For the sixth time in franchise history, the Lynx house the WNBA\u2019s Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s announcement that Olivia Miles was the 2026 honoree was hardly a surprise. Miles was the unanimous choice, collecting all 74 votes.<\/p>\n
In 40 games, Miles averaged 19.8 points, 6 assists and 4.7 rebounds while shooting efficiently and engineering Minnesota\u2019s high-powered offense.<\/p>\n
She set the all-time WNBA rookie record in total points (790) and finished second all-time in assists in a rookie season behind only Caitlin Clark.<\/p>\n
But Miles\u2019 dominance extended far beyond the rookie scope. She was an all-star starter who was firmly entrenched in the MVP conversation all season. Miles was the driving force behind a 33-win regular season that helped Minnesota earn the No. 1 seed in the WNBA playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Lynx play in New York on Tuesday for Game 2 of the first round, needing a win to extend their season and force a winner-take-all Game 3.<\/p>\n
In Minnesota\u2019s corner will be coach Cheryl Reeve, who was named WNBA Coach of the Year for a fifth time Monday.<\/p>\n
Reeve re-tooled Minnesota\u2019s roster on the fly in the offseason as the Lynx lost their starting frontcourt and reserve point guard to lucrative free agent deals. And Minnesota was sans star player Napheesa Collier for the first half of the campaign as she recovered from surgery on her ankles.<\/p>\n
Yet the Lynx never lost a step, as Reeve constructed an offense around Miles, Kayla McBride, Natasha Howard and Courtney Williams to pair with Minnesota\u2019s long-cemented defensive identity.<\/p>\n
The Lynx stormed out of the gates and finished the year with the No. 2 net rating. Minnesota is a top-two seed for the third straight season.<\/p>\n
Now both Reeve and Miles will attempt to parlay their regular season excellence into postseason success in the pursuit of an even bigger, more prestigious trophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the sixth time in franchise history, the Lynx house the WNBA\u2019s Rookie of the Year. Monday\u2019s announcement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,10946,736,123521,82,630],"class_list":["post-913357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cheryl-reeve","tag-minnesota-lynx","tag-olivia-miles","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913357","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=913357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}