Minnesota Lynx head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve has been named the WNBA's Basketball Executive of the Year for the third time, the league announced Monday. The award ties her with Atlanta Dream executive Dan Padover for the most selections in the honor's history.
The recognition arrives less than two weeks after Reeve's top-seeded Lynx were swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the eighth-seeded New York Liberty. It is the first time in WNBA history that a No. 1 seed has been eliminated by a No. 8 seed, and New York completed the sweep with a pair of 16-point victories, including a 91-75 win in Game 1 at Minnesota.
Reeve appeared on 13 ballots, ahead of Padover's 11 and Golden State's Ohemaa Nyanin's eight. Each of the league's 15 teams had an executive on the voting panel, and voters were not permitted to select themselves. The result amounts to a substantial endorsement from her peers.
The league's announcement highlighted Reeve's selection of Olivia Miles with the No. 2 pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft. Miles became the unanimous Rookie of the Year and set the league's rookie scoring record with 790 points, averaging 19.8 points, 6.0 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game. She also finished second in MVP voting.
Miles became available at No. 2 after the Dallas Wings chose Azzi Fudd with the top pick. Fudd averaged 13.1 points, 1.8 assists and 1.7 rebounds as a rookie. Miles produced her numbers while playing slightly fewer minutes per game and shot better from the field.
Reeve also drew praise for a pair of trades with the Chicago Sky. In April 2024, Minnesota moved from No. 8 to No. 7 and acquired the rights to Nikolina Milić, receiving Sika Koné, a 2025 second-round pick and the right to swap first-round picks with Chicago in 2026. Chicago used the No. 7 selection on Angel Reese. At the time, Minnesota was coming off a 19-21 season and Chicago an 18-22 season.
In April 2025, Minnesota sent Chicago the No. 11 pick, which the Sky used on Hailey Van Lith, for Chicago's 2026 first-rounder outright. That deal canceled the earlier swap and allowed Minnesota to keep its own 2026 first-round pick as well.
Reeve also signed Natasha Howard, who started all 44 games and earned an All-Star starting spot. Minnesota finished the regular season 33-11 and earned the No. 1 playoff seed.
Reeve's four championships are part of her record, though the most recent came in 2017. In the nine seasons since, Minnesota has reached the Finals once, losing to New York in 2024. During that same stretch, Reeve has collected three Coach of the Year awards and all three of her Executive of the Year awards — six individual honors and zero championships.
Reeve already won her fifth Coach of the Year award two weeks ago. With Monday's announcement, she became the first person to win Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year in the same season twice.
Reeve has also made her politics a prominent part of her public platform. She wore a «Trans Kids Belong» shirt on the sideline against the Indiana Fever shortly after Sophie Cunningham's comments about protecting women's sports went public. After Minnesota's Sept. 24 regular-season finale, Reeve characterized the controversy involving male participation in women's sports as an attack on what she called the «transgender community.»
«They don't want transgender people to exist,» Reeve said at the time. The remark drew criticism from those who argue that girls and women deserve their own athletic category. As both the coach of the Lynx and the executive overseeing their basketball operations, Reeve's public conduct carries the authority of both positions.