‘Very clear biases.’ Pain of controversial loss in WNBA Finals won’t go away as Lynx prepare for 2025 season.

The fact Cheryl Reeve still uses the word “trauma” to describe what happened in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn more than six months ago should be the first indication that the pain hasn’t dulled, the sense of injustice hasn’t faded.

But the sense of purpose? The chip on the Lynx’s collective shoulder? They have only grown since that night in New York when people had to go to the rule book to find out what the heck “illegal guarding position” meant.

“We will have an edgier group this year,‘’ said Reeve, the Lynx’s head coach and president of basketball operations, about her team’s sense of purpose as they begin preseason practices. “And that will have a direct correlation to the trauma. A direct correlation.”

It was Game 5 of the WNBA Finals. Seconds left. The New York Liberty inbounded the ball, down two. Breanna Stewart shot, missed.

A whistle.

Lynx center Alanna Smith was called for a foul. Reeve called for a review, to no avail. Illegal guarding position. Two free throws with 5.2 seconds tied the score and forced overtime, which ended in a 67-62 Minnesota loss.

“For it to end the way that it did?” Smith said after Minnesota’s first training camp practice. “It was bitter. I have calmed down about it. But it’s something that really stays with you. You have to remember that feeling and make sure you don’t feel it again.”

But it’s more than just that call, if you’ll recall.

The entire 2024 season felt like an us-against-them situation for Minnesota, a better-than-the-sum-of-its parts team picked to finish relatively low but rising to the No. 2 seed led by star forward Napheesa Collier and a cast of hardworking teammates. When the Lynx went to New York and beat the Liberty for the Commissioners Cup title in June, Reeve talked about how the Lynx had beaten a super team.

“You gotta talk about us now,” she said.

So it was more than just that call.

How about Collier, who scored 22 points, almost all in the paint, and never getting a free-throw attempt? It remains the only game in her career with 20 or more shots attempted and no free throws rewarded.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert attended the game in a dress depicting the New York City skyline. After the game the league’s X.com account posted — and later, deleted — an entry saying the championship trophy was where it belonged.

“What bothers us the most is that we did not fit the narrative,” Reeve said. “I don’t think anybody believes in any word of fixing, per se. But the injustice of not being the team that fit the narrative. There was a very clear conditioning of what some folks wanted.

“Whether it was the way the games were commentated [on TV], whether it was what the commissioner would wear to a Game 5. Very clear biases.”

Very clear inspiration.

“We’re using it as motivation,” Collier said. “No one is going to feel sorry for us. Everyone is competing for the same goal. But we do have more of an edge because it’s like a fire in our bellies.”

For all of that, there was opportunity. Guard Kayla McBride had a good look at a three that might have won it in regulation. Guard Courtney Williams is still bothered by her 2-for-14 shooting performance.

“I’d been killing it, the whole series, then I got to the last game,” Williams said. ‘’But all that made me do is get in the gym and work."

The two situations aren’t exactly the same, but perhaps the motivation is similar. In 2016 the Lynx were going for consecutive championships. Tied 2-2, in Game 5 against L.A. at Target Center, the Sparks’ Nneka Ogwumike had a shot clock violation that wasn’t called in a tie game in the closing moments.

That game ended on Ogwumike’s put-back basket and a 77-76 L.A. win.

As Reeve said, that 2016 team started that year with greater expectations — and a deeper résumé — than the 2024 team. Reeve knew what the response would be in 2017, which ended with the Lynx’s fourth title, won on the elevated floor at Williams Arena.

She can hardly wait to see how the 2025 team responds. Like 2017, all five starters return.

Lindsay Whalen was that team’s point guard, Rebekkah Brunson the power forward. Both of them are now Lynx assistants. They talked to the team in the post-practice huddle Sunday about the importance of being fueled by disappointment but not being consumed by it.

Whalen was in the stands as a fan at Barclays Center in October and she felt sick for the players. “Because,” she said, “I knew exactly what they were feeling.”

Back in 2016, Whalen couldn’t even watch sports on TV for weeks. But that loss, that pain, motivated her and her teammates.

“It brought us closer because we had this shared pain,” Whalen said.

And, months later, joy. “I look back at it and I don’t think we get that feeling of 2017 without the pain of the year before.”

That was the message she and Brunson tried to impart after Sunday’s practice.

“They were telling us sometimes you have to go through that to get to the top of the mountain,” Collier said. “OK, so we lost. We have that chip on our shoulder. Now we have to go get us one. When we tell our story, we’re going to tell about how we lost the first time, but came back and won the second time.”