UNCASVILLE, Conn.—Cheryl Reeve picked up her first win as head coach of the Minnesota Lynx 576 games and 5,898 days ago. On May 15, 2010, the Lynx opened the season with a road win against the Tulsa Shock by a final score of 80-74. Charde Houston scored 21 points. Lindsay Whalen had 10 points and six assists in her first game with her hometown team.
Rebekkah Brunson was on that team, too, but a couple weeks shy of making her Lynx debut after Minnesota acquired her in the dispersal draft. Fast forward nearly two decades, some hall-of-fame careers, a handful of championships, and 380 regular season wins later, both Brunson and Whalen were on the bench with Reeve as she surpassed Mike Thibault to become the winningest coach in the 30-year history of the WNBA.
It did not come easy, but when the dust settled at Mohegan Sun Arena, the Lynx came out on top against a pugnacious Connecticut Sun team by a final score of 86-80. The team hit the 16-win mark before anyone else in the WNBA in 2026, and Reeve hit a milestone no coach has done before.
“I just wanted to win the game, it wasn’t for me,” a relieved Reeve said postgame with a half full plastic champagne flute beside her. “I just don’t think this way. I appreciated how much it meant to the players to celebrate the moment. It’s not lost on me how important, so many players in that locker room, the staff, just talking with Chuck, our trainers, so many people that have been on this journey with me for so long. I told them, I mean, just to share with them was incredibly meaningful.
“It’s a moment in time. It’s one of those things, but to do it with people that you really, really care about, who will do anything for the team to be successful, great appreciation for them.”
Reeve’s achievement didn’t pile up just one win at a time as much as it did by winning one possession at a time. To take her place as the coach with the most wins in league history a mere couple of weeks after being enshrined in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame makes for a momentous outcome of a career still in progress that anyone would have a difficult time wrapping their head around.
As a coach known to push her players to focus on the process rather than worry about the outcome, results like all-time records and hall of fame enshrinement weren’t goals Reeve has even allowed herself to consider throughout her coaching life.
“Never. Never the hope and the dream. I don’t think like that,” Reeve said when asked if reaching the Hall of Fame had been a dream of hers during a pregame press conference against the Dallas Wings on June 28, the morning after the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “I remember as an assistant at George Washington, my first full-time position, just watching games and scouting games, inspiration for us at that time was Pat Summit. A badass woman, strong, that I saw myself in. But did I think I could be in the Hall of Fame? No, but I thought if I could be a 10th of what she was that would be a hell of a career. I wanted to learn what it would take, but I was never a person that said ‘I’m going to be in the Hall of Fame as a coach one day.’ That never crossed my mind.”
Coach Summitt served as a lofty north star for Reeve when she was an assistant coach in the nation’s capital under Joe McKeown. By the time she worked her way onto a WNBA staff, and eventually into a head coaching position of her own, she’d work with several of the icons who make up the top ten in all-time wins list.
Anne Donovan (No. 9 all time; 205 wins) gave Reeve her first coaching job in the WNBA on her staff with the Charlotte Sting in 2001. Dan Hughes (No. 5 all time; 286 wins) had Reeve on his bench with the Cleveland Rockers. Bill Laimbeer (No. 3 all time; 306 wins) won two WNBA titles with Reeve as an assistant, and a couple years later as an assistant coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves, he walked into the office of then Lynx GM Roger Griffith during a coaching search and said, “You should hire Cheryl.”
The branches of Reeve’s connections to the great coaches in the game’s history are long and winding, as can be expected of anyone who’s managed to last this long in such a demanding profession.
Two coaches at the top of the mountain
Reeve and Thibault’s names will sit next to one another on the all-time wins list for years to come. As the Lynx have stacked wins over the last two seasons with Thibault’s son, Eric Thibault, as Reeve’s associate head coach, Mike Thibault has had a closer look than most great coaches who have watched all-time records slowly chipped away.
