Cheryl Reeve’s record-setting odyssey with the Lynx is far from finished

It’s one of the most trite journalism angles in the book: That a successful veteran coach, long known for passion and intensity with a bit of a temper, has “mellowed.” What does that even mean? Fewer F-bombs per capita? No overturned chairs in the locker room after a loss? Less strident “conversations” with the refs?

So let’s not go down that road with Cheryl Reeve of the Lynx. All the things that made Reeve – Air Force brat, South Jersey/Philly product and the most successful coach the WNBA has ever seen – the competitor she is, remain, whether outsiders like them or not. 

She still demands the best from herself, her players and her staff. Though she’ll stand up for her players to a fault – i.e. her ejection from Game 3 of last year’s semifinals and $15,000 fine for lambasting the officials in defense of Napheesa Collier – she’s the rare coach who will criticize players publicly if she senses a lack of effort, disregard for the game plan, or poor defense. 

Case in point: Saturday night, when the Lynx gave up too many points to Reeve’s liking in a 101-93 victory over expansion Portland. 

At the postgame ceremony honoring Naismith Hall of Famer Sylvia Fowles, Reeve veered from her praise of Fowles to say the retired stars in attendance could have played better defense than the actual players just did. Yikes. And this about a team with the league’s best record (20-6). Reeve later noted it’s been a while since the Lynx held an opponent below 40% shooting, an unacceptable trend for a club with championship aspirations.

“Cheryl’s going to be honest,” said All-Star guard Courtney Williams, now in her third season with the Lynx. “She’s going to coach you hard, and if you’re built for it, you’re built for it. The ones that ain’t, they can’t play for Cheryl because she’s a straight shooter. I’m a straight shooter too, so it works out.

“She has one of the greatest basketball minds I’ve been around. She holds everyone accountable, no matter if you’re the best player to the staff to the ball kids. Our practice players … she really don’t care. She’s going to hold you accountable. She really just has a standard, and she wants everyone to be at that standard. That’s what I appreciate about her.”

So there you have it. Mellowed? Hardly. But there has been personal and professional growth, the specifics of which Reeve, who turns 60 in September, tried putting into words recently. 

As a wife and a mom (son Oliver is 11), Reeve felt she had to evolve as a coach and a person as the players around her changed. She’s done it without giving up the standards that, then and now, make her teams so hard to play against. 

Related: With flashy confidence, Minnesota Lynx’s Olivia Miles makes seamless entry to WNBA

The difference? Today’s Reeve might let point guard Olivia Miles play through some rookie mistakes she wouldn’t have tolerated 10 years ago. And she better understands which player and team deficiencies are fixable and which aren’t, and where to focus more of her attention. 

“The coach that Lindsay (Whalen) played for is very different than the coach Olivia Miles is currently playing for,” she said at a press conference celebrating her most recent achievement, supplanting Mike Thibault atop the WNBA career regular-season victory list. 

And yet, Reeve can still be sharp and sarcastic, as those around her can attest. At that same press conference, Reeve admitted saying something to Williams last season that “broke your spirit,” something Reeve clearly regretted. Reeve didn’t elaborate and Williams wouldn’t go into it, except to say she and Reeve discussed it and they’re fine now.

It’s easier to talk about Reeve’s accomplishments. She passed Thibault on July 8 with victory No. 380, a rugged 86-80 road win in Connecticut. Reeve already held the league record for combined regular season and playoff victories. The latest milestone came about two weeks after Reeve was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. 

Now in her 17th season with the Lynx, Reeve is a four-time WNBA Coach of the Year, a two-time Executive of the Year (she’s also president of basketball operations), a five-time All-Star head coach (her fifth on tap later this week) and a six-time WNBA champion – four with the Lynx, and two as an assistant with the Detroit Shock. 

Sooner or later, she’ll be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as well. But she’s far from done with coaching, and she yearns to win a title with this group.

“Courtney Williams has never won a championship,” Reeve said. “I want it for them. Every day.”

