NEW YORK (AP) — Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said the WNBA championship was “stolen” from the Lynx during her complaints about the officiating Sunday night.
The New York Liberty beat the Lynx 67-62 in Game 5 in overtime, getting there after a disputed foul gave Breanna Stewart two free throws that tied the game with 5.2 seconds remaining in regulation.
“We know we could have done some things, right, but you shouldn’t have to overcome to that extent,” Reeve said. “This s—- ain’t that hard. Officiating is not that hard.”
Reeve, who has led the Lynx to four WNBA championships and coached the U.S. women to an Olympic gold medal this summer in Paris, said she was aware there would be headlines about her complaining.
“Bring it on,” she said, “because that s—- was stolen from us.”
The Liberty shot 25 free throws, while the Lynx went 7 for 8. Minnesota was called for 21 fouls to New York's 17, with All-Star forward Napheesa Collier, the WNBA's Defensive Player of the Year, fouling out.
Reeve took particular issue with the foul on Alanna Smith with Minnesota holding a 60-58 lead. Stewart drove into the lane and appeared to take the shot before there was any contact. The Lynx challenged the call, but it was upheld after video review.
Reeve called the contact “marginal at best.”
“This sucks,” she said, after mentioning faulty officiating in Minnesota's loss in the 2016 WNBA Finals. “This is for a championship, for both teams. Let them decide it. What contact is legal should be the same for both teams.”
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve reacts during the third quarter of Game 5 of the WNBA basketball final series against the New York Liberty, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. (AP) — Renee Kyro already has voted for Republican nominee Donald Trump for the third consecutive presidential election. But she plans to volunteer for the first time, reaching out to her neighbors in hurricane-battered western North Carolina to make sure they have a voting plan amid a flurry of precinct changes.
“I want to say I’m confident he wins, but I’m worried that people are just overwhelmed and may need some help or encouragement,” she said, standing outside an early voting site in the conservative stronghold of Rutherford County. “I just can’t imagine Kamala Harris as president.”
To the east, in heavily Democratic Winston-Salem, Dia Roberts described the fear that has her writing postcards urging voters to back Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee.
“Donald Trump is a narcissist, a liar, a wannabe dictator,” said Roberts, an independent who has voted for Democrats in the Trump era. “This should not even be close.”
But it is.
And the presidential race in North Carolina is playing out in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and alongside a governor's race in which the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has seen his campaign collapse amid multiple controversies, potentially splintering GOP unity.
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are ramping up their activity here again after the storm. Trump has three North Carolina stops Monday, including a visit to see storm damage in Asheville. Former President Bill Clinton appeared last week with Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, and followed with several visits in eastern North Carolina.
With 15 days until Election Day, North Carolina is critical to the Electoral College math that will decide whether Trump gets a White House encore or Harris hands him a second defeat and, in the process, makes history as the first woman, second Black person and first person of south Asian descent to reach the Oval Office.
“We are going to win or lose the presidency based on what happens in North Carolina,” Republican National Chairman Michael Whatley, a North Carolinian, said last week as part of a GOP bus tour.
Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes have gotten more attention from Harris and Trump than other battlegrounds. But North Carolina and Georgia are the next largest swing states, with 16 electoral votes each. While Georgia yielded Democrat Joe Biden’s closest victory margin four years ago, it was North Carolina that delivered Trump’s narrowest win: less than 75,000 votes and 1.3 percentage points.
North Carolina is expected to cast as many as 5.5 million ballots, with more than 1 million votes already cast since the start of early voting last Thursday.
Harris on Monday was targeting suburban Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — holding a series of conversations with Republican Liz Cheney that will be moderated by Bulwark publisher and Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes.
Many North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene moved Election Day precincts or changed early voting sites. Thousands of voters remained displaced or without power or water as early voting commenced.
Buncombe County, home to left-leaning Asheville, was hard-hit. Appalachian State University in Boone, the other cache of Democratic votes in the mountainous region, remains closed. But surrounding western counties, including Rutherford, add up to more GOP votes than Democrats' advantages in Asheville and Boone. That leaves both parties scrambling to check turnout operations and their math.
