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The Minnesota Lynx are on the brink of elimination in the WNBA playoffs, and now face the possibility of ending their season without head coach Cheryl Reeve.
The WNBA suspended Reeve for one game and issued a fine for her behavior and comments toward officials in Friday’s 84-76 semifinals loss to the Phoenix Mercury in Game 3. Minnesota enters Sunday’s Game 4 trailing 2-1 in the best-of-five series.
The league issued the following statement explaining Reeve’s actions:
“Her conduct and comments included aggressively pursuing and verbally abusing a game official on the court, failure to leave the court in a timely manner upon her ejection with 21.8 seconds to play in the fourth quarter, inappropriate comments made to fans when exiting the court, and remarks made in a post-game press conference.”
The controversial sequence began when Reeve was ejected after walking onto the court to confront the officials. Her objection was a response to Suns star Alyssa Thomas scoring a layup after inadvertently running into Lynx star Napheesa Collier’s knee while stealing the ball. The score was 82-76 at the time.
Collier held her knee on the ground before being helped off the court. Reeve gave the officials and fans an earful as she made her delayed exit, and offered a scathing criticism of the officiating crew post-game.
“The officiating crew that we had tonight — for the leadership to deem those three people semifinals playoff worthy — is (expletive) malpractice,” said Reeve, per AP, of officials Isaac Barnett, Randy Richardson and Jenna Reneau.
Reeve also criticized the way the game was called in totality, blaming Collier’s injury on allowing too much physicality.
“When you let the physicality happen, people get hurt, there’s fights, and this is the look that our league wants for some reason,” she said. “We were trying to play through it, trying not to make excuses.”
In addition to disciplining Reeve, the WNBA fined Lynx assistant coaches Eric Thibault and Rebekkah Brunson. Per the WNBA, Thibault was “fined for his inappropriate interaction with an official on the court” while Brunson was fined for “an inappropriate social media comment directed at WNBA officials.”
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