Cheryl Reeve and the Minnesota Lynx are thriving right now, but does she deserve Coach of the Year or Executive of the Year honors? Or is it both?
It is a conundrum borne of success.
One can’t consider Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx for 2019 WNBA Coach of the Year without acknowledging the extremely able assistance she received from her team’s general manager. In an offseason that saw Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen and Rebekkah Brunson — trio anchors of the greatest run in league history — all depart, the Lynx general manager managed to replace a collective 57 percent of last season’s minutes through careful addition in the draft, through trades and in free agency, rebuilding a team on the fly in a league where player movement is notoriously difficult.
Five of the team’s top seven in minutes per game — Odyssey Sims, Napheesa Collier, Damiris Dantas, Lexie Brown and Stephanie Talbot — are new to the Lynx in 2019. So clearly, much of the reason the Lynx are on a three-game winning streak, at 16-15 for the season and back in the playoffs for a ninth straight year, one in which many observers had written them off, is not the coach of the Lynx, but their GM. Allow me a moment to look up who that is, so Reeve can send that executive a thank you note…
Ah, I am getting word the general manager is also Reeve.
Accordingly, should Reeve be Executive of the Year?
Well, hard to argue her reconstructed team hasn’t benefited from the work by the four-time WNBA championship coach of the Minnesota Lynx, finding new roles for her acquisitions and adjusting to a number of key injuries to replacements acquired this winter to be part of the new plan, from Jessica Shepard in the draft to Karima Christmas-Kelly via free agency.
See the problem?
“Damn, that’s a tough one,” Seimone Augustus said, pondering it in the Lynx locker room after a win at New York earlier this month. “Oh, that’s hard.”
Consider the many ways Cheryl Reeve the coach has excelled this season. Just incorporating so many new players is difficult enough. But Reeve has, in many instances, utilized them in new and more significant roles.
Take Odyssey Sims, for example. After three seasons as a high-volume scorer for Tulsa and Dallas, she served as points off the bench for much of her two years with the Los Angeles Sparks. But the Lynx brought her in, thanks to a trade for Alexis Jones, and made her a more efficient combo guard, leading the Lynx in scoring while posting an assist percentage (29.1) that is easily the highest of her career.
Reeve sold Sims right away on the notion that this would not be a rebuilding season.
“We talked about it,” Sims said. “It was an opportunity for me, a great opportunity, so I took it. Left L.A. and came here, and everything’s been great since I’ve been here from day one to up until now. She’s right. We’re not rebuilding. We are who we are. We’ve still got great players on this team. We’re still trying to get some more wins and get ready for this playoff push, but we’ll be okay. I have faith in my team, and I know we’re going to be fine.”
It also takes an elite GM to manage to snag the Rookie of the Year with the sixth overall pick, but there’s every reason to believe Reeve did so in Napheesa Collier, an indispensable starter who is leading the rookie pack in win shares.
Or to recognize that the Atlanta Dream were out of full-protection options and bring in Damiris Dantas to play a stretch big role.
Or to take Stephanie Talbot off of Phoenix’s hands after the Mercury faced a roster crunch in the final days of training camp, to add necessary shooting and spacing. Ditto, the night of the draft with Lexie Brown, deemed surplus-to-needs by Curt Miller in Connecticut, but an important two-way rotation player for the Lynx, sinking 3s and grabbing steals in bunches.
Even without Christmas-Kelly, who played just six injury-marred games this year, and Jessica Shepard, lost for the season after six games as well, Reeve has managed to not only weather the losses, but turn the Lynx into a better team, per both offensive and defensive rating, than the 2018 team that was made up of a core that won the 2015 and 2017 WNBA titles.
“I have always said this as a coach, I think when you surround yourself with players that have the same passion as you do for what you’re trying to do,” Reeve said, by way of explaining the success. “Not everybody’s good at rebounding. You’ve got to surround yourself with people that do those little things that win a game, you’ve got to have a balance of that. You’ve got people that can put the ball in the hole. So we’ve tried to match those players. We needed spacing, so Stephanie Talbot made a lot of sense. We were fortunate, I think, in some of the situations to be able to kind of piece this team together and still find some success.”
Exactly what this team’s ceiling is remains unknown. As of now, the Lynx would host a first-round playoff game against the Storm, but the bottom half of the WNBA playoff picture is extremely fluid with three teams — the Lynx included — at 15 losses. Teams above them include the Connecticut Sun, Chicago Sky and Las Vegas Aces, all of whom the Lynx have beaten decisively this month.
I asked Reeve what she thought this team could be. After all, she’s seen how four WNBA title winners look a month out from the playoffs.
“I think anytime you have Sylvia Fowles, and I think Odyssey Sims that’s healthy both mentally and physically, you have a chance to be successful. And I think those guys have carried us when the two of them play well, we have, I think, a decent record. When we defend and rebound, I think that’s been the key ingredients to our success.”
Fowles echoed Reeve’s optimism about the Lynx, calling her team “a contender for sure,” as did Augustus, who is playing a mentoring role for so many of her teammates this year.
And Augustus was even ready, after giving it careful thought, to make a call on who is more important to the Lynx: Cheryl Reeve the GM got the nod over Cheryl Reeve the coach.
“You know what, I would give her GM of the Year,” Augustus said. “Because people were really shocked by everything that happened and she did an amazing job. Like even in the draft it was like, yo Minnesota actually had a very good draft. And she made the free agency happen, bringing in those players. This year I think she was a good executive because she knew all the gears with the moves that she made.”
But then Augustus paused, and smiled.
“I mean, we can argue Coach of the Year, too.”