{"id":173092,"date":"2025-09-27T13:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T13:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/173092\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T13:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T13:31:09","slug":"lynxs-cheryl-reeve-blasts-referees-after-napheesa-collier-hurt-in-playoff-loss-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/173092\/","title":{"rendered":"Lynx\u2019s Cheryl Reeve blasts referees after Napheesa Collier hurt in playoff loss | WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minnesota star Napheesa Collier was injured Friday in a loss that left the Lynx on the brink of elimination from the WNBA<\/a> playoffs, and coach Cheryl Reeve didn\u2019t hold back her opinion of the way the referees handled the physical contest.<\/p>\n

The Phoenix Mercury<\/a> beat the visiting Lynx 84-76 to take a 2-1 lead in a best- of-five semifinal series.<\/p>\n

Reeve wasn\u2019t around to see the end of it after she was ejected with 23.8 seconds later, arguing that Phoenix\u2019s Alyssa Thomas should have been called for a foul while stealing the ball from Collier. The play ended with Thomas hitting a layup that put the Mercury up by six.<\/p>\n

After running onto the floor to dispute the call, Reeve was given her second technical foul of the night, resulting in an ejection.<\/p>\n

Postgame, Reeve didn\u2019t hold back on the profanities while weighing in on the officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the look that our league wants, for some reason,\u201d she said of the game\u2019s physicality. \u201cWe were trying to play through it, we tried not to make excuses. One of the best players in the league [Collier] shot zero free throws. Zero, and she had five fouls. Zero free throws. Got her shoulder pulled out and finished the game with her leg being taken out, and probably has a fracture.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so this is what our league wants. OK. But I want to call for a change in leadership at the league level when it comes to officiating. It\u2019s bad for the game.\u201c<\/p>\n

Reeve added, \u201cThe officiating crew that we had for tonight, for the leadership to deem those three people semifinals playoff worthy is fucking malpractice. I can take an L with the best of them. I don\u2019t think we should have to play through more than what they did.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got players \u2013 (Maria Kliundikova is) on the glass and gets fucking cracked, and there\u2019s no call. And all of them decided, \u2019It wasn\u2019t my call, I don\u2019t know, I didn\u2019t see it that way.\u2019 They\u2019re (bleeping) awful.\u201c<\/p>\n

The Mercury shot 22 free throws in the game, hitting 18. The Lynx ended up 10 of 11 at the line.<\/p>\n

Collier, 29, scored 17 points and grabbed six rebounds. She was the runner-up for WNBA Most Valuable Player for the second season in a row after averaging a career-high 22.9 points to go with 7.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota star Napheesa Collier was injured Friday in a loss that left the Lynx on the brink of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-173092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}