“We’re working every channel we can, you know?” Whatley said. “We’re going to be doing phone calls. We’re going to be doing direct mail. We’ll be doing emails and digital — basically anything we can do to let people know where to go.”
Republicans like Kryo, who lives a short drive from the devastated Chimney Rock community, said she knows “plenty of Trump supporters who lost everything” and others who remain in their homes but don’t have reliable internet or phone connections and may not know their polling location.
“I’ll go door to door if I have to,” she said.
Yet Trump and Republicans never built the same campaign infrastructure as Harris — or President Joe Biden’s before he dropped out of the race in July.
“It was a flip of a coin before the storm,” said GOP pollster Paul Shumaker. “The critical question is going to be: How is the rural turnout going to compare matched with the urban and suburban turnout?” Especially, Shumaker added, if Republicans “continue to have ballot erosion in the urban-suburban areas.”
State Sen. Natalie Murdock, who doubles as political director for Democrats' coordinated campaign in the state, said the party has the apparatus to reach their target voters in the disaster zone. Field workers in some of Democrats’ two-dozen-plus offices around the state have engaged in recovery efforts, distributing water and other supplies to residents. Murdock noted that Appalachian State is slated to be open before Election Day, with students being able to vote at their usual campus precinct.
Even before Helene, North Carolina was all the more compelling because of its history of split-ticket voting. It’s one of the few states that features competitive governor’s races concurrent with presidential contests. Democrats have carried the presidential electoral votes just once since 1992 (Barack Obama's narrow win in 2008). Republicans have won just one governor’s race in the same span. Four years ago, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won reelection by 4.5 points despite Trump outpacing Biden. He's now term-limited.
Democrats hope Robinson’s latest struggles, centered on CNN’s revelations that the state's first Black lieutenant governor once called himself a “Black Nazi” and posted lascivious statements on a porn website, turn thousands of Cooper-Trump voters into supporters of Harris and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Stein. Robinson has denied the allegations and sued CNN, calling its report defamatory.
In his campaign appearances last week, Walz took care to make two points beyond the usual pitch to any swing-state audience: He offered condolences and promised continued federal assistance to Helene victims, and he declared that Robinson “will never be the governor of North Carolina.”
Said Murdock: “We are definitely making it clear how extreme the Republican ticket is.”
At the least, Trump’s dominance over the GOP has moved some of the state toward Harris, said Robert Brown, a High Point attorney who came to hear Walz. Just 16 years ago, Brown was on the other side of the aisle as Republican nominee John McCain’s state director against Obama.
Trump’s nomination in 2016, Brown said, pushed him to register as an independent and vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton. “Then after Jan. 6, I moved all the way over” and registered as a Democrat, he said.
“I’ve just become more and more scared and disillusioned about the direction of the party and the country,” he explained, adding that he sees Harris as a center-left pragmatist who is as strong on national security as was McCain. “This really isn’t that hard for me and for some other Republicans and former Republicans.”
Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.
Supporters for Vice President Kamala Harris, Juliette Delgado, left, and Toni Mangan, both of Rutherford County, outside the Rutherford County Annex Building, where early voting was taking place, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 in Rutherfordton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Douglas MacDonald, of Rutherfordton, attaches a flag to the back of his car at the Rutherford County Annex Building where early voting was taking place, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 in Rutherfordton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Outside the Rutherford County Annex Building where early voting is taking place, Susan McGowan waves a United States flag in support of Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz, Thursday, October 17, 2024 in Rutherfordton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Former President Trump supporter, Tyler Schultz of Rutherfordton signs the tour bus during the Team Trump bus tour across North Carolina, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 in Rutherfordton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Governor Kristi Noel (SD), third from left, talks with Trump supporter, Tom Dodgen of Rutherfordton, left, at the Team Trump bus tour across North Carolina, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 in Rutherfordton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Trump supporter, Renee Kyro of Lake Lure, North Carolina at the Team Trump bus tour across North Carolina, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 in Rutherfordton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
