Cheryl Reeve tried all the tricks of the trade. She chugged a water bottle like it was the champagne from one of the four Lynx championship celebrations, trying to push that frog in her throat back down into her stomach.
She tilted her head to the ceiling at Mayo Clinic Square, trying to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling on to her cheeks.
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She averted her eyes from the press conference observers in the front row, trying to avoid eye contact with Lindsay Whalen’s mother, maybe the only person in a packed practice facility more emotional than the Lynx coach.
For nine years, the Whalen and Reeve bond has served as the connective tissue that helped the Lynx deliver four championships to a state that produces sports heartache at the equivalent of the GDP of Japan. After a year of getting to know each other in 2010, and the fortuitous arrival of Maya Moore in 2011, Whalen and Reeve helped turn the Lynx from an anonymous franchise into a dynasty supported like no other in the league.
Now it’s almost time to go their separate ways, and the two followed the same script during Whalen’s retirement announcement that has made them the WNBA’s most successful coach-point guard tandem.
Reeve was the emotional mess, losing her composure before emcee John Focke had even finished introducing the two of them.
And Whalen provided the comic relief, waxing nostalgic on the gold cards that got her and her father two-for-one Whoppers at the Burger King in Hutchinson, dropping that deadpan humility when she thought about the trade that brought her back home to Minnesota in 2010 — “I hope it’s worked out. I feel like it has.” — and deploying the comic timing more pinpoint than a bounce pass through traffic to a cutting teammate when she thanked her husband, Ben Greve, who was competing in the prestigious U.S. Amateur golf championship at famed Pebble Beach.
“To my husband who is on a golf course right now,” Whalen said, letting those words hang out there for the throng to soak in, “appreciate all of his support throughout the years. (pause) … Membership dues at our golf course came through the other day.”
It’s exactly what Reeve needed on a day she had long been preparing for but was in no way ready to handle when it finally arrived. As she tried to find the words to capture her feelings, the frog climbed right back up and the waterworks turned on full blast.
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“Just how lucky (I am) to be here at this time,” Reeve said. “Lindsay talked about the trade for her, which was an absolute no-brainer, right? Just how well it worked out, for her career. Just how special of a relationship. I know she feels lucky about things, but for me it’s once in a lifetime.
“That sort of relationship is once in a lifetime.”
They talk on the phone every off day, taking the temperature of the water as the team navigates the season. They meet at halfcourt during warm-ups on every game night, going over the game plan and points of emphasis for that particular opponent. They convene in the coach’s office after many a game for a mojito (Reeve) and a beer (Whalen, but a light one because she’s had to make a few adjustments to her diet later in her career) to dissect what went right and wrong over the previous 40 minutes.
Whalen refers to herself as Reeve’s point guard, the extension of the coach on the floor. And like seemingly everyone else in Minnesota, it didn’t take long for her to fall in love with “the state’s favorite daughter,” as Reeve called Whalen on Monday.
Whalen always had a feeling that coaching would be in her future, so she dived into the relationship with Reeve, one of the league’s best. It was Reeve who convinced Whalen to give it one more go rather than retire after the storybook championship clinched at Williams Arena, and as her 15th and most challenging season has played out, the point guard has discovered that she has looked forward more to her strategy sessions with her head coach than she has to the demanding physical nature of playing on the court.
Cheryl Reeve and Lindsay Whalen have built a tight bond over nine seasons together with the Minnesota Lynx. (Credit: Jesse Johnson/USA Today Sports)
That feeling is what helped Whalen know that she was making the right decision. It was getting too hard to get her body ready to play, her days of staying on the pick-up court all afternoon because her team kept winning were gone and the next phase of her life is waiting for her as coach of the Golden Gophers women’s team.
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So while Reeve had a hard time holding it together while she pondered the finality of it all, Whalen was at peace, even if it broke her heart a little to see her friend, mentor and coach break down.
“I don’t like making people cry,” Whalen said with a wry grin. “Coach wears her heart on her sleeve. Her determination and how she is as a person made all this possible. You see today, see her emotion, that’s how she is. That’s how she coaches. She pushes us. She’s made me an Olympian and a champion. That emotion today is how she is.
“That’s why we’re the team we are, and that’s why we’re so good. We all want to do everything we can possibly do to win for her because you can see how much she cares.”
There are so many similarities between the two women, each as ferocious of a competitor as you will ever meet. The next fight either one backs down from will be their first.
Perhaps most importantly, Whalen has ushered in a popularity of the women’s game in Minnesota the likes of which the 51-year-old Reeve has spent all of her adult life and more fighting to make happen.
Reeve grew up in New Jersey, a ferociously competitive and headstrong athlete who could test her parents’ patience with her demanding ways. She graduated from high school in 1984, long before the popularity and viability of women’s sports started to take hold. She grew up needing to fight and scratch and claw for any opportunity she could get in sports, and that’s exactly what she did.
She never took no for an answer. She played with the boys. She would not stand for the patronizing pats on the head and calls to be patient and to not rock the boat. Reeve used plenty of honey trying to chase down those flies, but if it didn’t work she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to soak them in vinegar to get their attention.
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“My parents would tell me, they hoped I would have a kid just like me,” Reeve said. “I wasn’t sure what they meant for many, many years. Then when you get to be older and a parent, you realize that maybe I was a handful.”