“It’s fun,” the elder Thibault said in an interview with The IX Sports back in June. “Cheryl and I have become friends. Obviously I was on her staff with USA Basketball for the World Cup and for the Olympics so that added to the whole family thing. My daughter coached at the University of Minnesota, Lindsay Whalen’s like her big sister. So we have this whole family thing with Cheryl and her family, our family, so it’s fun to be around their group.”
Whalen played for Thibault for the first six seasons of her career as a member of the Sun.
“It’s fun, I can watch them from a distance,” Thibault said. “I don’t have any of the pressure that they have day to day, and yet I watch a game and I’m living and dying with every shot.”
Reeve and Thibault go back a long ways in WNBA annals. Specifically to the battles for Eastern Conference supremacy when Thibault was coaching the Connecticut Sun and Reeve was an assistant on Bill Laimbeer’s bench with the Detroit Shock.
“Detroit and Connecticut were sworn enemies at that time,” Thibault said. “So there wasn’t a lot of kumbiya rapport between the teams.”
What they might have lacked in “kumbiya rapport” at the time, they made up for in mutual respect and coaching innovation. Despite a history of intense postseason battles between them, neither coach could resist embracing the old adage “iron sharpens iron” when they brought a new tradition into an already intense preseason routine.
“Early on in Connecticut we started this tradition of playing them in the preseason and practicing together the day before [the game] kind of like NFL teams do,” Thibault said. “Then we carried that on when I came to Washington. So that was another way that I could watch her coach up close, how she coached her players and what she demanded.”
The tradition of the ‘NFL style’ training camp scrimmages extended through the Eric Thibault era in Washington. Nearly two decades worth of coaching against one another up close and personal through the intense grind of training camp. When Thibault the younger became a coaching free agent after the 2024 season, Reeve had already seen his coaching chops in a way no resume or hours of game tape could reveal. He was a natural choice to round out Reeve’s staff ahead of the 2025 season, and it gave him the unique opportunity of helping a staff eclipse a long-standing record he helped his father to build.
“It is cool. We were flying back from our game the other day, and had ESPN on and they had the big graphic with the two of them side by side with the 379, that’s pretty cool,” Eric Thibault told The IX after practice on July 1st. “That’s a lot of wins and a lot of years of doing it at a really high level…It makes you appreciate how long you’ve got to be good at it for something like that to happen. I’m sure neither one of them thought when they started with a WNBA team like, ‘oh, I’m going to be the wins record holder.’ You do that by having good teams for a bunch of seasons in a row, testament to consistency.”
Contemporary coaching connections
It isn’t just Reeve’s coaching mentors who populate the top of the all-time wins list. No. 2 behind Reeve in all-time wins among active coaches is Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello with 278 WNBA victories to her name.
Brondello and Reeve have met several times when the stakes were highest over the years as two of the coaches who have shaped the modern era of the WNBA.
“Well, Cheryl’s the GOAT,” Brondello said before a game against the Lynx at Target Center on May 21st. “I mean she’s had so much success in this league and we’ve been so competitive for so long, but she’s one of the coaches I really admire in this league. I think it’s great we’re still here and still competing at a high level. I have so much respect for her, what she does, and how her teams compete.
“We always found it very hard to win here. Just the toughness of their teams, how she prepares them, how they play, it’s credit to the identity that she wants them to play with. So, yeah just a lot of respect to them. They’re always fierce battles, but I think we appreciate each other for what we’ve done for this league.”
Brondello at 278 wins is eight shy of matching Hughes for a spot among the top five all-time. Next on the list of active coaches is Aces’ head coach Becky Hammon with 132 wins since taking over in Las Vegas in 2022.
“I have the utmost respect for Cheryl,” Hammon said before the two teams met in Las Vegas earlier this season. “Every year her teams are just competitive, disciplined, play the right way.”
When asked a follow-up question on Reeve’s ability to keep the Lynx near or at the top of the league in the absence of Napheesa Collier, she added:
“I mean last year when Phee was out they won a lot of games too. I wouldn’t say I’m surprised because they have a system in place, her system. Her system year after year puts a really great product on the floor.”
