The Lynx May Be Salty, but They’re Right About Terrible WNBA Finals Officiating

The losing team is typically the one to complain about the refs, but that doesn’t mean Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve’s complaints aren’t valid.

Reeve challenged a foul called on Lynx forward Alanna Smith with five seconds left in the fourth quarter, but it was unsuccessful. / Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

Shortly after the Minnesota Lynx came close as they could possibly get to winning a championship, coach Cheryl Reeve applied for another job: editor.

“I know all the headlines will be ‘Reeve Cries Foul,’” she said, after the New York Liberty beat the Lynx, 67–62, in overtime. “Bring it on, right? Bring it on, because this s--- was stolen from us. Bring it on.”

This was after Reeve said, “We know we could have done some things right, but you shouldn't have to overcome to that extent. This s--- ain't that hard. Officiating is not that hard.”

Oh, and also: “This sucks. This is for a championship. Let them decide it. What contact is legal should be the same for both teams. This isn't that hard, and so it's disappointing.”

Oh, and also: “Sometimes you get away with stuff when you're physical and aggressive, and they certainly did. It's a shame that officiating, you know, had such a hand in a series like this.”

How mad were the Lynx? The Dead Sea is not this salty. Kayla McBride walked into the postgame press conference and kept asking to look at the box score. Napheesa Collier said the reason the Liberty slowed her down was “probably because I was getting held a little bit. It was a little hard to make shots.”

You can say they were sore losers and poor sports and whatever else you want.

But they were right.

I would not use the word stolen. It implies intent, and I’m not questioning anybody’s integrity—just their performance. The officiating was woefully inconsistent in this series, and Game 5 was a low point. The quicker team shot eight free throws. The more physical team shot 25. Throughout the game, Reeve kept turning to her bench after calls, asking if she should challenge, knowing full well what I wrote last week: As long as the WNBA lets game officials review their own calls, they will be reluctant to overturn them.

With five seconds left in the fourth quarter and the Lynx leading 60–58, officials called Alanna Smith for a foul on Liberty star Breanna Stewart. Reeve turned to the bench and decided to finally use a challenge. 

The WNBA rule book says “Incidental contact with the hand against an offensive player shall be ignored if it does not affect the player’s speed, quickness, balance, and/or rhythm.” Smith put her hand on the ball. Any other contact was incidental. But there wasn’t even any suspense to the challenge. Of course it was unsuccessful.

“If we would have turned that clip in, they would have told us that it was marginal contact, no foul—guaranteed, guaranteed,” Reeve said. “So when you review, those should be the same parameters that you're reviewing with. But the three people that are on the game need a third party to let them know, because that decided the game. That decided the game.”

One call does not decide a game. Coaches say it all the time. But I talked to Reeve briefly after her press conference, and it was clear that her frustration extended far beyond that one call.

“Our first two free throws came in the third quarter,” she said. “First two free throws of the game in the third quarter. [There’s] shooting fouls, and then there's the off-ball fouls that would accumulate, which would lead to free throws, which certainly went uncalled …

“Collier didn't take a single free throw. Zero free throws. And all her points were in the paint.”

She summed up interactions with officials like this: “You tell them. They don’t see it. That’s what they say: They don’t see it, they don’t see it. I don’t understand it. … We’ve got work to do.”

Other than establishing an offsite center for challenge reviews, what can the WNBA do to improve officiating?

“I don't know the answer there,” Reeve said. “I mean, I've been working on it for years. Is the NBA happy with their officiating?”

Of course not. Mark Cuban’s tombstone will probably include a complaint about the refs from the 2006 NBA Finals. But I’ve never seen an NBA series with such inconsistent officiating as we saw in this WNBA series. I arrived at the Barclays Center on Sunday sure of only two things: Whoever lost was going to complain about the officials, and they would have a point.

Put it this way: If you didn’t care who won, and you watched a version of this game that was edited down so you didn’t know which fouls were called, you would never imagine that Collier committed six fouls and shot zero free throws. You would never guess that the Liberty’s Jonquel Jones and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton committed fewer fouls combined (4) than Collier.

You would have seen Stewart shoot 5 for 14, Sabrina Ionescu shoot 1 for 19, and you would have assumed the Liberty lost. 

“These guys shot 30%,” Reeve said. “Thirty percent. The difference was in the foul line.”

Of course, Reeve is biased. But that doesn’t make her wrong.

Reeve also said she was proud because the Lynx “do things the right way. You know, built a team within the rules … we gave hope to those teams that aren't willing to circumvent the cap, or, you know, fly illegally, or all this stuff has happened over the last five years.”

This was a direct shot at the Liberty, and probably at the 2022 and ’23 champions, the Las Vegas Aces, as well—and it was unnecessary. There is definitely a larger discussion to be had about whether the WNBA is willing to drop a punitive hammer on its most popular teams at a time when the league is growing, but Reeve did not have to bring it up Sunday night. She had legitimate complaints about the officials in a deciding game of the WNBA Finals. There was no need to litigate anything else.

There was also no need for Reeve to reference her lingering resentment over the end of the 2016 WNBA Finals, or for this:

“Congratulations to the Liberty on their first championship,” Reeve said. “How long has the league been around? Twenty-eight years? It took them 28 years. Congrats to them. We were that close to our fifth.”

The implication here seems to be that the league wanted its star-studded New York team to win its first title and directed the refs to deliver it. That’s some NBA-level conspiracy theorizing, and on another day, we could all find it entertaining.

But cap violations are not what we should be discussing today.

The previous 27 years are not what matters today.

What does matter is that the WNBA has a fantastic product with an obvious officiating problem, and that problem sullied the Finals. Only losers complain about the officials. But sometimes they’re absolutely right.