On brink of WNBA championship, Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve enjoying her ‘finest’ year

MINNEAPOLIS — It took all of two practices in April for Cheryl Reeve to truly believe that this might work. The new pieces she had acquired through the WNBA offseason — not through high-profile signings or super-team denominations — and the remaining players developed in Minneapolis over the past few years might actually pan out in a way that felt like seasons past.

Two practices in, players and coaches looked around the gym, and realized the chemistry they were sensing and how quickly the players and staff were coming together was a rare feeling. Outside expectations for Minnesota, which had failed to make the playoffs in 2022 and exited in the first round of the 2023 playoffs, weren’t very high. But inside the gym, the Lynx saw, heard and felt something completely different. Sometimes, that type of foundation takes weeks to build, which in a three-month season, often means a team needs to climb out of a hole and fight its way back from the bottom. But for the Lynx, it was clear by Practice No. 2.

“The way we played for each other on the court,” Reeve said. “I didn’t know all the personalities, how we’d go through the journey, road trips, all of that stuff, wins, losses. But the second day of training camp, we had a way about us that we played for each other. … I didn’t necessarily know what it was going to translate into but for me, it was a second day.”

THAT’S OUR COACH. 💪

Cheryl Reeve is the 2024 WNBA Coach of the Year. pic.twitter.com/9qSrFPpNn5

— Minnesota Lynx (@minnesotalynx) September 29, 2024

Seven years have passed since Minnesota won a WNBA championship, which in Lynx-years (somewhat lengthier than dogs years) is practically a lifetime. Between 2011 and 2017, Minnesota won four titles and went to the WNBA Finals two other times. The core of players on those teams were iconic all-stars in their own rights (and in the WNBA All-Star sense of the word). When the 2024 WNBA season tipped off, all but one of the most key players from that legendary run — Maya Moore — had their jerseys hanging in the rafters. By August, Moore’s was up there, too, joining Lindsay Whalen, Rebekkah Brunson, Sylvia Fowles and Seimone Augustus. There were always the naysayers and whispers. Sure, Reeve had won titles while coaching four Olympians and five players with retired uniforms, but who couldn’t?

One season after Minnesota won its final title in 2017, Moore, Whalen and Brunson had all retired. Fowles and Augustus remained, but the Lynx were turning over to a younger generation. In 2019, Minnesota drafted Napheesa Collier out of Connecticut. Brunson, who is now a Minnesota assistant, said, “No one was screaming ‘Draft Phee!’ But the potential was there.”

One of the greatest runs in pro sports history was — within 12 months of hanging its fourth title banner — back to talking about potential and growth. But that’s how dynasties work. They have lifespans — a rise and a fall; swift, gradual or otherwise.

There was no going back to those days, and in some ways, it just wasn’t possible. The league was changing, and with it, free agency became drastically different.

Free agency really opened up before the 2021 cycle, and the Lynx made big moves, bringing in Kayla McBride, Natalie Achonwa and Aerial Powers. Across the WNBA, super-teams formed as players gained more power to choose their destinations. The Las Vegas Aces added point guard Chelsea Gray to its already-stacked 2022 team, which won the franchise’s first title, and then before the 2023 season, they added Candace Parker. At the same time, the New York Liberty courted two-time MVP Breanna Stewart, MVP Jonquel Jones and All-Stars Betnijah Laney-Hamilton and Courtney Vandersloot.

Minnesota threw its hat into the ring for some of those big-name players, but it came out of free agency empty-handed.

Enter 2024: Other franchises followed the lead set by the Liberty and Aces as Seattle signed All-Stars Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins Smith to join Jewell Loyd and Ezi Magbegor and the Mercury brought in Kahleah Copper to join Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner. But Minnesota decided to take a slightly less-traveled (read: less-heralded) path.

“Everyone’s goal is to improve year over year,” Lynx GM Clare Duwelius said. “We were very pointed in what we wanted. It’s not unlike a basketball game where you take it one possession at a time.”

With that mindset, Minnesota set into free agency not to sign the biggest names or steal the headlines. The Lynx wanted to address some basic areas: Players who could add offensive firepower around Collier and McBride, who were already signed to multi-year deals, and defensive stalwarts who would thrive in Reeve’s system. Just as crucially, Reeve emphasized that every player coming into the franchise needed to be the right culture fit, someone who would buy into the goal of exceeding expectations.

