Lynx and Liberty head to WNBA Finals Game 5, laden with drama and, as usual, including coach Cheryl Reeve

And now after a 40-game regular season and three playoff rounds, just one game remains in 2024, the WNBA Finals’ Game 5 on Sunday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The Lynx forced that decisive Game 5 with Friday’s 82-80 home victory over the New York Liberty, won on Bridget Carleton’s two free throws with two seconds left.

The Lynx shrugged off elimination and sent the best-of-five series back east for one last game — the eighth Finals Game 5 in league history and the first since Washington beat Connecticut in 2019.

The Liberty are in the WNBA Finals for the sixth time, dating to 1997. They also are 0-5 so far. The Las Vegas Aces won their second consecutive title by beating them in four games last year.

Minnesota is going for a record fifth WNBA title. The Lynx won four championships in seven years — the last in 2017 — and lost in the Finals two other times with such stars as Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles and Rebekkah Brunson.

Now the Lynx are back in a Finals Game 5 for the fourth time — they are 2-1 — with a new collection of stars but with Cheryl Reeve as coach every time.

Reeve will have been involved in six of the eight WNBA Finals Game 5s: As a Detroit Shock assistant coach in 2006 and 2007, and with the Lynx in 2015, 2016, 2017 and now 2024. Her teams won in 2006, 2015 and 2017, and sustained a blowout, 108-92 home loss to Phoenix in 2007, when the Shock lost the series’ last two games and the chance to be repeat champions.

That loss also was the first time in the WNBA’s first 11 years a visiting team won the title on the road, a challenge the Lynx now face.

“I don’t really think about the other ones,” Reeve said after Friday’s game. “I do feel very blessed in my career to have a chance to have been a part of so many. Haven’t won them all. In Detroit, we suffered a heartbreak at home. So it runs the gamut. What I’m just thrilled about is this group gets to experience the Game 5.”

Lynx assistant coaches Brunson, Katie Smith and Elaine Powell all played in Finals Game 5s in their day, too.

Come next season, Game 5s in the Finals won’t be so final. The WNBA is going to a best-of-seven (2-2-1-1-1) Finals.

The Lynx stretched the series to its limit even though stars Napheesa Collier and Courtney Williams were scoreless in Friday’s fourth quarter. In turn, Liberty stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu shot a combined 10-for-36 and together were 0-9 on three-point attempts.

Ionescu went 0-for-5 on threes after hitting the clutch, winning three-pointer from nearly halfcourt at Game 3′s end. Stewart shot 5-for-20 and said afterward she was “going too fast” and needed to slow herself down when the Lynx sent multiple defenders at her.

“Everyone is out there to do the same thing: Make shots hard,” Collier said. “She’s one of the best players in the world. But you have to make it as hard as you can for her.”

The Liberty were 32-8 in the regular season, two games better than the 30-10 Lynx. That earned them the playoffs’ first seed and the right to have homecourt advantage through the playoffs.

The payoff, theoretically, comes Sunday night.

“That’s what we said we worked for all season long,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said after Game 4. “Minnesota did what they needed to do here to tie it up, and now we go back home. We love playing in front of our home crowd. So it will definitely be another sellout, and it will definitely be loud.

“I have lot of respect for Minnesota. This is a really tough team. They play well. They compete. So we’ve got one more game and we’re going to win on our home court.”

Both Brondello and Reeve worked the officials publicly after the past two games.

After Game 3, Reeve told reporters “the game’s called differently for Phee than it is for Stewie, for sure,” referring to her star Collier and New York star Stewart. “For whatever reason, we have a hard time getting to the foul line in this series.”

The Lynx were called for 18 fouls to the Liberty’s 13 in Game 3. In Game 4, the Lynx had nine fouls, New York 14.

“We got no calls today, so do I need to talk up in a press conference?” Brondello asked reporters after Friday’s game. “We were getting ticky-tacks [fouls called] and we went down there and got nothing. … Just be fair. If they’re getting hit, it’s a bloody foul.”

In a Finals series so close and riveting, Reeve was asked what will be the difference in Game 5.

“Wish I knew,” she said. “I’d either not eat and not sleep or I’d sleep really good if I knew. It’s two great teams. Who knows? Who knows?”

Lynx guard Kayla McBride said in one winner-takes-all game, venue or city doesn’t matter.

“The last 40 minutes of the season, it could be anywhere, really,” McBride said. “We are going to be out there together going to war and I’m pumped.”