The conversation around Olivia Miles isn’t just about her being the favorite to win the Rookie of the Year award anymore. Over her first season in the league, the Minnesota Lynx guard has quickly made a case as an MVP candidate, and after the team’s latest win, her coach seems to believe that she deserves the award.

After the Lynx beat the Washington Mystics 94-84 on August 21, head coach Cheryl Reeve did not hold back in praising her point guard and laid out a clear philosophy in how the MVP award should be awarded. Her comments were posted to X by Underdog WNBA.

“You have a 31-7 team … If Olivia Miles doesn’t play, we’re not 31-7, and so, to me, I think MVP awards should go to teams that are at the top, especially if that player, if she’s not out there, we have a hard time being where we are,” the coach told reporter Cassidy Hettesheimer.

In their post, Underdog WNBA also gave Miles a 14% chance to win the MVP award.

The argument she makes is more than just Miles being part of a stacked roster. While the team is clearly great outside of Miles, with pieces like Kayla McBride and Napheesa Collier, Reeve believes that the rookie is central to why Minnesota has reached the top of the standings in the first place.

That argument carries a lot of weight when we add in the fact that Collier, the team’s best player last season, has missed a majority of the season due to injury recovery. Despite that, Miles has consistently raised the team’s ceiling, resulting in a Net On-Off of +8 per stat-tracking website databallr.com, implying that the team’s net rating is eight points better when she’s on the floor.

However, Reeve’s praise for her rookie goes beyond just the box score.

“She’s got curiosity to her,” the Lynx coach told Hettesheimer. “She doesn’t have the answers. She’s got curiosity, and she leans on people to tell her what she should expect, and that’s really special. This is not somebody that’s going, ‘Hey, look at me, I know everything, look at me, I’m an MVP.’ She doesn’t do that, and that’s really special.”

That poise showed against the Mystics. Miles finished the game with 24 points and seven assists, adding three steals, leading all scorers to lift her team without Collier, who sat out the game due to injury management. The Lynx have now won 16 of their last 17 games, sitting ahead of the Golden State Valkyries for the #1 seed.

Olivia Miles even played well down the stretch, helping the Lynx create separation with nine straight points in the fourth quarter to make the score 86-80 with 2:21 left in the fourth. With her efforts tonight, Miles also became the fastest player in WNBA history to reach 700 points and 200 assists, doing so in just 36 games, per an X post by Real App.

Clearly, Minnesota’s extraordinary success is not just because of a deep roster. For Reeve, the stance is clear: Miles is just that impactful, and as the center of a 31-7 team, she belongs in the MVP discussion.