Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve will have a quick turnaround before Sunday’s midday game in Dallas. Saturday evening, she’ll be in Knoxville, Tenn., to be inducted into the 2026 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
To Kayla McBride, “No one deserves it more.”
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“Anytime I talk about Cheryl I have more and more to say,” said the guard, in her sixth year with the team. “Obviously it’s a huge accomplishment, and it just shows what she has done for this franchise and everything that she has done for the W, and women’s basketball, and everything. I can’t say enough about Cheryl.”
Reeve has been head coach of the Lynx for 16 years, and she led the franchise to four WNBA championships — in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017.
Reeve is a four-time WNBA Coach of the Year and two-time WNBA Basketball Executive of the Year. She’s the longest-tenured WNBA coach by more than a decade, and she’s two wins away from breaking the all-time WNBA coaching record.
Some would argue she already holds the record — if you include postseason wins, she’s already in the lead.
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That achievement is a testament to the coach’s skill and longevity.
Assistant coach Eric Thibault knows there isn’t one secret to Reeve’s success, “then everybody would do it. It’s a combination of coaching talent and personality.”
“Year after year, rosters change, the league changes,” Thibault continued. “To stay at that high level takes a lot of willpower, and Cheryl has that. I think one of the other things is just the way you treat people, and the way you build an environment and a culture for your team.”
Of the more than 200 members in the hall, Reeve is only the second WNBA coach to be inducted and the first in more than two decades. Van Chancellor, coach of the now-defunct Houston Comets, was inducted in 2001.
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Maya Caldwell, who joined the Lynx this season, was surprised by how friendly Reeve is as a coach.
“Outside looking in, she seems a little intimidating,” Caldwell said. “But then when I got here I was like ‘Oh, you’re kind of a nice teddy bear.’ She can get on you, but it’s out of love. She’s one of those coaches where you can tell she wants the best out of you.”
McBride, in her sixth season with Reeve, wouldn’t say that’s always been the case. When she joined the team, there were strict practice and travel uniforms. In some ways, she has seen Reeve “mellow out” — a change she credits to StudBudz Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman.
McBride hasn’t seen Reeve mellow out on the court, but “I feel like she’s having more fun. There’s more joy.”
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Thibault joined the Lynx coaching staff this season, but he previously coached against Reeve with the Washington Mystics. Even as an assistant, he always knew “you weren’t ever getting anything easy against Minnesota.”
“We always kind of joked, like, God forbid, they were coming off a two-game losing streak, and you were the next opponent,” he said.
Other inductees in the 2026 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame class include Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne, Doris Burke, Kim Muhl, Amaya Valdemoro, Isabelle Fijalkowski and Barbara Kennedy-Dixon.
