade.
It's not that reigning champions are following up titles with losing seasons. That's happened only twice. The first time was when the 2008 Phoenix Mercury finished 16-18 and became the first defending champions to not only finish with a losing season but also to miss the playoffs. Phoenix did it again in 2010, finishing 15-19, but that year they earned a postseason berth.
Aside from those two cases, reigning champions have remained contenders, but they've failed to dominate in the playoffs. There hasn't been another case like that of the Comets, who fell apart after Cooper retired, Kim Perrot passed away and Swoopes and Thompson became injured. It's just the reality of parity, of a league with more teams and more talent.
Chancellor, who went on to coach the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team in 2004 and the LSU women's basketball team from 2007-11, still follows the WNBA closely. He said that the league he watches today is so different from the one he coached in, mostly because of the talent pool. There are more players now, and first-round picks at times are cut from teams. That would have been unheard of in his day, just as players competing as long as they do today would have seemed far-fetched.
In the early days of the WNBA, the league was less stable. Players' salaries were even lower, and women had to weigh the options of other careers against entering a league that might disappear the next day. WNBA legend Tina Thompson has said she had to seriously contemplate her decision to forego law school and enter the league. Those stories are harder to come by in 2012, and with more stability comes a greater talent pool.
After five of the league's initial eight teams -- including Houston -- folded, the WNBA began to grow. It didn't have to recruit college stars; going pro was their logical next step. With the parity that's grown in the league, it's nearly impossible for one team to hoard so many of the league's stars as Houston did in the late 1990s.
This should all seem like a cautionary tale for Reeve and the Lynx, and in the thick of their season, it is. Especially with Minnesota holding a 12-1 record, the best in the league by 2.5 games, it's important to ignore talk of repeating as champions. There's no time for that now, not when Reeve stresses a shorter focus, looking only at the next game. But that's not to say that the Lynx haven't talked about repeating.
"Let's begin to think about repeating," Reeve said in February. "It's very challenging, so that's obviously a goal. It's something that hasn't been done in a long time, 10 years, and we'd like to be the team that is able to do that. We understand that this journey is different."
That's the kind of talk for offseasons, for preparation. It's more of a mental state than anything. The Lynx discussed it before there were other pressing issues at hand. Now, there are individual games to prepare for. In the winter, there was a whole season to worry about; there was a tone to be set.
"2012 is going to be very different than 2011," Reeve said. "I want them to come back as hungry as they were when we began 2011 because we came out of 2010 not feeling very good."
In 1998, the Comets might have had room to be complacent. They were a dynasty without question. But 14 years later, there's no place for that kind of thinking. There's always another team waiting, lurking just a few games behind in the standings and ready for a playoff upset.
If the Lynx can pull off what the Comets and Sparks did all those years ago, it would be a statement. It would mean more than any season-opening winning streak record, more than finishing the season atop the Western Conference. And in some ways, it might be good for the league.
When Houston went on its championship streak, it averaged 12,602 fans in 1998. Even though attendance in the league has been growing for the past five seasons, it averaged just 7,955 in 2011. No team last season came close to meeting the Comets' 1998 attendance mark, and even back then, Chancellor's team was outdrawn by New York, Washington and Phoenix. Granted, the league was more of a novelty in its early years, but having a team that dominant, that much in the national spotlight and with that many stars, will bring fans.
It's hard to imagine any team winning four championships in a row again. It hasn't been done in the NBA since the Celtics won eight in a row from 1959-66, and it's never been done in the NFL. The NHL hasn't seen a four-peat since the Islanders from 1980-83, and baseball hasn't had once since the Yankees won five World Series between 1949-53.
But for now, it isn't about four in a row. For the Lynx, this is about two, and even that will be difficult.
"Right now, Minnesota has won a championship," Chancellor said. "They're leading the league. But I still think there are a number of teams that could win the championship, and that could create some interest for it."
The Lynx aren't a dynasty -- not yet. But they have a talent level that's good enough to hint at one, and they'll draw interest as much by winning as by being unseated. That's what will make this season so difficult.
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