Unlike the Liberty, the Lynx aren't a “superteam”…and that doesn't make them any less excellent – Twin Cities

Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon reflected thoughtfully on the moments after her team's reign came to an end Sunday as the Aces fell in Game 4 of their semifinal series against the New York Liberty.

It was a somewhat frustrating year for the Aces, who still had all the talent in the world but couldn't find the same equipment as they had in the previous two seasons.

“We had great talent,” Hammon told reporters, “and had a good team.”

Just a good team. Not great, let alone excellent. The Aces simply weren't the sum of their parts.

In comparison, Hammon discovered – unprompted – that the lynx was just the opposite.

“You take a team like Minnesota and you have good talent,” she said, “but you have an excellent team.”

This is a super team era in the WNBA. Last year's final featured Las Vegas and New York, two teams boasting All-Stars and high draft picks. These are the teams with the big names, and they have received the majority of the media coverage and recognition. And rightly so. They were the ones fighting for titles.

Minnesota was not. And the expectation at the start of the season was that it would continue like this. At the start of the season, oddsmakers had odds of about 50-1 for the Lynx to win the WNBA title.

Minnesota didn't appear to have the talent to compete at the highest level. Yes, Napheesa Collier was great. But Las Vegas and New York were full of high-end gamblers. Minnesota apparently had one.

But then early results suggested Minnesota might be different. The Lynx started 4-1. Then it was 13:3. They then won the Commissioner's Cup, defeating the Liberty in the final 94-89.

“You have to talk about us now. “You have no choice,” Lynx coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve told the media after that win. “We simply beat a super team. You know how hard this is. Because you love your super teams, man. You love your super teams. The only thing you want to talk about is your super teams. And we just beat a super team, so let’s talk about it.”

And yet the narrative seemed to change only so much. Although Minnesota continued to win games and the Lynx played the best basketball of any team in the league after the Olympic break. Still, all the talk surrounding the WNBA semifinals revolved around Liberty Aces.

Minnesota-Connecticut was on the undercard.

This was brought to Collier's attention in the semifinals, and honestly she appreciates the lack of exposure at this point in the season.

“If we continue to be underestimated and we just keep doing what we’re doing. We come in and punch teams in the face because they have the same attitude,” Collier said. “I think we've proven who we are all season, we have so much confidence in ourselves and know what we're capable of and we try to show that every night. So it doesn't matter what other teams say and believe. What matters is what this core team feels, and we know we have something special here.”

They've known it since training camp, when they saw firsthand her willingness to move the ball on offense and win possessions on defense. The strength to do both came from the desire to achieve something for each other.

The collective was stronger than the individual pieces.

“We like each other, we got along so well in training camp, the chemistry was there and we kept building it,” said Lynx guard Courtney Williams. “You could just feel the difference and the way we play for each other, our selflessness, everyone just wants to win. “At the end of the day, that's what this team is about.”

Reeve said Minnesota could have taken two different approaches when it became clear that Las Vegas and New York had “swallowed up the top talent.”

“You can either say, 'Okay, it won't be our time for a while, we'll just wait,'” she told reporters. “Or you can say, 'We'll find another way.' ”

Minnesota chose the latter, and its path was one of team-first basketball, using each player's individual skills to make the five-player combination as successful as possible on the court. Now only the Liberty – the final opponent – ​​stands between Minnesota and the top of the mountain.

A similar scenario has already played out with men. Reeve recalled the 2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons, who used a similar formula to defeat a Lakers team in the Finals that featured Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Karl Malone and Gary Payton.

“So there’s more than one way (to win),” Reeve said. “There’s more than one way to do this and that’s why we’re not a super team, but we’re a heck of a basketball team.”

Yes, the “not a superteam” chip still rests on Reeves’ shoulders, as well as those of her players.

“I think the chip was there,” Williams said. “(Pundits) had us in ninth place at the start of the season, so that chip was never lost. We block out the noise. We know what we can do, we’ve always known what we can do, so we’ll continue to show everyone what we can do.”