2000 WNBA Finals

Result

Finals MVP: Cynthia Cooper

Houston's fourth consecutive title, sweeping the Liberty; Cooper's fourth straight Finals MVP award, a WNBA record run of championships that has not been matched since.

Games

Finals context

Houston and New York squared off for the third time in four Finals, and this time there was no late heroics to save the Liberty. Game 1, played in New York on August 24, went to the Comets 59-52 despite Tari Phillips's team-high 24 points for the home side; Houston's balanced attack, and its familiarity with the moment after two previous Finals appearances against this same opponent, proved too much. Houston closed out the sweep two nights later back in Houston, winning Game 2 79-73 behind 31 points from Sheryl Swoopes, who had missed much of the 1997 title run around the birth of her son and was now fully unleashed as a second dominant scoring option alongside Cynthia Cooper. Cooper was named Finals MVP for the fourth consecutive year, an unmatched run that, combined with the four championships, made her run of 1997-2000 the gold standard of WNBA sustained excellence; the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame's own biography of Cooper credits her with exactly this distinction — four-time WNBA champion and four-time Finals MVP with Houston. The four-peat placed the Comets among the great dynasties in American professional sports for the era, particularly striking given how young the league still was; no other WNBA franchise had won so much as a single title through the league's first four seasons, and Houston's sweep meant the Comets had now outscored, out-executed, or simply outlasted every credible championship contender the league had produced to that point, including two prior Finals meetings with this same Liberty roster. Coach Van Chancellor built the roster around a core of Cooper, Swoopes, and Tina Thompson that blended veteran savvy (Cooper had played professionally in Europe for years before the WNBA's founding) with emerging homegrown stars, and the Comets' sustained dominance gave the fledgling league a marquee anchor tenant while other franchises, including the expansion clubs added in 1998 and 1999, were still finding their footing. For New York, this represented a third Finals loss in four seasons, all to the same opponent, cementing a rivalry that was almost entirely one-sided on the scoreboard even as it produced signature moments like Teresa Weatherspoon's Game 2 buzzer-beater the year before. The Liberty's frustration would only deepen with additional Finals losses in 2002 and 2023 before the franchise finally broke through in 2024. Houston's dynasty, meanwhile, proved to be built on a closing window: Cooper retired after the 2000 season (she would return briefly in 2003 with a different team), and though the Comets remained competitive, the team never again reached the Finals before folding entirely after the 2008 season, leaving 1997-2000 as an era unlikely to be repeated in league history.

Sources

• Wikipedia — 2000 WNBA Championship
• Wikipedia — WNBA Finals Most Valuable Player
• Women's Basketball Hall of Fame — Cynthia Cooper-Dyke