Sylvia Fowles was at the Minnesota Lynx offices late last week. It was just a quick trip up to see some of the young players, tell head coach Cheryl Reeve she was definitely not ready to get into coaching — yet — and just touch base before happily returning to her post-WNBA life in Florida.
The Lynx open 2023 training camp Sunday. It is the first since 2015 that won't include Fowles, the future Hall of Fame center, who retired after last season. In many ways it is the first camp in a while that will have the feeling of a team looking to the future rather than one trying to maintain its past.
"I'm really looking forward to this camp,'' Reeve said. "There is a new opportunity, maybe, with this team. We're being really open-minded about roles, who's involved in this. And certainly Phee is going to be at the center of all this.''
Phee would be Napheesa Collier, who missed most of last season after giving birth, who rushed back in order to play a handful of games with her friend Fowles, who was a part of a team that finished outside the playoffs for the first time since 2010.
Fowles is gone, but Collier, the Olympian, is back, fit, ready, and about to be the focal point of an offense that will cater to her need for space to operate inside. What the team looks like around her — who starts, who gets minutes, roles, rotations — is legitimately up in the air.
"We know a few who will be on the team,'' Reeve said. "But what direction it goes will be determined by camp, by the draftees or the camp invitees. That's the vibe. And I think people will feel good about getting that chance to legitimately say, 'I was able to compete for that job.'"
'A hungrier group'
Frankly, it wasn't that way, certainly last year. With Fowles about to enter her final season, Reeve worked hard to build a veteran team around her that would give Fowles a legitimate shot at a playoff run.