The countdown to the start of the 2025 WNBA season is on, and it’s time for groups to place their ft on the gasoline. In what often is the best season in WNBA historical past, groups can not let up for a single day. Proper now, it’s time to shift from coaching camp mode into common season mode.
Coaches anticipate 100% on the very least from their gamers each single day, and a few usually are not afraid to inform it as it’s once they don’t get that. Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve is aware of what it takes to construct a championship staff, and typically which means robust love. After Lynx apply on Monday, Reeve known as out her staff for not bringing their A-game to that day’s apply.
“It’s why we’re right here so early,” she stated to reporters after the Lynx concluded their apply.
“The way in which they confirmed up right this moment, it felt like they weren’t taken with actually being right here and dealing on something,” Reeve added with a sarcastic chuckle.
Cheryl Reeve on the Lynx apply shifting to the common season
“The way in which they confirmed up right this moment it felt like they weren’t taken with actually being right here and dealing on something so… I used to be nonetheless in coaching camp, they weren’t”@terryhorstman asks did that get higher all through… pic.twitter.com/bL4h6qXp6u
— Andrew Dukowitz (@adukeMN) Could 12, 2025
Robust? Perhaps. Efficient. Very probably. Reeve is likely one of the most revered coaches in girls’s basketball, and if she is dissatisfied in you… Nicely, I do know it could make me have a look within the mirror and get myself in examine.
Minnesota is making an attempt to make a return to the WNBA Finals this season after shedding in final yr’s Finals sequence 3-2 towards New York. It was a decent sequence and will have simply gone the opposite manner, and let the Lynx win their first WNBA Championship because the days of Maya Moore in 2017. As an alternative, they went residence empty-handed, and the Liberty gained their first title.
This yr will probably be even more durable, provided that the Liberty have leveled up their roster in numerous methods, and the Las Vegas Aces are already trying menacing within the preseason. The Indiana Fever have boosted the encompassing roster round Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston, and plenty of different groups are ready on the perimeter to take over a championship-contending spot on the league energy rankings.
On account of all that, it’s no shock Reeve is anticipating such a excessive degree of effort from her staff, it doesn’t matter what day of the week it’s. They may must be at 100% each single minute of each single sport to compete with the excessive degree of expertise the WNBA is presently working with.
Mentioning that to reporters isn’t simply an off-handed dig at her staff’s effort in apply, it’s a approach to maintain them accountable. Typically, a little bit public shaming to the media is what gamers have to kick themselves into gear.
Furthermore, coming from a coach as extremely revered as Reeve ought to make the general public feedback really feel much less about being imply, and extra merely about being truthful. She tells it how it’s, and in the event you’re not prepared for that, effectively, there are about 100 recently-cut coaching camp gamers prepared to come back in and take your roster spot.