Lynx guard Courtney Williams: She’s funny, she’s tough, she’s the ‘head of the snake’

Near the end of the morning shootaround before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the Lynx were trying to put some finishing touches on their plan for that night’s game against the New York Liberty.

But, suddenly, the lights went out. And, loudly — so loud they couldn’t hear each other talk — music started blaring. Perhaps apprehensively, the Lynx looked to see how coach Cheryl Reeve was going to react.

Then Courtney Williams started to dance. And then Reeve joined her, then Natisha Hiedeman. With one glide step, the tension was diffused.

“I mean, there wasn’t nothing else we could do,” Williams said. “Lights were out, music was loud. Just making fun of the moment, that’s all.”

Asked about it, Reeve jokingly asked if Williams said who danced best.

Seriously, though, Reeve said: “That’s something that wouldn’t have happened in 2011. I would have cussed the league out, all that kind of stuff.”

Then she paused. “Well, I still did that. But I danced in between.”

There are a lot of reasons the Lynx are in the league’s Big Dance, tied with the Liberty at one as the best-of-five WNBA Finals comes to Target Center for Game 3 on Wednesday.

Napheesa Collier has emerged as a superstar, taking an amazing regular season up a notch since the playoffs began. Reeve has assembled a roster of shooters that complement what Collier does, giving her the space to do it. The team is a true collective, unselfish, resilient. The Lynx are not easily rattled, quick to laugh.

And Williams is a huge reason.

Reeve’s offseason was like an under-the-radar stealth mission. She signed Alanna Smith and Williams in free agency, two players who had played together the year before in Chicago, Smith emerging as a quality starter, Williams transitioning from off guard to the point. She traded for Hiedeman.

Each of those moves worked, combining to form an alchemy that made the Lynx a better team than the sum of its parts.

But it was Williams, perhaps, whose addition helped the team reach critical mass. Her ability to create out of the pick-and-roll is vital to Collier’s success. Her toughness in the face of adversity has rubbed off on the team. Her sense of humor has, more than once, defused a tense situation.

“I thought she was going to blow it,” Collier said of Reeve at that shootaround. “But it was cool to see her cool in that moment. She and Courtney, their relationship is special.”

A former point guard herself, Reeve’s relationships with those playing the position has been complex at times through the years. But it appears Reeve’s bond with Williams is crystal-clear.

More than once Reeve has talked about how the two can say anything to each other. The honesty is refreshing.

“She’s not going to walk over and say, ‘Why are we doing that?’” Reeve said. “She’ll look you dead in the eye and say, ‘What do you need me to do?’ She’s coachable. And she’s creative, too. She has her own ideas.”

Williams averaged 11.4 points and 5.5 assists in the regular season. Dealing with an injured right (shooting) hand, she shot 44.3% overall, 33.3% on three-pointers. But, after the month-long Olympic break, her hand healed, her scoring jumped to 13.4 points and her shooting to 51.1%.

In the playoffs, against the toughest competition, she has averaged 14.9 points, 6.0 assists, shot 46.1% overall and 57.9% on threes.

Collier, of course, is the player for whom this Lynx team was built. And her numbers — especially in the playoffs — have been impressive. But in the pick-and-roll game, which is more dominant in the WNBA now than it has ever been, Williams’ play has become just as important. Her ability to hit the mid-range shot makes for a hard decision for opponents.

“Courtney can, as they say, just go get a bucket,” said ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo. “Even when the defense is stellar. And she can make the right decisions, too. A post player in a pick and roll is only as good as the guard.”

New York coach Sandy Brondello agreed.

“When she’s scoring, they’re a way more effective team,” Brondello said. “She’s one of the best point guards in the pick-and-roll. She can also facilitate for her teammates. We’ve said Courtney is the head of the snake here. Napheesa is an amazing player, but she needs Courtney to get her open. And there is toughness, which is good. You want players like that on your team.”

Williams and Reeve have talked about this. When Williams was being recruited in free agency, Reeve said Williams pointed to a game in the 2023 playoffs against Connecticut when Lynx guard Diamond Miller was knocked to the floor.

“We talked about when Connecticut was trying to punk us,” Reeve said. “About the bullying maybe last year’s team would have accepted. She saw Miller being on the court, the team talking [trash] to her. Diamond was giving it back, but nobody had her back.”

The Lynx needed a dose of toughness. “That really impacted Courtney,” Reeve said. “She was like, ‘Your team is missing that.’ And she wanted to be that for us.”

Sometimes it’s meant as humor, but Williams likes to talk about her teammates as “dawgs.” Smith has heard a version of this several times since the playoffs began: “She’ll say, ‘Underdawg, big dawg, little dawg? It doesn’t matter as long as we’re dawgs,’ ” Smith said. “That stuff comes out of her mouth on a daily basis, and I’m like, ‘That’s pretty good.’ ”

That’s pretty important.

“It’s outward confidence,” Kayla McBride said. “Both Phee and I are both very confident, but we’re not the type that’s going to say it. We say it through our games. Courtney says it, and that adds an aura to our group. We already had a quiet confidence about us. But having that extra layer? We needed that.”

The Lynx definitely need that in Game 3. As good as Collier is, Williams is, perhaps, the team’s weather vane.

In Game 1′s dramatic comeback, Williams scored 13 points in the Lynx’s final 23 points that took them from down 11 with 3-plus minutes left in regulation to an overtime victory, the biggest coming on her four-point play late in regulation.

Down 17 at one point in Game 2, the Lynx rallied to within two on Williams’ drive with 3:40 left. Neither she nor the team scored again; it was Williams’ turnover, which turned into Leonie Fiebich’s wide-open three that essentially clinched the Liberty’s victory.

Expect a bounce-back.

A couple days after the Lynx won the Commissioner’s Cup title against New York, after a bad loss to Dallas, in the locker room afterward, Reeve told Williams she felt her guard had “given in to hard.” Williams vowed it would never happen again.

After struggling down the stretch in Game 2, in Reeve’s offense after returning to Minneapolis, the two talked. Williams’ usage down the stretch was too high; McBride and Bridget Carleton needed to be included. There was too much dribbling.

“She walked out of the office saying the same thing,” Reeve said. " ‘Never again will it be me.’ She knows where she needs to be better.”

Williams said she would be.

“I love the moment,” she said. “I don’t shy away from the moment at all.”