If anyone ends up in a position to challenge Reeve’s mark of 380 and counting, Brondello, Hammon, and Indiana’s Stephanie White are the ones best positioned to do so. Though the younger and more newly appointed generation of coaches have taken inspiration from her as well.
Few coaches spent more time game-planning for Reeve in 2025 than reigning WNBA Coach of the Year Natalie Nakase. Over the course of the regular season and round one of the playoffs, the Lynx and the Valkyries met six times with Reeve adding to her win total in all six.
“Even going back to my Vegas days, I mean Cheryl, she’s so prepared,” Nakase said before taking on the Lynx in Minneapolis on June 14. “I don’t think she sleeps. I think she does a heavy dose of watching film, you know, but she loves it. I think that’s one of the coolest things when I watch Cheryl coach. She’s doing everything because number one, she studied, she’s prepared, but you can just tell she loves being out there. She loves being out there. She loves being [in front of] the crowd. She lets her players know too, like she’s in it with them. She’s in it with the fight and she’s ready to lead. I think that’s one of the most dangerous things about a coach is when she’s prepared and her fight is going to be unmatched.”
One of Nakase’s assistant coaching colleagues from her Vegas days echoed her sentiment.
“It’s a big challenge, but it’s also a growing opportunity for younger coaches such as myself,” Chicago Sky head coach Tyler Marsh said before a game against the Lynx on May 23. “I think it helps you be a better coach when you’re going up against a legend like Cheryl. If you’re an aspiring coach, it’s hard to watch the game through the lens of a fan or spectator. Once you get into the profession you start watching coaches and what their tendencies are, how they get their players motivated and up for games. I think that Cheryl’s second to none at being able to instill her culture on whatever team she’s coaching, whatever pieces she has and making them fit into the brand that she wants the Lynx to be.”
380 and counting
Reeve and the Lynx will enjoy this latest hallmark achievement for a minute or two, maybe for a night at the most. Judging by Napheesa Collier’s Instagram stories, Reeve was properly celebrated in the visiting locker room at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“It’s really cool, what Cheryl’s meant not only to our league, this franchise and being a part of it and understanding the standard of excellence since day one,” Kayla McBride said during the postgame press conference in Connecticut. “We all have our different relationships with Cheryl, but for me, she changed the trajectory of my career. So to be here with her, watching her become the all-time winningest coach in W history was really cool. It’s surreal. I’m just so happy and grateful for who she is on and off the court and what this franchise has meant to me.”
The record on its own matters little to Reeve compared to what the record is made of. The people, the players, the joy of victory, the agony of defeat, and all of the moments big and small that go into three decades of coaching this game. For Reeve, a coach who navigated the treacherous waters of an era of franchises folding, relocating, dispersal drafts, and murmurs contemplating the league’s survival; securing the longevity of the league for the coaches of tomorrow is just as important as celebrating today.
“I did think about that over the last week,” Reeve said after win No. 380. “That there is going to be a coach that maybe one day when they’re accepting their nomination what we did with the Minnesota Lynx and their success, that they might say that was their inspiration. Because I know how impactful it was for me. And if I can be that for a young coach, if I can hear that, it’s one of those things where you can die tomorrow and feel really fulfilled.”
The coach whose place she’s taking atop this who’s who list of the game’s great coaches expressed a similar feeling of fulfillment.
“I’m proud of her. I’m excited for her,” Mike Thibault said back in June. “If I were going to lose my record, there’s no one else I’d rather lose it to.”
Thibault’s record, which belonged to him alone for multiple seasons, now falls under Reeve and looks to remain her honor for a good while. The law of sports tells us records were made to be broken and Reeve’s mark will eventually, someday, change hands. It could be eclipsed by someone like Brondello, or Hammon, or White. Or, it could be by a young coach in their first assistantship, burning the midnight oil in a cramped office, looking for some coaching inspiration, for a north star. It could be by someone looking at Reeve’s legacy with the Lynx and echoing her words from 1990: “If I could be a 10th of what she was that would be a hell of a career.”
A career that starts where everyone else does, built slowly and thoughtfully, brick by brick, and by winning one possession at a time. The rest of her coaching career will be built the exact same way.
