Cheryl Reeve was hired by the Lynx before the 2010 season and inherited a team that had never reached the WNBA Finals.

After failing to make the playoffs that first season, Reeve has brought the Lynx to four Finals – five including the one that starts Sunday – winning three of them. She’s won a gold medal with U.S. basketball, and won two WNBA Coach of the Year awards, including one this season for guiding the Lynx to a first-place regular season finish.

Only one thing is missing from her resume.

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Sunday, as they begin their best-of-five championship series against the second-seeded Los Angeles Sparks, the Lynx will look to rectify that, and add to a trophy case that already has titles from 2011, 2013, and 2015.

“We don’t focus on the end result,” Reeve said, shying from talk of two championships in a row. “We know that if we can win the series then we repeated. … But we haven’t really talked about it since (training camp).”

Standing in the way of dynasty talk are the Sparks, one of just two teams that beat the Lynx at Target Center this season.

Regardless of opponent, the Lynx have seen first-hand the difficulties of repeating as champions.

In 2012, they set a WNBA record by opening 10-0, but lost in the Finals.

In 2014, they were bounced before making it to the finals.

No team has won back-to-back championships since the Sparks did in 2001 and 2002.

“It’s so hard to do,” Lynx star forward Maya Moore said. “This is a league that’s so competitive. Every year is a new challenge, but I’ve just been so grateful to have this group that we’ve had for so many years – the sustained excellence. I just want to get everything that we can as a group and a unit because we’ve worked so hard and been so good to each other.”

Moore has won three championships in five WNBA seasons. She won back-to-back NCAA titles at UConn, has two gold medals from Olympic play, was named WNBA MVP in 2014, and has won three championships with the Chinese team she plays for during the offseason.

Like Reeve, all that’s missing from her resume are back-to-back WNBA titles, something she said wasn’t a concern to her.

“I more than anything want it for this group,” Moore said. “Things like back-to-backs and legacies and dynasties are things you look at in hindsight. I’m just really in the moment right now, wanting this group to get that chance to finish off the season the way we’ve wanted to since Day 1.”

The Lynx won two of three regular-season games against the Sparks, with the lone setback a 94-76 blowout on June 24, three days after the Lynx beat Los Angles at Staples Center, 72-69.

The Sparks have made the playoffs five straight seasons, but this is their first championship appearance in that run.

They boast the 2016 MVP in Nneka Ogwumike (19.7 PPG, 9.1 RPG) and have enough talent to keep the Lynx from winning consecutive titles.

“That’s what we’re going for now,” former Gophers star Lindsay Whalen said of repeating. “We have done a lot over the years, but we’re always striving for more and we want to do better. We get to this position and we’re not thinking, ‘Oh, we did great the last couple years.’ We’re not thinking of that as pressure like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get that done.’

“But at the same time it’s something that we want. We’ve worked hard to get here, but so has LA. Each team will go out there and try to do what they do. It gives us that extra attention to detail knowing how hard it is. It hasn’t been done in a long time so we have to be that much more focused.”