Blunt dynamic drives vital Lynx partnership between Reeve, Williams

Last week, in between the first and second rounds of the WNBA playoffs, Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve sat next to Alanna Smith on a stage set up in Target Center’s atrium. As they celebrated Smith’s Co-Defensive Player of the Year honors, the pair reminisced on Smith’s first day at preseason training camp last year.

Smith had stood out. Napheesa Collier stood out. Natisha Hiedeman stood out. Reeve then pointed to a pink-haired player sitting in the front row of the audience.

“Court, uh.” Reeve hesitated, smiling. “We’re still working on standout days.”

The jab caused Courtney Williams to burst into laughter.

“They both give it,“ Lynx associate head coach Eric Thibault said. ”They can both take it.”

That blunt dynamic between Reeve and Williams is a driving force in Minnesota’s hunt for a league-record fifth WNBA title.

“We both are straight shooters,” Williams said. “She going to tell me the truth. I’m going to tell her the truth. So it works.”

But it was at a Team USA camp in 2022 when Reeve first got to coach her and realized they would get along because “we both have thick skin.” She could be direct with Williams, no hard feelings.

She’s called Williams’ “Dory,” after the forgetful cartoon fish from “Finding Nemo,” for her ability to forget missed shots and keep letting attempts fly until she finds her groove.

A retooling Lynx squad pursued Williams in free agency after the 2023 season. In her recent Players’ Tribune article, Williams wrote that even her mom told her that if Reeve wanted her on the Lynx, who was she to turn down the winningest coach in WNBA history?

Even if that coach wanted her to play out of position full time.

Reeve tasked the South Florida grad to orchestrate offensive possessions as a point guard rather than playing as an off-ball shooting guard. Thibault, who coached the Washington Mystics at the time, recalled seeing Williams at a preseason scrimmage take the mantle of point guard, syncing up with Collier, calling plays.

Williams has now become the point guard engine of the Lynx offense.

The relationship between the pair allowed them to work through difficult games — like Game 5 of last year’s Finals, or Tuesday night.

Reeve didn’t hesitate to call out the late turnovers that cost the Lynx Game 2 of the WNBA semifinals, an 89-83 overtime loss that sent the best-of-five series back to Phoenix tied 1-1.

Williams put up 20 points and nine assists but turned the ball over seven times, her second-highest count of the season. The team totaled 16 turnovers. As the Lynx struggled to find good looks late in the third quarter, a few picked-off passes and possessions sent flying out-of-bounds helped the Mercury claw back from a 20-point deficit.

“I can show you four turnovers, right now, in a minute and a half that had nothing to do with Phoenix,” Reeve said postgame. “That made us out of sorts.”

In that series-opening win, the Lynx’s second-half surge was sparked by a defensive-minded film review, of which Williams was a vocal leader, asking, “Can we try this? Can we do this?” Reeve recalled.

Williams went on to tally a game-high 23 points and five steals.

“She’s one of the most respectful players that I’ve been around,” Reeve said. “Whether it’s the happiest of moments or the most difficult moments, her eye contact is so respectful and so locked in.”

When Williams and Hiedeman approached Reeve to tell her they were starting their viral duo livestream, StudBudz — which would land the pair and their bright pink hair on the cover of Vogue and SLAM and all over WNBA All-Star weekend — they eventually got their coach to admit “willingness to put some version of pink in my hair” if the Lynx win a title.

“[Players] keep telling me that Cheryl wasn’t like this before me and T got here,” Williams said. “I don’t really even know the Cheryl they are talking about, because they said Cheryl changed once we got here.”

On the Lynx’s run to the WNBA Finals last season, Williams was repeatedly asked, mostly in jest, if she was ready to embrace her new title of “point guard” yet.

She repeatedly insisted: No, not yet, “Next year.”

It’s “next year,” and Williams has the hallmark stats of a player running point.

Aside from using her midrange strengths to chip in 13.6 points per game this regular season, her average of 4.5 defensive rebounds per game was third among guards, putting the pace of Minnesota’s transition on her shoulders. Her 6.2 assists per game are second among guards, according to WNBA’s Advanced Stats. (Those spots bump up one factoring out Caitlin Clark, who played just 13 games this year.)

“[Reeve] saw some things in me, you know, that I honestly didn’t see in myself,” said Williams, who earned her second All-Star nod this year.

And without the connection between the pair, and a head coach’s trust in a brand-new guard, there might not have been a Defensive Player of the Year ceremony to make wisecracking jokes at.

Before the 2024 season, Reeve asked Williams — who, at that point, had just signed with Minnesota — what she thought of her former Chicago Sky teammate Smith?

“‘Oh, we need Lan,’” was the verdict, said Reeve. “‘We gotta get Lan. Let me see what Lan’s doing.’”