Cheryl Reeve Wins WNBA Executive of the Year After 33-Win Lynx Season

The WNBA named Minnesota Lynx head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve its 2026 Basketball Executive of the Year on Monday.

The announcement came two weeks after the league named her Coach of the Year for a fifth time.

Reeve also won the executive award in 2019 and 2024. In 2024, she took Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year in the same season, and this is the second time she has done it.

Curt Miller is the only other person to win both in one season, with the Connecticut Sun in 2017, the first year the league handed out the executive award.

Minnesota finished 33-11. That was the best record in the league and earned the Lynx the top overall seed in the playoffs. It was Reeve's 17th season as Minnesota's head coach.

Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams were back in the backcourt. Reeve signed Natasha Howard, who has won three WNBA titles, in free agency and brought back Napheesa Collier, though Collier sat out the first 27 games after ankle surgery, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

By the Star Tribune's count, five of the top eight players in the 2025 rotation were gone.

With the second overall pick in April, Reeve took TCU point guard Olivia Miles.

Miles finished with 790 points in 40 games, which broke the WNBA's single-season rookie scoring record, and she led the Lynx at 19.8 points and 6.0 assists per game.

In July, with Collier still out, Reeve said Miles was shouldering basically the entire team.

"She is the first player in [WNBA] history — not the first rookie — the first player in [WNBA] history to get 400 points, 100 rebounds and 100 assists in 22 games," Reeve said. "And so I want you to digest that and think about that."

Miles was a unanimous pick for Rookie of the Year on Sept. 28. Reeve won Coach of the Year that same Monday.

Reeve received 40 of 74 Coach of the Year votes from a media panel. Golden State Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase, the 2025 winner, finished second with 20. Washington Mystics coach Sydney Johnson had 14.

In net rating, Minnesota ranked second in the league at 9.1. The Lynx were third in offensive rating at 115.0 and fourth in defensive rating at 103.5.

They were second in steals at 9.1 per game, third in assists at 21.9, and third in opponent field goal percentage at 43.5%.

Minnesota won 18 road games, a WNBA record. From July 11 through Aug. 12, the Lynx won 10 straight, the franchise's longest winning streak since 2016.

On July 8 against the Connecticut Sun, Reeve won her 380th regular-season game and passed Mike Thibault as the WNBA's all-time winningest head coach. She finished the regular season with 397 wins.

Reeve was the league's Coach of the Month for June. She coached in the All-Star Game in Chicago in July, a month after her induction into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

New York, seeded eighth, took Game 1 91-75 at Target Center on Sept. 27.

Two nights later at Barclays Center, the Liberty won 87-71 and closed out the best-of-three series.

Minnesota was the first top seed in WNBA playoff history to be swept in its opening series, according to ESPN.

"It sucks," Reeve said Tuesday night.

Reeve said after Game 2 that she would face hard decisions as an executive this winter.

"I have not felt like we've had that team over these three years," Reeve said, "and so what we're doing is sort of maybe exceeding expectations in the regular season, and then when it comes playoffs, maybe we don't quite have the right group to be effective."

New York's run ended in the next round. The Atlanta Dream swept the Liberty in the semifinals.