Courtney Williams is the WNBA’s most devoted fan of the midrange shot. The Minnesota Lynx point guard rolls her eyes at those who say it has no place in modern basketball. (“I already know who’s saying that,” she says. “It’s the people who can’t shoot from midrange.”) No one in the league shot more from that part of the floor this season. More than 65% of Williams’s baskets came from between 15 feet and 22 feet. She understands why the game is getting pulled both inside and far out, and she disagrees, but that’s fine, Williams says. She’ll just keep working from the middle.
“Everybody wanna shoot logo threes and have a little jelly going on at the rim,” Williams bemoaned at shootaround on Thursday. “But I do my damage one step inside the three-point line. It’s a lost art.”
Yet for Game 1 of the WNBA Finals against the New York Liberty, in order to seal the most dramatic comeback in league playoff history, Williams had to abandon her beloved middy. She instead used the last few minutes of play to score in just about every other way. The Lynx found themselves in a spot that was rare for them: They got blown out in the first quarter and then had to claw their way back in fits and starts. So their point guard responded in a way that was rare for her: She drove to the basket, splashed from downtown and took over the game more or less entirely. The Lynx had been down by 15 with less than five minutes to go in the fourth quarter. And then came Williams. Using a pair of three-pointers, a few shots in the paint and one very clutch free throw, she created enough offense down the stretch to secure a 95–93 overtime victory for the Lynx.
“Courtney recognized that she had to get more aggressive,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Her team needed her to be aggressive, to go score the basketball. We needed some help.”
They got it. Williams was the engine of the most crucial minutes in this frenzied game. That was somewhat uncharacteristic: The 30-year-old facilitator would not be voted most likely on this roster to swing a game to her will. She is not Minnesota’s leading scorer (Napheesa Collier) or best sharpshooter (Kayla McBride) or a serious threat from three (Bridget Carleton). But in the biggest of moments, trying to seal the longest of shots, there was Williams. She scored eight of the last 10 points in regulation for the Lynx. She then scored five of the last seven in overtime. (She also had two missed shots, a pair of turnovers and a jump ball violation in that stretch, befitting a chaotic last few minutes of play.) Minnesota had stared down the end of the fourth quarter in need of a miracle. It found one in Williams.
She’d recorded just eight points in the first three quarters. But she finished the night with a team-high 23. It was more than she had scored at any point in the regular season.
Every bucket here felt like its own small wonder. But the signature one was unquestionably the last one that she made in regulation. Down by three, 15 seconds to play, Minnesota had a chance to take the final shot of the game. Williams launched a three over rangy Liberty defender Leonie Fiebich. Her shot managed only to skip around the rim and bounce out. But Lynx forward Alanna Smith corralled the rebound and immediately kicked it back out to Williams. This was a strategy they had used earlier this year: They know they would rather get multiple quick looks on a final possession than wait to find one perfect shot. “Being aggressive and getting the three ball,” Reeve said, “If one didn't go in, you know, [we had to] get as many chances as we could get.” So Williams quickly sent up another shot from beyond the arc, this one defended by a desperate Sabrina Ionescu, and watched it fall. This one was good. And so was the foul shot that followed due to a messy closeout from Ionescu.
With 5.1 seconds left in the fourth quarter, it was a four-point play by Williams, and it gave her team its very first lead of the night.
WHAT A SHOT BY COURTNEY WILLIAMS 😱 pic.twitter.com/HDuQAy9B9I
— ESPN (@espn) October 11, 2024
The play was dramatic and a bit disorganized. It hinged just as much on the Liberty making a mistake as it did on the Lynx making sure to execute. But Williams reframed it. She had seen it as an act of trust.
“That's just a testament to how we believe in each other,” she said. “We have so many great three-point shooters, and the fact that these girls are out here trying to get me the ball, I mean, I could cry. This is amazing. I love it.”
She was not wrong. The Lynx are the best three-point shooting team in the league. (Their 38% shooting percentage from beyond the arc was the highest for any team in four years.) There are six players on the roster who take more threes per game than Williams. Yet here, they believed in her, and even when she missed—they went straight back to her. They trusted Williams to make a shot that she does not often take. She made it worth their while.
“It defines our team in terms of being able to get through difficult times,” Reeve said. “That's what we say, we've been talking about, all these interviews we've been given, that's what we are talking about: You have to be mentally tough and resilient. You have to look inward and not blame other people, and give each other confidence. And we were that team.”
It was hard to argue otherwise. The result was an all-time collapse by New York and a defensive masterclass by Minnesota. It was also a display of just how far that mental toughness could extend. The Lynx had their worst first quarter of the year. They found themselves losing by more in the fourth quarter than any winning team ever had. They needed their point guard to abandon her role as a distributor, and to instead take over by herself, well outside her literal comfort zone. “We just had to be gritty at the end,” Reeve said. They were.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Courtney Williams Was the Engine of the Lynx’s Unlikely Game 1 Win.
