The hard road to the WNBA Finals finds survivors in the Lynx and the New York Liberty

A little more than three months ago, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve pulled point guard Courtney Williams aside after a performance that apparently pleased neither.

“It was a moment after the Commissioner’s Cup game and we played Dallas and I was terrible,” Williams said. “And she said, ‘Court, I feel like you gave into hard.’ And from that moment, I was like, ‘I will never do that again. You’ll never have to worry about that again.’”

Those few words have become a theme in a season when every team battles its own version of hard as it advances — or doesn’t — in the WNBA playoffs.

Minnesota has embraced the hard and will play Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Thursday against the New York Liberty in Brooklyn.

The Lynx, making their first trip to the Finals since 2017, were seeded second in this year’s WNBA playoffs. They swept Phoenix in two first-round games and then beat Connecticut 88-77 on Tuesday in a deciding fifth game at Target Center in the semifinals.

“It’s so hard because so many things have to align to even be in this position,” said Williams, who has been in the Finals before with Connecticut but never won a title. “We always believed from the beginning. We have such a great group and we all believed in what we could do as a group. Now everybody else is seeing. But it’s hard.

“We understand it’s hard. But we invite hard. We love hard.”

It’s hard for everybody, win or lose.

“Each round, each step, each game gets you closer to a championship, but the closer you get, the harder it gets, the better teams you play,” Connecticut forward DeWanna Bonner said. “It’s really hard to get to this point of the season. It gets harder and harder until you get to the final goal. Unfortunately, they wanted it more.”

The Liberty won the WNBA regular-season title but did, memorably, lose to the Lynx 94-89 in the league’s midseason Commissioner’s Cup championship on June 25. The Lynx, in fact, won three of four meetings, including a nationally televised game with New York at Target Center.

“We got a little complacent in a few of those games,” said Liberty All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu told reporters Wednesday in New York. “Players coming in and out and our season hasn’t been the easiest in terms of continuity.

“Now we’ve been able to peak at the right time in terms of understanding what we need to do to win, how we need to stay hungry. If a team is taking one thing away, how do we combat that with different options … we’re in a different place where we’ve been doing that really well.”

Liberty coach Sandy Brondello praised the Lynx on Wednesday.

“They play basketball in the right way,” said Brondello, who coached Phoenix to the 2014 WNBA title. “Great teamwork, great defense. They make it hard for you.

“They have great shooting, and they space you out. They’re a good team. Obviously, they’ve beaten us a few times. I don’t think they’ve seen us at our best.”

The Lynx begin their Finals series in Brooklyn, N.Y., on a 48-hour turnaround.

“We’ll have a chance for recovery in the morning, then we’ll fly out, do the media circuit, get a scouting report in and go hooping,” Reeve said after Tuesday’s victory. “Talk about the schedule, I mean, who cares? Nobody is going to feel bad for us. Nobody. I don’t care if New York is sitting there, we got to go hooping right away.”

The Liberty have been waiting to play again since they beat Las Vegas 76-62 on Sunday to win the semifinal series 3-1. They’ve worked on their bodies and their games in the interim.

“Minnesota is coming in from playing [Tuesday] and we have a game [Thursday],” Liberty center Jonquel Jones said by video call. “It was really important to go out to Vegas and finish Game 4 and end that series so we had time for things we wanted to work on.”

Game 2 is Sunday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and the Lynx will play host to Game 3 and, if necessary, Game 4 next week.

After Tuesday’s game, however, Reeve was too emotionally spent to consider the next step.

“Honestly, it hits too hard for me right now,” she said. “I just spent five games playing a team. I have no idea. I don’t remember a lot of the stuff that we did. It’s beyond my capacity. I know we’ve had some really good games and we expect it to be a great series.”

Connecticut coach Stephanie White appreciates the way the Lynx create space for star forward Napheesa Collier, but says not to underestimate Liberty stars Breanna Stewart, Ionescu and Jones, who she calls the series’ X factor.

“It’s going to be a fun series,” White said. “Minnesota has proven to give New York some problems, the way they space the floor.

“But on the flip side, Stewie’s playing incredibly and Sabs is playing incredibly well. I don’t know if there’s a matchup for J.J. I’m excited. I think it’s going the length, it’s going five games. It’s going to be a great series.”

New York lost to Las Vegas in last year’s Finals, and is the only original WNBA franchise to not have a title, despite five Finals appearances. This will be the Lynx’s seventh Finals berth, and they have won four championships. The former is a record and the latter ties a record; both Seattle and the defunct Houston Comets also have four titles.

“I feel like our keys against [the Lynx] are play our style, our tempo, control the boards, I think that’s the biggest factor,” said Stewart, who has two WNBA titles with Seattle after winning four consecutive NCAA championships at UConn.

“Know that they’re a team that definitely is gonna scramble, trying to muck us up offensively, but we just need to be able to play through that and continue to find the open person.”