“Everybody is taking it to another level once you get to the playoffs and it takes that much more discipline and that much more toughness to make it to the Finals,” Jones said. “We’ve been there, so we definitely know what it takes to do it.”
It took three years to get back. Hindsight can make a long road feel short. In the two seasons in between, the Sun lost in the semifinals twice.
They weren’t just one win away in 2020, they were four points away. A 66-63 loss to the Las Vegas Aces in a do-or-die Game 5 showed how slim and how painful the margins are. They were a series away in 2021, but that series wasn’t close. The Sky bounced the Sun in four games.
A title was within arm’s reach when they made it back to the Finals in 2022, but still well beyond their grasp. They lost to the Aces in another four-game series.
They were close again last year when they fell to the Liberty in the semifinals. They were even closer Tuesday night when they faced the Minnesota Lynx in Game 5 with another trip to the Finals on the line.
The Sun dug themselves a 13-point ditch in the first quarter that widened to 19 by halftime — the largest halftime deficit in a Game 5 in WNBA history — and no matter how close they made the score, a return to the Finals couldn’t have been further away after an 88-77 loss ended their run at Target Center.
“Each round, each step, each game that you win, it gets you closer to a championship,” said DeWanna Bonner, who scored 14 points and added eight rebounds. “But the closer you get the harder it gets. The better the teams you play. It’s really hard to get back here.
“It’s really hard to get to this point in the season, so kudos to my team doing that. But I think we didn’t have the understanding that every time we won a game, that it gets harder and it gets harder and it gets harder until you get to your final goal. Unfortunately, they wanted it more, but I’m still proud of us for getting to this point.”
The Sun have been to four Finals. The Lynx denied the Sun a fifth trip.
The only team that’s been to more without winning a title is the New York Liberty and they have a chance to change that after finishing the regular season with the league’s best record, dethroning the defending champion Las Vegas Aces in the semifinals, and setting themselves up to host the Lynx in Game 1 of the Finals on Thursday.
They Sun have been to the semifinals (or the Eastern Conference Finals) 11 times, including each of the past six seasons. Their 48 postseason wins as a franchise is the fourth-most in WNBA history.
For 26 years, they’ve been at the doorstep, knocking, close and far at the same time.
“Every team is so different,” said head coach Stephanie White. “They’ve been there. That group [Bonner, Jones and Thomas] has been there. They’ve been to the Finals. Again being right there, sometimes it’s like are you a piece away, a shot away. Certainly, the way a season works, it does take a little bit of luck, too. Unfortunately, we had a good opportunity in front of us and we weren’t able to take advantage of it.”
White has made two semifinals runs in two seasons with the Sun. In 2015, she led the Indiana Fever to the Finals. She listed the ingredients for a Finals run.
“Just like anything, it takes a little bit of luck,” she said. “Gotta stay healthy. You gotta get hot at the right time.”
The Sun came up empty on all fronts in Game 5. Luck and health betrayed them when Marina Mabrey stepped on the foot of a cameraman along the baseline in the second quarter and tweaked her ankle. Mabrey played just 14 minutes (the fewest she played all season) and scored eight points on 3-of-5 shooting (2 for 4 from 3) before signaling to come out in the third quarter, hobbling just to get up and down the floor.
As far as getting hot, the Sun offense couldn’t find the pilot light. The Lynx held them to 38.5 percent from the floor. Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve had the numbers on hand for when her team defends that well.
“I damn near guaranteed you that we would play the defense that we played,” Reeve said. “We’re now 180-[11] since 2011, when we hold our opponents below 40 percent. To do that to this team was special and it was necessary to close them out.”
On a night when Napheesa Collier gave the Lynx a 27-point, 11-rebound double-double and the Lynx shot 49.3 percent from the floor (34 of 69, 10 of 26 from 3), the Sun couldn’t conjure up enough offense to push through.
“It does take a lot to get to this point,” White said. “It takes a lot to move on to the Finals and to win a championship. Every year, every team is a little bit different. But the most important thing it takes is consistency. You’ve got to be able to come the same way every night. Certainly the course of a season has its ups and downs and players have their ups and downs, but there has to be a consistency and a tough mentality.”
“I think our core three when you think about DB, AT, and Breezy, they’ve been there. They know what it takes, they know the toughness, they know the grind, the ebbs and flows. They’ve led us to this point and I think it’s a really good opportunity for our young players and the players who haven’t been here before to see that and to recognize what it’s going to take to get to the next step.”
The Lynx are in the WNBA’s rare air. They’ve won four titles — matched only by the Houston Comets, who four-peated when the league was born in 1997, and the Seattle Storm, who spread their success over 16 years from their first title in 2004 to their most recent in 2020. They’ve been to six Finals.
Tuesday’s win gave the Lynx their 48th playoff victory, the most in WNBA history.
Reeve was on the sideline for all but one of them.
“Every championship team that I coached — or successful team — had at the core of them a selflessness, a chemistry,” she said.
Despite winning 14 of their last 16 games to close out the season, with the Liberty head and shoulders ahead of the league and the Aces chasing a three-peat, the Lynx were the championship caliber team no one apparently saw coming — except the Lynx.
“Their belief in themselves and each other is off the charts — and it never waivers,” Reeve said.
Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.
