MINNEAPOLIS – It took two practices in April for Cheryl Reeve to really believe this could work. The new pieces she acquired during the WNBA offseason — not through high-profile signings or superteam nominations — and the remaining players who had developed in Minneapolis over the past few years might end up playing out in a way that felt like past seasons.
After two practices, players and coaches looked around the gym and realized that the chemistry they felt and how quickly the players and staff came together was a rare feeling. External expectations for Minnesota, which had fallen short of the 2022 playoffs and exited the first round of the 2023 playoffs, were not very high. But in the gym, the Lynx saw, heard and felt something completely different. Sometimes it takes weeks to build such a foundation, which in a three-month season often means a team has to climb out of a hole and fight its way back from the bottom. But for the Lynx, it became clear through drill No. 2.
“The way we played for each other on the field,” Reeve said. “I didn’t know all the personalities, how we were going to go through the journey, road trips, all that stuff, wins and losses. But the second day of training camp we felt like we were playing for each other. … I didn’t necessarily know what it would mean, 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 (a little longer than dog years) is practically a lifetime. Between 2011 and 2017, Minnesota won four titles and went to the WNBA Finals two more 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 kicked off, all but one of the most important players from that legendary run – Maya Moore – had their jerseys hanging in the rafters. Moore’s was also there in August, along with Lindsay Whalen, Rebekkah Brunson, Sylvia Fowles and Seimone Augustus. There were always naysayers and whispers. Sure, Reeve had won titles while coaching four Olympians and five players in retired uniforms, but who couldn’t?
One season after Minnesota won its last title in 2017, Moore, Whalen and Brunson were all retired. Fowles and Augustus stayed, but the Lynx passed on to a younger generation. In 2019, Minnesota signed Napheesa Collier from Connecticut. Brunson, who is now an assistant at Minnesota, said, “No one was shouting ‘Draft Phee!’ But the potential was there.”
One of the greatest runs in the history of professional sports was – within twelve months of hanging the fourth title banner – talking about potential and growth again. But that’s how dynasties work. They have a lifespan – a rise and a fall; quickly, gradually or otherwise.
There was no going back to that time, and in some ways it just wasn’t possible. The league changed and with it free agency became drastically different.
Free agency didn’t really open until the 2021 cycle, and the Lynx made big moves, signing Kayla McBride, Natalie Achonwa and Aerial Powers. Superteams formed all over the WNBA as players gained more power to choose their destinations. The Las Vegas Aces added point guard Chelsea Gray to their already stacked 2022 team, which won the franchise’s first title, and they added Candace Parker before the 2023 season. 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 in the ring for some of those big players, but came out of free agency empty-handed.
Early 2024: Other franchises followed the lead of 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 to add. But Minnesota decided to follow a slightly less traveled (read: less heralded) path.
“Everyone’s goal is to improve year on year,” said Lynx Managing Director Clare Duwelius. “We were very clear in what we wanted. It’s like a basketball game where you take one possession at a time.”
With that mentality, Minnesota began making a free choice not to sign the biggest names or steal headlines. The Lynx wanted to address some basic areas: players who could add offensive firepower around Collier and McBride, who had already signed multi-year contracts, and defensive stalwarts who would thrive in Reeve’s system. Just as crucially, Reeve emphasized that any player coming into the franchise had to be the right culture fit, someone who would align with the goal of exceeding expectations.
The franchise’s first move was a January trade with Connecticut that drew little attention, bringing in Natisha Hiedeman as a backup guard and three-point threat.
A day later, the Lynx announced they had re-signed Bridget Carleton. Her numbers for 2023 were good, but not outstanding. She was thought to be a rotation depth player, but the coaches believed she was close to making a breakthrough, if only they could give her more confidence in her outside shot (Spoiler: They were right. This season she’s shooting in longer minutes 44 percent compared to long distances at high volume).
On Feb. 1, the first day WNBA free agents could sign, Minnesota announced deals with guard Courtney Williams and forward Alanna Smith, answering offensive and defensive questions for the Lynx.
Smith, like Carleton, once assumed her WNBA days might be over. After the Fever cut her in 2022 (a season in which they won just five games), she thought she would shift her focus to her Australian national team and overseas professional play. Williams, who played for three teams in three seasons, was brought to Minnesota as the starting point guard.
In April, with room to bring in another 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 worked out regularly to arrive from Italy to to play in the franchise. US
Heading into the 2024 season, Minnesota’s free agency period was largely rated as fair — good enough for a team looking to keep pace, but not as impressive as what other teams in the league had accomplished. Swish Appeal ranked the Lynx eighth in free-agency success. ESPN ranked them ninth in its preseason power rankings. “If everything comes together, the Lynx can 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 apparent to the outside world, Reeve decided there was one more move to make to address some paint issues: bringing in undersized post Myisha Hines-Allen from Washington.
In her previous championship-caliber rosters, Reeve’s job was to take superstars and mold them into compliant pieces. During the 2024 season, her job on the Olympic team was the same: take the best players in the world and create the best team in the world. That often meant asking players to minimize aspects of their own game, to be smaller than in any other basketball environment.
But in Minneapolis it was almost the opposite. Take a unique star in Collier and players who have made careers by being complementary players, and turn them into the best team in the league. That, says Brunson, is where Reeve’s ability to find the right cultural adjustments came into focus most.
She was a part of all four of the Lynx’s WNBA titles and felt the selfless nature of those locker rooms. She knew what that second practice felt like during those championship seasons, and when the 2024 squad — question marks and all, new faces galore — stepped onto the floor, she felt something familiar.
“You have a feeling whether the team is going to whine or not,” Brunson said. “As soon as this team stepped into training camp, you could tell we had an opportunity to be special.”
.@minnesotalynx coach Cheryl Reeve on the mentality going into Game 3 of the WNBA Finals:
“They understand it’s two games at home, but we’re stuck in the first five minutes of game three. How we proceed will determine everything.” @FOX9 pic.twitter.com/JdPkUhW5i0
— Jeff Wald (@JeffWaldFox9) October 15, 2024
The road from Practice No. 2 to WNBA Finals Game 3 was a long one, and one that, despite its ups and downs, didn’t really require the runway many thought 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. These first five? It’s hard to say how many people, outside of Collier, actually have a shot at joining these five jerseys.
Over the next three days in Minnesota, the current players – the underrated signees and the need-filling, unheralded Lynx – have a chance to accomplish what few outside their locker room thought possible in the Twin Cities this year: be a championship team that makes a super team down.
“Personally, I think this is her best coaching year in the WNBA despite all those championships,” Miller said of Reeve, who won the WNBA Coach and Executive of the Year awards this season. “I think this year she has done her best coaching job in her historic and award-filled career by combining a team with a high basketball IQ that plays with great energy, but most importantly, playing some of the most unselfish basketball that our league has ever seen. ”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Minnesota Lynx, WNBA
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