In everything Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve asks her players to do, there is one constant, unifying theme: It should look easy.
“If we have to do hard things, we’re not very good,” Reeve said earlier this season. “That’s true for most teams.”
Nothing this season has looked easier for Minnesota than moving the ball. This offense can suggest a game of pinball, zipping around the perimeter, all quick turns and clear angles. There is no group that shares the ball quite like the Lynx: They not only led the league in assists, but also became the first team in WNBA history with an assisted shot rate of more than 75%. Minnesota rode that model of distribution to its best regular season record in seven years, then to a playoff spot in the semifinals, where it now sits down 0–1 in a best-of-five series against the Connecticut Sun. The matchup pits two of the best defenses in the league against one another. But these offenses can be formidable, too, and for the Lynx, it’s largely a product of their ball movement.
“There’s no forced effort,” says Minnesota guard Kayla McBride. “You see these kinds of things falling into place. People are cutting at the right time, hitting shooters in transition, and that adds up to assists, but it really just adds up to good basketball.”
The Lynx did not have much time for that chemistry to develop. The roster brought back just five players from last season: The front office did not rebuild so much as it simply retooled with a series of quick, modest upgrades that added up. (That performance earned the awards for both coach of the year and executive of the year for Reeve—who serves as president of basketball operations in addition to her role on the sidelines.) But the players believe that in some ways it was helpful to be in an environment where almost everyone was new. It meant they were not fitting a few pieces into an existing system. Instead, they were building a new system from scratch, together.
It had been years since Reeve had a team able to pull off this kind of ball movement. (Her last roster to lead the league in assists was more than a decade ago.) But she knew early on this group could give her more to work with. “It’s all the skills of the group,” Reeve said. That required an experienced point guard in Courtney Williams, acquired last winter in free agency, who has led Minnesota in assists this season with 5.5 apg. But the forwards are just as important here. They’re rangy, dynamic and capable at spacing the floor. The group is anchored by Swiss army knife Napheesa Collier, one of the most versatile, efficient players in the league. And she’s generally paired with bigs—6' 4" Alanna Smith and occasionally with 6' 5" Dorka Juhász—who offer good speed for their size and have the ability to shoot from deep. They give the Lynx everything they need to get the ball going all over the floor.
“Those are players who know how to move the ball, they know how to shoot the three, they know how to drive,” says forward Bridget Carleton. “They're so versatile. That helps the spacing and the ball movement for everyone.”
Look at the ball movement from the Minnesota Lynx. pic.twitter.com/pu3RVUUbJX
— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) August 22, 2024
This emphasis naturally comes with tradeoffs. The Lynx had the lowest percentage of points scored in the paint this year and got to the foul line relatively infrequently. But their performance in the midrange and on the perimeter was enough to make up for that. Minnesota finished the regular season as the best three-point team in the league. (Its 38% shooting from beyond the arc was the best the WNBA had seen from a team in four years.) And, unsurprisingly, an assist was recorded on almost every one of those shots from deep: 97.4% were assisted.
The principles here come from Reeve. But an offense with this kind of motion naturally involves reading and reacting in real time. “It’s one thing having Cheryl give us the system,” Smith says. “It’s another thing acting it out on the court and actually playing into that.” Their free-flowing, quick-moving game requires improvisation, and Reeve gives them a green light to do that.
“It’s her giving us the confidence to be able to make those decisions on our own,” Carleton says of Reeve. “A lot of it isn’t scripted.”
That’s a sign of how much Reeve trusts the players, but it’s a sign of how much the players trust each other, too. In a group that had so little experience playing together before this year, they’ve come together quickly.
“It’s an internal confidence that we have in one another,” McBride says. “I think that’s what you’ve been able to see.”
And the most impressive part of that for Reeve? They generally make it look easy.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as It’s All About Moving and Grooving for the Lynx’s Offense.