The press conference offered a rare opportunity for Reeve to be reflective in the middle of the season. She recalled her struggle to become a head coach, toiling as a WNBA assistant for nine seasons with three teams, two of which folded (Cleveland and Charlotte). 

A middle child with younger and older brothers, Reeve earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s in business administration as a player and assistant coach at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Her family had less faith in the WNBA succeeding than she did, and Reeve said she heard gentle suggestions to scrap this basketball thing and put her education to use.

But Reeve stuck with it, and landed the Lynx job when the club failed to reach a contract agreement with interim coach Jen Gillom. It helped that Bill Laimbeer, the Shock head coach when Reeve was there, had become a Timberwolves assistant and urged then-Lynx GM Roger Griffith to hire her.

Related: Nia Coffey is the latest newcomer thriving with the Lynx under Cheryl Reeve

“I remember when I interviewed here, one of my biggest takeaways was, I felt like I could come in here with a different expectation than maybe what they had in the past,” Reeve said. “At the time, what they were hoping for was a goal instead of an expectation. The goal for them was to make the playoffs. And I just didn’t feel like that bar was high enough … Being in the playoffs should be something that happens every year. The goal is to win a championship.”

It didn’t start out that way. The Lynx opened that first season 2-9, and Reeve recalled a heckler riding her about that defense her team was supposed to play. “And it hurt,” she said. After one particularly one-sided loss, she told the few reporters in attendance the Lynx were a bad basketball team – a refreshing bit of honesty that alarmed the ticket sales staff, whose jobs she just made more difficult. 

Eventually, Reeve’s demand for excellence reached every corner of the Target Center and the team’s various practice facilities. 

I tell this story a lot: That first season, I went to a Lynx game to write a Whalen feature. In those days, Lynx players and coaches entered the arena floor from the east concourse alongside fans. A beefy security guard cleared a path to the bench. 

That night, Reeve’s assistants walked in a few seconds ahead of her. The guard, apparently thinking his job was done, turned his back and stood in Reeve’s way. Reeve walked around him, then turned and shot him a look that would have cut most people in half. That moment made clear a strong personality was now in charge, and things would be different with a franchise that made the playoffs just twice in its first 11 seasons.

You know the rest. Reeve’s insistence on defense, coupled with landing the overall No. 1 pick in 2011 (Maya Moore), brought four championships and six finals appearances in seven years.

Reeve retooled the offense when Fowles fell into their laps via trade in 2015, and retooled it again when volume three-point shooting became in vogue. Playoffs? The Lynx qualified 14 times in Reeve’s 16 full seasons, and are on track to go again even with Collier out injured, largely due to the rise of the dynamic Miles running point. 

“Cheryl’s the G.O.A.T.,” said Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello, who competed against Reeve for championships in Phoenix and New York. “She’s one of the coaches I admire in this league. I have so much respect for her, what she does and how her teams compete. Just the toughness of her teams, the way she prepares them, how they play. It’s a credit to the identity she wants them to play with. There have been fierce battles, but I think we appreciate each other and what we’ve done for this league.”

Reeve is grateful to still be in Minnesota after all this time, in an era where an accomplished coach like Brondello was out of a job one year after leading the Liberty to their first WNBA title. Consistency helps, along with supportive owners like Glen and Becky Taylor, who sold the team last year. Besides her 13-21 debut in 2010, Reeve’s only other really bad year was 2022, when Collier played only four games after giving birth and the Lynx finished 14-22. Two years later, the Lynx were back in the finals.

Using her coaching platform to support various social causes also sets Reeve apart. At home games, fans know to check out the statement T-shirts she wears under a blazer – everything from “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” to “Soccer is for Everyone,” the latter in support of Minnesota Aurora. (Reeve and her wife, Carley Knox, president of Lynx business operations, are Aurora investors.)

It’s all part of Reeve’s evolution as a coach and a person.

“With age comes a little more wisdom around what you can do better,” Reeve said.

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