As Lynx play in WNBA Finals, Cheryl Reeve cements status as league’s all-time greatest coach

NEW YORK – Her college playing career at La Salle over, Cheryl Reeve was a graduate assistant coach at her alma mater in 1988 for coach John Miller.

“I’ll never forget it,” Reeve said Thursday at Barclays Center, hours before her Lynx team would match the biggest comeback in WNBA Finals history in an overtime victory against New York in Game 1.

“He used to kneel down,” the Lynx coach and president of basketball operations said of Miller. “He was there with his hand on his knee. I was kneeling next to him, and I was complaining about something that a player was doing.

“And he said, ‘You know Cheryl, you’ll figure this out in coaching, but right now, your box is about this big about things you accept. You’ll realize that box will have to grow.’ "

Miller was talking primarily about a successful coach being willing to accept players for the people they are as well as their collection of athletic skills. This was a life lesson — one of many Reeve got from Miller — and not just an X’s and O’s session.

But can the two really be separate?

It’s hard. A coach wants to drive players and pull the best out of them. That’s the same. But the way she does it?

Lynx assistant coach Rebekkah Brunson — who won four of her five WNBA title rings playing for Reeve during the team’s wonderous championship run starting in 2011 — will tell you that Reeve has changed.

A bit.

She doesn’t blow gaskets like she used to, Brunson said. There is a good chance you won’t see Reeve ripping off her sport coat and throwing it on the ground like she did during the 2012 Finals.

Napheesa Collier, the team’s current star, has seen Reeve soften. A bit. Dress codes are looser, for example.

But here is what hasn’t changed: Reeve’s ability to design an offense, coach a defense and meet players at their level.

“Her level of expectations have not changed,” Collier said.

But, just maybe, some of the rougher edges have been softened.

“She’s a little more mellow, for her own health,” Brunson said. “But as far as coaching, that’s all the same.”

Center Alanna Smith, enjoying a career year since signing with the Lynx in the offseason, was asked recently if she wished she had come to the Lynx earlier. No, she said. She wouldn’t have been mature enough to handle Reeve’s coaching when she was younger.

Asked how she’d changed most from those days as a grad assistant, as a WNBA head coach beginning her run with the Lynx years ago, Reeve hesitated.

“Plus 25 pounds,” she joked.

But also: “I’m more patient, a little wiser, more accepting. But that’s growth.”

Some would say what makes the 58-year-old four-time WNBA Coach of the Year stand out is thinking outside the box.

When the Lynx won WNBA titles in 2011 and ‘13 they had a high-post offense with passing centers (Taj McWilliams-Franklin and Janel McCarville) that featured Maya Moore’s slashing and Seimone Augustus’ lethal midrange.

After losing in the league semifinals to a Phoenix team that included a young Brittney Griner, Reeve waited, then traded for Sylvia Fowles in the 2015 midseason, revamped her offense and used a post-centric approach to win two more titles.

Now she has a team custom-made for Collier, a roster filled with shooters who provide Collier space with a five-out approach, a generous team that shares the ball and doesn’t care who gets the credit.

Some coaches keep trying to force square pegs into round holes as they age and get set in their coaching ways. Others are pragmatic and flexible. Reeve will tell you the latter has to happen. The game is changing, three-point shooting is more important.

But it’s not that simple.

“She did such a great job of bringing in players that would fit and complement her style,” New York coach Sandy Brondello said. “It’s our goal to always keep getting better, not relying on what we did in the past. Cheryl has done that.”

Reeve was both Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year, and led Team USA to Olympic gold in Paris in August.

While others (New York, Las Vegas, Seattle) attempted to build superteams, Reeve crafted a roster filled with players both capable and selfless.

She already had Collier, Kayla McBride and Bridget Carleton, among others. But she signed Courtney Williams and Smith, traded for Natisha Hiedeman. Reeve said she could feel it on the second day of training camp.

“We had a way about us that we played for each other,” she said. “[But I] didn’t know what that would translate to.”

To this: a 30-victory season, a second seed. A first-round playoff sweep, a grind-it-out, five-game semifinal victory. And, Thursday, an epic comeback.

“That’s kind of what Cheryl does,” said Sabrina Ionescu, the Liberty guard who played for Reeve in Paris. “Obviously, Napheesa is the head of the monster. But all the players on that team buy in to their role. They understand what they need to do to win. And that starts with the coach.”

Liberty star Breanna Stewart played for Reeve in the Olympics, too. She was asked what came to mind first when it came to Reeve.

“She’s intense,” Stewart said. “She wants to get the best out of everyone. She’s going to put people in the best position to succeed.”

Reeve has 330 regular-season victories in 15 seasons, second in league history to Mike Thibault, who had 379 in 20 seasons. She has a record 48 playoff victories, and her postseason winning percentage (.658) is higher than her regular-season percentage (.647).

In their record seventh appearance in the Finals, the Lynx are looking to break a tie with the Houston Comets with a fifth title. Seven years after her last championship, Reeve was asked how this run felt different from the one that produced four titles in seven seasons.

“I haven’t really had a chance to digest that, the 2024 season as a whole,” she said. “When the season ends, nobody’s going to be able to find me for a long, long time.”

But she and her staff have talked. Associate head coach Katie Smith won titles in Detroit in 2006 and 2008 when Reeve was an assistant there.

“We talked about this,” Reeve said. “We’ve been there. We’ve felt it. This team, this group, deserves that. This is sweet because it’s a group that deserved it.”