With the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game behind us, the second half of the season kicks off with a packed five-game schedule on Tuesday. Besides a busy schedule, teams are staring at a looming trade deadline in less than a week, at 3:00 ET on August 2. So it’s not surprising that the league-leading Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve was asked how she plans to improve their already successful roster before the window closes on Sunday.

“Every team is going to be opportunistic to improve their roster. Every team [is] maybe in a different spot in terms of what they think they need and whether they should or shouldn’t,” Reeve said during the media availability after their latest practice session.

“We’re certainly a team that’s been ‘open for business’ and open-minded to things that are being talked about. It’ll be a busy week for us,” she added in the clip shared by Lynx beat writer Andrew Dukowitz.

Cheryl Reeve also addressed how the new CBA has affected roster moves, including the SEI designation for Emma Cechova, which opened a roster spot, and the Lynx’s second development spot. However, Reeve and the administration won’t pursue that before the trade window closes.

“Yeah, the development spot, the SEI, the season-ending injury exception, which once the trade deadline is over, we will engage in, and we will get our second development spot.”

“I think it’s been really good… being able to transact from a salary standpoint, a lot easier than what it was when we had all this hardship going on, and hard cap and hardships and everybody is over the cap,” Cheryl Reeve commented on the new CBA.

The historic CBA, the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), ratified on March 24, 2026, transformed the entire WNBA landscape, bringing in a five-fold increase in player salaries, which now exceed $583,000 on average; meanwhile, the supermax contracts climbed to $1.4 million.

Not only did that make team-player negotiations smoother, but the “hardships” of the $1.5 million hard salary cap that Cheryl Reeve referenced also rose to $7 million.

Last year, just days ahead of the trade deadline, the Lynx acquired DiJonai Carrington from the Dallas Wings in exchange for Diamond Miller, Karlie Samuelson and a 2027 second-round draft pick. Whether they’ll make a similar last-moment move remains to be seen, but the second half of the season will see Minnesota making some tweaks to their lineup.

Cheryl Reeve on reintegrating Napheesa Collier into the lineup

The 22-6 Minnesota Lynx got their biggest star back on July 22. After missing the first 27 games of the 2026 season and spending nearly 300 days away from the court due to double ankle surgeries, Napheesa Collier returned just ahead of the All-Star Break.

In her first game back against the Seattle Storm, Collier dropped a double-double with 24 points and 10 rebounds despite playing just 22 minutes, and helped extend the Lynx’s win streak to seven games. Naturally, Cheryl Reeve will now “tinker a little bit” with the rotations to get Collier a regular spot in the lineup.

“We’re not changing what we’re doing. Our identity is formed. We can move that identity. We can morph it into different things. But we have an identity that isn’t, at this point, going to change,” the Lynx head coach told the media.

However, the coach also believes that she won’t have to work hard to get the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year back into the lineup.

“Phee’s not a player that a lot needs to be run for her. She finds offense because of the way she moves and playing off of others,” added Cheryl Reeve.

However, the coach did have a conversation with their Rookie of the Year contender Olivia Miles, who has helped carry the league leaders’ elite offense in Collier’s absence this season.

“I know what’s in her head is ‘Oh, Phee’s back, where’s Phee, where’s Phee, try to throw it to her,’ and that’s just simply not the best basketball. So just making sure that she understood that Olivia Miles being Olivia Miles helps Napheesa Collier be Phee.”

So with the trade deadline looming, the Minnesota Lynx will start their second-half journey against the Toronto Tempo on Tuesday.