Lindsay Whalen returns: ‘I needed time to, like, really miss it’

Lindsay Whalen was in the owner’s lounge overlooking the court where the Timberwolves and Lynx practice on Sunday morning. She was happy, bristling with energy.

“For the last month, since Coach texted me, this is all I’ve been able to think about,’’ she said.

This, of course, is a return to coaching as an assistant with the Lynx under head coach Cheryl Reeve. This, finally, is a return to the game Whalen has devoted her life to but needed some time, perhaps, to love again after a five-year stint coaching at the University of Minnesota ended in 2023.

“I needed time to be away,’’ Whalen said, the noises of Timberwolves practices rising up from the court. “I needed time to, like, really miss it.’’

That time has arrived.

Saturday the Lynx announced Whalen would rejoin the team as an assistant coach, coming back to a team she helped lead to four WNBA titles. Here she will be professionally reunited with Reeve, Lynx assistant Rebekkah Brunson — Whalen’s teammate on those four title teams — and Eric Thibault, who was hired as the team’s associate head coach.

This is a full-circle moment.

Whalen played for Reeve, played with Brunson. She started her WNBA career playing for Mike Thibault — Eric’s dad — in Connecticut, where she became like a part of the family. Eric’s sister, Carly Thibault-DuDonis, was on Whalen’s first Gophers staff.

“Mike called and said, ‘You can’t get rid of us yet,’ ” Whalen said. “And I said, “Yeah, well, I think that goes both ways.’ ”

Whalen, the legend out of Hutchinson, the star at the University of Minnesota, the two-time Olympic gold medal winner, the four-time WNBA champion, finally missed basketball.

“I was excited to come in here today to talk just because I could be here, right?” Whalen said. “I couldn’t wait to get back, be here, the place that had such an impact on me.”

But it took time.

Whalen was hired to coach the Gophers starting with the 2018-19 season, just as her WNBA career was coming to an end. She went right from playing into coaching, with a few months of overlap. After five seasons with the Gophers, she was let go by the school — which announced the decision on the weekend the Big Ten tournament was being played at Target Center in March 2023.

That tenure included some difficult times. Especially after Year 4, when so many veterans transferred. Or down the stretch of the 2022-23 season, after some tough losses, as things snowballed.

Whalen takes things to heart. She couldn’t watch sports without feeling sick after the Lynx lost to New York at the end of Game 5 of this year’s WNBA Finals, and she took the end of her Gophers run hard, too. She had trouble sleeping.

Whalen took some time to get away. She spent time with husband Ben Greve, her friends and family, dived into tennis, played a lot of golf.

“You find things to fill your day,’’ Whalen said. “For 20 years there is something to do, all the time. For a while I was able to be, not really off the grid, but able to really shut it down for a while.’’

Then the game started drawing her back. Whalen watched the women’s game booming, in college and in the WNBA. The crowds, the ratings, the level of play.

More importantly, she watched the 2024 Lynx team — a close-knit team that Whalen said epitomized the way she likes the game played — make a run to a Finals of its own. Whalen sat courtside at Target Center during the Lynx playoff run, hugging Napheesa Collier after big wins. She traveled to Brooklyn to watch the Lynx play the Liberty in the Finals.

Ultimately, she felt ready.

The first text from Reeve came some weeks ago. It was a Friday morning. Whalen’s mom was over, and she was getting ready to go play tennis.

“My mom was so excited,” Whalen said. “Instantly like, ‘Oh, wow!’ Nobody is more excited about this than my dad, he’s already scanning WNBA rosters. He loves this stuff.”

So, again, does Whalen.

“In her experience as a head coach, she knows the good, the bad,” Reeve said. “Sometimes you learn what not to do. I think what we’re getting with Lindsay is someone who is battle-tested in the profession. And someone who is superenergized.”

That might be the best part of it, after the way her time with the Gophers ended.

“Every team I tried [out] for, I made,” Whalen said. “USA Basketball, Olympics, World Cup. It was the first time that it was like, your services are no longer needed. I was 40 the first time it happened. They say you’re not in the club until you’ve been fired. So I guess I started off the decade a little rocky. But I’m still going.”

Whalen probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere else. She’s back coaching for Reeve, whom Whalen credits for sending her career path to a new level thanks to a heart-to-heart talk in 2010. She is an assistant, so she doesn’t have to deal with any of the outside noise, just coaching.

“I have a lot to learn, because as a head coach there are things you don’t do,” Whalen said. “You spend so much time doing big-picture stuff. Now it’s all about skill development. My biggest thing right now is how can I be helpful to coach?

Judging by her energy Sunday, expect Whalen to dive right in. The WNBA expansion draft is imminent. Then comes free agency, offseason workouts.

Basketball.

“There is nothing like having a team and a group you can be a part of,” Whalen said. “There’s just nothing that’s going to replace that. Don’t get me wrong, I was lucky to have the time to do what I was able to do, like take a lot of trips, see a lot of family. But there’s nothing like it, being at the gym, around people.”

Because there is a family with the Lynx, too.

“I mean Coach, she was willing, when I played, to see things that I could be,” Whalen said of Reeve. “She pushed me to places I didn’t know I could go. I would not have had all that success, be in the Hall of Fame, without that. You need someone like that in your life. So now maybe she can do that now with me as a coach.”

Reeve is counting on it.

“This is a player who played the game at the highest level,” she said. “A Hall of Famer. Those experiences she’s had, I’ve never had. And it’s valuable to have someone who’s been a head coach.”