The franchise’s first move was a January trade with Connecticut, which drew minimal notice, to bring in Natisha Hiedeman as a backup guard and 3-point threat.

A day later, the Lynx announced they re-signed Bridget Carleton. Her 2023 numbers were good, but not eye-popping. She was thought to be a rotational depth player, but coaches believed she was close to achieving a breakthrough, if only they could infuse her with more confidence in her outside shot (Spoiler: They were right. This season, in increased minutes, she’s shooting 44 percent from long range on high-volume).

On Feb. 1, the first day WNBA free agents could sign, Minnesota announced deals with guard Courtney Williams and forward Alanna Smith, addressing offensive and defensive queries for the Lynx.

Smith, like Carleton, once assumed that her WNBA days might be over. After the Fever cut her in 2022 (a season in which they went on to win just five games), she thought she would turn her focus to her Australian national team and overseas professional play. Williams, who played for three teams in three seasons, was brought in to steady Minnesota as the starting point guard.

In April, with room to bring in one more 3-point shooter, Reeve and Duwelius went after Cecilia Zandalasini, who had been under contract with the franchise since 2017, but whose timing had not regularly worked out to come from Italy to play in the U.S.

Heading into the 2024 season, Minnesota’s free agency period was largely assessed as decent — good enough for a team looking to hold pace but not as impressive as what other teams across the league had accomplished. Swish Appeal ranked the Lynx eighth in free-agency success. ESPN placed them ninth in preseason power rankings. “If everything comes together, the Lynx could make the playoffs again,” the story read.

From Los Angeles, former Sparks coach Curt Miller, viewed Minnesota as dangerous. “It may not jump off the page on free-agent signing days, but they had an incredible free-agent offseason,” he said.

Midway through the season, as the Lynx’s playoff potential became more clear to the outside, Reeve decided there was still one more move to make to address some paint problems: bringing in Myisha Hines-Allen, an undersized post, from Washington.

On her previous championship-caliber rosters, Reeve’s job was to take superstars and mold them into conforming pieces. During the 2024 season, with the Olympic team, her job was the same: take the best players in the world and make the best team in the world. That often included asking players to minimize aspects of their own games, to be smaller than they were in every other basketball setting.

But in Minneapolis , it was almost the opposite. Take a singular star in Collier and players who made careers out of being complementary pieces and turn them into the best team in the league. That, Brunson said, is where Reeve’s ability to find the right culture fits came most into view.

She was a part of all four of the Lynx’s WNBA titles and felt the unselfish nature of those locker rooms. She knew what that second practice felt like during those championships seasons, and when the 2024 roster — question marks and all, new faces abound — stepped onto the floor, she felt something familiar.

“There’s a feel you have about whether the team is going to jell or not,” Brunson said. “As soon as this team stepped into training camp, you could tell that we had the opportunity to be special.”

.@minnesotalynx coach Cheryl Reeve on the mindset going into Game 3 of the WNBA Finals:

“They understand it’s 2 games at home, but we’re locked into the first 5 minutes of Game 3. How we go about our business is going to dictate everything.” @FOX9 pic.twitter.com/JdPkUhW5i0

— Jeff Wald (@JeffWaldFox9) October 15, 2024

The road from Practice No. 2 to WNBA Finals Game 3 has been a lengthy one, and one that, despite the ups and downs, didn’t need quite the runway that many assumed it would. But now, the Lynx are two wins away from returning to that familiar place where the franchise once seemingly only existed. That version of Minnesota is canonized in the rafters. This starting five? It’s hard to say how many, outside of Collier, truly have a shot to join those five jerseys.

Over the next three days in Minnesota, those current players — the underrated signees and need-filling, unheralded Lynx — have a chance to achieve what few outside their locker room thought would be possible this year in the Twin Cities: be a championship team that takes down a super-team.

“I personally think through all those championships this is her finest coaching year in the WNBA,” Miller said of Reeve, who won WNBA Coach and Executive of the Year awards this season. “I think she has done her finest coaching job in her historic and awards-filled career this year of blending a high-basketball IQ team that plays with great energy, but most importantly, play some of the most unselfish basketball our league has seen.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Minnesota Lynx, WNBA

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