Here’s how the Lynx’s Cheryl Reeve racked up the most head coaching wins in WNBA history

Is it total career wins or the most league titles that make a coach worthy of the well-worn sports term, “winningest?”

If the No. 1-seeded Lynx come away with a WNBA-record fifth title in October, it won’t matter when discussing head coach Cheryl Reeve. It’s either. Or both.

Leading Minnesota through next week’s second-round series against Phoenix — which defeated the Liberty 79-73 on Friday night — to another Finals win would break a stalemate with Van Chancellor, who coached the Houston Comets to the league’s first four trophies, from 1997 to 2000.

Reeve already picked up her record 414th victory as a head coach — all with the Lynx — in a 101-72 blowout against Golden State to open the first round of the playoffs. The win edged her past Mike Thibault, who spent two decades as coach of the Connecticut Sun and Washington Mystics.

“Turning over every rock to see where we can get an edge and an advantage, to be able to do that day in day out, with all the other things she has to juggle on her plate, managing an organization,” said Eric Thibault, Mike’s son, who joined Reeve’s coaching staff as associate head coach this offseason. “She just is full commitment to every part of the job,”

Now in her 16th season with Minnesota, Reeve has won Coach of the Year four times and helped build and then rebuild title-contending teams.

Here’s a year-by-year breakdown of how those 414 wins piled up, and how a record fifth title came into reach.

Prior coaching stops had taken her to teams in Charlotte and Cleveland since she joined the WNBA in 2001, having coached collegiately at Indiana State, George Washington and her alma mater, La Salle.

Minnesota trades for former Gophers guard Lindsay Whalen and add Rebekkah Brunson from Sacramento’s disbanding franchise.

In Reeve’s first year, the Lynx go 13-21 — the fewest wins she’ll post in a season. Through the draft lottery, the Lynx get the next year’s No. 1 pick to strengthen a roster that already included 2006’s top pick, Seimone Augustus.

That lottery pick turns into Maya Moore and the first of the franchise’s four WNBA titles, sweeping Atlanta 3-0 in the Finals. Reeve wins her first Coach of the Year Award.

“She’s been good for so long, it’s just become almost an expectation for her to do the best every year,” Lynx post player Alanna Smith said this season.

The Lynx punctuate three consecutive Finals appearances with a second title: another 2-0 sweep of the Dream.

Defending a title is hard, isn’t it? The pattern continues, with a 22-12 regular season capped off by a 2-1 loss to Phoenix in the semifinals. Moore becomes the first Lynx player to win MVP.

The Lynx acquire center Sylvia Fowles from Chicago in a midseason trade, tweaking their usual style, before going on to win a third title, this one against Indiana 3-2.

“Prior to getting Sylvia Fowles, we were small,” Reeve said. “We’ve always been more geared towards schemes and how you mitigate size ... an intelligence about angles, your footwork.”

Reeve earns her second Coach of the Year Award as the Lynx reach the Finals but fall to Los Angeles 3-2.

After going 18-16 with a group of stars growing older, the rebuild begins. Whalen retires, and Brunson and Moore step away from the game, eventually retiring in the coming years.

“They made me believe,” Reeve says at the time. “As a coach, wanting to keep it going? To defy the odds? I don’t have any regrets. Where the chips fell, they fell.”

The Lynx draft eventual Rookie of the Year Napheesa Collier with the No. 6 pick, plus add key players Jessica Shepard and Bridget Carleton to the squad as rookies. They go 18-16 again, losing in the first round to Seattle.

Reeve, signing another extension, becomes the first woman to win WNBA Basketball Executive of the Year for retooling the Lynx roster, with a increasing emphasis on 3-point shooting.

Another Coach of the Year award — but the season is anything but routine. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the league plays in a “bubble” in Florida, with the Lynx reaching the semifinals.

Free agent guard Kayla McBride joins the Lynx from Las Vegas as Minnesota finishes 22-10 with a second-round playoff exit to Chicago.

“Those first three years, she was still very strict, like with from the dynasty times,” McBride said. “That’s not a knock or anything. It’s just she’s kind of opened up a little bit, and I think it takes a special type of coach to be able to adjust to the players around you.”

With a 14-22 regular season — mostly without Collier, who was returning from pregnancy — the Lynx miss the playoffs for the first time since Reeve’s first season as head coach. Fowles, who had overtaken Brunson as the league’s all-time rebounding leader, retires.

“We had turned the page off of not making the playoffs in 2022,” Reeve said. “We sort of recommitted to an identity, resetting our culture and making sure that we had, across the board, players [who] understood how we want to play.”

With an extension through 2027, Reeve becomes president of basketball operations.

The Lynx add guard Courtney Williams and forward-turned-center Alanna Smith in free agency, and trade for Natisha Hiedeman.

The Lynx play the role of underdog en route to a No. 2 seed and the WNBA Finals, where Minnesota took the New York Liberty to overtime in Game 5.

“If I sat here and told you that we knew that those couple signings would would catapult us into a contender that very same year, you guys should call me a liar,“ Reeve said. ”We thought we’d be really good. We projected ourselves to be a top four team with those signings. And obviously they achieved even greater heights."

In 2024, Reeve becomes the first person to win both WNBA Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year in the same season, and brings home Olympic gold with Collier and Team USA at the Paris Olympics.

The Lynx tie a league-record for wins in a season (34-10), trading for guard DiJonai Carrington at midseason and leading the WNBA in both offensive and defensive rating despite an ankle injury that forces MVP-candidate Collier to miss 11 games.

“I’m hopeful” for this group, she added, “that they get to experience many more highs in the coming weeks.”