Whalen is just as fiery and just as unrelenting. She grew up in Hutchinson playing sports with the boys, talking trash and developing the swagger that would eventually make her one of the most popular athletes — not women’s athletes, athletes period — the state has ever seen.
“That sort of relationship is once in a lifetime,” Reeve says of her bond with Whalen. The two have been teamed together since 2010. (David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)
Like Reeve, who played college basketball at La Salle, Whalen wasn’t a five-star recruit out of high school. Legend has it that Whalen had just wrapped up a recruiting visit to North Dakota when she stopped in Fargo to watch her beloved Vikings lose the NFC championship game in 1998. When she signed with the Gophers, the program was a glorified mid-major, a mess of a situation playing in front of a few hundred fans in the Sports Pavilion next to The Barn.
That little gym wasn’t big enough for Whalen’s barnstorming game, and soon enough she was leading a program that many in the metro area didn’t even know existed to the Final freaking Four.
When Reeve and Whalen united in 2010, Reeve’s first season as Lynx head coach, the team went 13-21. That bit of misfortune followed with a lottery win that gave them the No. 1 pick in a draft that just so happened to have Moore, a transcendent talent who helped vault the team to the championship the very next season.
With Reeve barking on the sideline and Whalen clothes-lining opponents on the court the Lynx reached a level of popularity in the state that is unparalleled throughout the rest of the league.
“It’s a testament to Lindsay,” Reeve said. “Anyone that’s ever been around her, she just has that way. She’s special with her teammates. I think we all feel the same about Lindsay. She, herself, is magical just in the way she plays the game, the will to win that she has and just who she is as a person. Player-coach. Teammate to teammate. All of those things make it special.”
The star-studded Lynx core has been in place for eight seasons now, leading the franchise to six WNBA Finals appearances in the last seven years, including those four championships. Moore and Sylvia Fowles are the superstars. Seimone Augustus was the first to arrive and give Lynx fans a glimmer of hope that better days lie ahead. Rebekkah Brunson is the set of brass knuckles that every championship contender needs in the biggest moments.
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Whalen and Reeve are the tip of the spear, the tandem that sets the tone for everyone else. They are so similar and yet the differences in their personalities were there for everyone to see on Monday.
Whalen cracked jokes to lighten the mood, trying to turn it from a somber one into a celebration. When asked why they chose Monday rather than wait for the end of the season, Whalen said they “tried to pick the most humid day of the year.”
“I don’t know if you could have written a better story, a better script … and I feel so blessed to have been on the sideline and have had a great seat to all of that.” – @LynxCoachReeve on Lindsay Whalen's illustrious career pic.twitter.com/WgUofxuQ65
— NBA TV (@NBATV) August 13, 2018
That’s when Reeve had to cut in.
“This is one of those moments where it’s hard for Lindsay to express,” she said. “It’s something I asked of Lindsay to think about. Maybe I coaxed her into this a little bit, but a chance for our fans to know. While they may think certain things, it was an opportunity here at Target Center on Sunday to know that it’s possibly, for sure the regular-season finale of Lindsay Whalen’s career. And give our fans a chance to show how much we’ve appreciated her career.”
During a rare moment of honest reflection on the run they have shared together, Whalen smiled when she thought about a press conference that really captured the epitome of her relationship with her coach.
“It’s been four championships. It’s gone pretty well, right?” Whalen said. “I think you see our personalities and how we’ve worked together throughout these years, it’s been on display all these years. She pushes me. I’m her point guard, so I’m always going to try to do whatever I can on the court.
“Our personalities, there are a lot of similarities in our personalities, but also a few differences, which has made us a tough tandem to beat throughout these years.”
Both were quick to point out that this isn’t over yet. Whalen is coming off the bench for the first time since the very first game of her professional career, a gut-wrenching decision for Reeve but one she felt she had to make. The Lynx are currently the seventh seed in the playoffs, meaning they will not have the luxury of the double-bye and homecourt advantage that they have enjoyed previously in the postseason.
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They could still have one more run left in them.
“Never underestimate the heart of a champion,” former assistant coach Jim Petersen has been known to text Whalen over and over again.
If that is to happen, if title No. 5 is somehow going to find its way to Minnesota, it’s hard to imagine that Whalen won’t be right in the middle of it.
But if it doesn’t, nothing will change when it comes to the legacy these two built. Together.
The Whalen and Reeve connection won’t end when the point guard pulls off that blue No. 13 jersey for the last time. It will just change.
Reeve said she “can’t wait the first time to walk over as a season-ticket member and watch a Lindsay Whalen-coached Gopher team. I simply cannot wait.”
When that happens, all of the knowledge and conversations the two have shared over the last nine years will come into sharper focus. Truth be told, they didn’t always see eye to eye. They did butt heads on occasion. As close as they have been, the relationship was still that between a player and a coach.
Now the understanding only figures to deepen. And in some ways, this really is just the beginning.
“For Lindsay, not that she was a handful, but you can’t help that you want your players to understand what it’s like to be a coach on this side of it,” Reeve said. “To have the magical ones, and also what I know will be trials and tribulations. I will be here through all of that, for her, with her. I’m just really excited for her for the next chapter.”
(Top image: Lindsay Whalen and Cheryl Reeve huddle during a game in 2010, Whalen’s first season with the Lynx. Credit: David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)
