How do you coach a Hall of Fame basketball player? WNBA's Cheryl Reeve has the answers
Editor's Note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
If you are looking for Hall of Fame basketball players, Cheryl Reeve is a good place to start. The head coach and president of basketball operations for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx has coached four members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen) and her current star (Napheesa Collier) is destined for enshrinement in the future. The list grows if you include all the members of the 2024 U.S. Olympic women's basketball team that Reeve coached.
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Think about this: After this year's induction ceremony, four starters from Minnesota's 2015 and 2017 championship teams will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. In an effort to gain insight into how to coach greatness, I spoke to Reeve about what she has learned about leadership during her four-decade coaching career.
You have coached multiple Hall of Famers. What have you learned that you need to do as a coach when it comes to coaching Hall of Fame-caliber players?
Hold them accountable to standards even beyond their wildest imagination for their own abilities. Great players want to be coached and great players never think that they're good enough. We have the Minnesota Hall of Famers, but I've also been around other Hall of Famers, and that is the common thread. They never think that they've arrived. There is always something else that they think they're not quite good enough at. It drives them. I think accountability is the greatest thing that a leader can do for that level of player. We would be doing them a disservice if we just let their own belief and drive in themselves be the only thing that they have. That's how I've approached coaching the Hall of Famers that we've had in Minnesota.
Did you always demand accountability as a coach from the beginning, or did you have to learn how to demand accountability out of great players?
I don't know the reason for it, but that's something that I've innately had. Jim Peterson was a longtime assistant for the Lynx, played in the NBA, played at the (University of Minnesota) and is now a full-time broadcaster for the Timberwolves. One of the things he said to me was, 'Cheryl, I can't believe your level of accountability.' It struck me as, this isn't normal. He said how non-existent it was in men's sports, in the NBA, the communication part of it. That was probably the first time my eyes were open to maybe that wasn't the norm. So I thought, well, how else do you do it? I don't know of any other way.
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It's not for everybody. I do know that. I do well with those that are accountable to themselves, have high standards and are high achieving. I relate to that the best. I'm not going to hold anybody more accountable than I hold myself.
Can you give me a specific example of one of your Hall of Famers really defining accountability to you when you asked and demanded accountability?
Our local beat writer after a game once said, 'Cheryl, why do you get on Maya so much?' I said, 'Do you realize how much she's doing wrong? She's an incredible player, but I need her to do this and this and this and for her to be even greater.' I have this thing where it has to look perfect. Take a DIY project. Someone will walk in and say, 'Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.' But I'm going, 'No, you don't know what it was supposed to look like.'
Well, that, to me, is practices and games. The practices is where we are trying to hone our skills so that the game is the work of art. I am pretty critical of myself and of others. Again, that's me being Virgo or that's what I hide behind. I am a driver. The good, the bad, the ugly, I'm a driver. But I've learned how to drive a little more gracefully through the years than maybe my beginning days. I think the Hall of Famers now look at me and go, 'You weren't like that with us.' But times have changed, and there's an evolution there.
When you are coaching someone who is a Hall of Famer or Hall of Famer-to-be that you don't know as well, which would be the Olympic team, do you coach them the same way as you would the Hall of Famers who you coached every day and knew intimately?
Reeve: Bill Laimbeer was the one who brought this out of me, which was being able to be comfortable in your skin, to be yourself. That is the most important thing that you can be in any space, especially a leadership space. People allowing you to be able to be yourself is also important. In the national team space, I went into it having worked for and with Geno (Auriemma) on his staff and Dawn (Staley) on her staff. One of my biggest takeaways from that was if I get this (head coaching) opportunity, being myself is the most important thing that I could do even in that space, even though there's not those relationships that you described.
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Sue Bird described this best about the national team experience and it is 1000 percent true: It's an uncomfortable space for everybody. Which is a really strange thing to say, but the national team experience is everyone not being able to fully be yourself. It's a fragmented version. So I tried to keep that component of leadership the same, which was holding them to the highest standards possible in the way that I felt like I best could do.
What is one thing that you learned from Maya Moore that helped you coaching someone who is not Maya Moore?
Patience. We all had to have patience with Maya. I remember playing the Phoenix Mercury at a time when they were launching 3s so the number one part of our game plan was controlling the tempo, making sure that we weren't fueling their ability to light us up. I'm a big shot-selection person. But Maya taught me that the shot selection for Maya Moore is different than shot selection for others.
Now, that made some others not as happy, but that's the way it goes. So off the jump ball, Maya launches a 3 and misses. Phoenix comes back down the court, boom, they splash a 3. We come up the floor again. Maya has another bad shot. Next thing you know, we are down double figures. Time out. Maya came off the court saying, 'Oh, so that's what you meant by shot selection thing and controlling the tempo.'
Maya did things that no one else in the league did, and that is a blessing and a curse at times. There had to be some give and take. It's just like Caitlin Clark. When she sprints up and shoots a 3, you gotta live with it most times. I think we all learned from Maya because she could take over a game. She could do things that nobody else could do. You might have to live through some tough times, but she was certainly going to make up for it in other ways. Maya was not just a scorer. Maya led our team in deflections and things like that. So I think what Maya taught was, I use the word patience, but it's more being open-minded about what a shot selection should be for a player like that.
If you could swipe a couple of leadership attributes or traits from some of the coaches that you've either worked with or that you have seen from afar, what comes to mind?
My college coach, John Miller, and (former WNBA coach) Dan Hughes were similar. They made me want to a better person. They were so patient and graceful in their criticism of a player. What we call coaching is what players call criticism. I only worked for Dan Hughes for one season, in 2003, but I felt like I worked for him for 10 years. I learned so much in a year. He would tell a player that didn't do something the way they needed to do it, and we would walk away from the conversation, and I'd go, 'I felt like you just complimented them.' He just had an unbelievable way of saying, 'Hey, you didn't do that very well.'
If I could just get an ounce of that, I would feel like a far better person and a far better coach for our players. It's something I still strive for, to be better and patient and use my words better. It's been a chase for me in my life.
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