The Minnesota Lynx's 2025 revenge tour continues in the playoffs, and they could not have dreamed up of a better start to their postseason run than the one they had on Sunday against the Golden State Valkyries in Game 1 of their first-round matchup. As was characteristic of the one-seed, the Lynx took care of business rather handily against the WNBA's newest expansion team, demolishing them by 29 points, 101-72, to start the postseason.
The Valkyries did give the Lynx a few nervous moments in the first quarter, but Minnesota was the top-seeded team in the WNBA this season for a reason, as they climbed back from a deficit that grew as large as 10 points to win by 29 in a game they led by as many as 36 points. This game just reaffirmed the notion that they are out for blood, and that they are looking to avenge last year's heartbreaking WNBA Finals defeat.
In the process of doing so, Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve became the all-time winningest coach in the history of the WNBA, with this most recent win against the Valkyries being the 414th of her career (regular season and postseason combined), as per Mitchell Hansen of Canis Hoopus. She surpassed Mike Thibault, who amassed 413 total wins for his career after being the head coach of multiple championship-winning Connecticut Sun and Washington Mystics.
Reeve has been the head coach of the Lynx since 2010, and she has tallied 364 wins in the regular season and exactly 50 in the playoffs thus far for her career. She has a total WNBA career record of 414-218, which puts her win percentage at around 65.5, and she has won four championships, all of them coming during Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles' heyday.
But clearly, she and the Lynx are not done achieving great things yet.
Napheesa Collier, Lynx are out for redemption
Nothing might be more heartbreaking in professional sports than to come to within one win away of winning a championship. As famous movie philosopher Ricky Bobby Sr. once said, “if you ain't first, you're last.” While that necessarily isn't true, the sting of coming so close yet so far cannot compare to anything in sports.
For the Lynx, they have certainly played with a huge chip on their shoulder all year long. Napheesa Collier might be on her way to winning her first MVP award, and their beatdown of the Valkyrie on Sunday showed that there might not be anything that exists to stop them from winning a championship this year.
