'They're just adaptable': USA women's basketball coach Cheryl Reeve on the qualities of her team
Team USA has high expectations heading into Paris 2024. Reeve talks about the team effort happening to get the U.S. to the Olympics, as well as her legendary t-shirt collection.
Basketball
In early November, the USA women’s basketball team played two exhibition games with American college teams, and trained together at a three-day camp in Atlanta. At the helm was Cheryl Reeve, the head coach of Team USA. She led the U.S. team to gold at the FIBA World Cup in 2022, and now is focused on continuing the U.S. women’s basketball Olympic gold medal streak that started at Atlanta 1996.
The camp was just a few weeks after the Las Vegas Aces had won the WNBA championship, beating the New York Liberty. Reeve’s other job is head coach of the Minnesota Lynx, where she’s won four championships. Many of the players on Team USA were the same people her players were trying to beat just weeks before. She has one secret to juggling the two demanding jobs.
"Compartmentalize! For whatever reason, that's been something that's been ingrained in me. I have an ability to, and you have to. When you're with USA Basketball, you're with USA Basketball, you're fully immersed into it. And when you're not and you're with the Lynx and I'm fully immersed into that. And the two, they don't bleed into each other. And that's been the easiest way, I think, to manage,” Reeve said to Olympics.com.
Cheryl Reeve says the USA team's adaptability is 'something I marvel at'
The transition from the WNBA to USA Basketball much easier is that the players are so coachable. She can count on them learning their role quickly, even if that role is different than the one they’ve had on other teams.
"Their ability to adapt on the fly is just something that I marvel at. Because of their overseas play, they've played for so many different teams. They start at a young age, whether it's AAU teams, high school teams, college teams, then go to the pros. They're playing for multiple teams within a year, three teams if you're a national team player. I have found with players, you just simply say, 'okay, this is what we want you to do here'. And they'll say, 'okay', even though it's not something they might do in Chicago or New York or Minnesota. They're just adaptable. And that makes it easier to manage a group that doesn't get to spend much time together.”
It isn’t just the players who adapt for Team USA. Reeve’s staff is filled with the WNBA coaches she faces regularly. Stephanie White, who was one of USA Basketball’s court coaches for the games in November, coaches the Connecticut Sun, who eliminated the Lynx from the playoffs in September. The staff also included Curt Miller of the Los Angeles Sparks, Mike Thibault of the Washington Mystics, and Tanisha Wright of the Atlanta Dream. Including visits to the camp and games, coaches from a total of nine of the league’s 12 teams showed their support.
“We just played against each other in a playoff series or whatever it is through the course of the season. We know each other so well, or we feel like we know. And then to get in a room and exchange ideas, you know, it's probably the best part about being in this position with USA Basketball. You just learn from some other great minds. There's great value. And I think the players will probably say the same, about how much they learned from each other.”
How Cheryl Reeve's t-shirt collection came about
Reeve knew the league had been changed by the 2020 season. Trying to avoid COVID-19 outbreaks, the league staged the entire season on the campus of a boarding school in Florida. Players called it the wubble – the WNBA bubble. Players, coaches, officials and support staff all stayed on campus throughout the season. During this season, the players pushed for more social justice initiatives.
The WNBA had already been at the forefront of using its platform for more than just basketball. Reeve’s Lynx players wore shirts pushing for change and accountability from police in 2016, well before other athletes. When Reeve returned to Minnesota for the 2021 season, she knew she couldn’t go back to the suits she had been wearing on the sidelines, and she didn’t want to do the quarter zip tops she wore in the wubble. She took a cue from her players.
"We were in this space that I just told the staff, just be business casual and whatever that means to you. For me, I'm a blazer kind of a gal, with comfortable pants and what we're wearing on our feet has changed. Trying to put the whole fit together what you're wearing under your blazer, it kind of gave me an opportunity to say I don't want to wear some of these more dressier blouses you'd wear under a suit with heels. I have liked statement tees in the past and I thought, I think I want to rock the statement tees. I think I want to do that. And so I just grew my collection through the course of the season.”
She said she often gets questions about where to buy the shirt of the day. Her favorite says, “Dear strong women. You are not intimidating. They are intimidated.”
“I think the message around that resonated with so many women in our business lives. And you know what we're told because we do have an opinion or because we're strong, we're told that we're difficult and worse. I just want women around, you know, just to understand our worth. And we're not the problem.”
Reeve and Team USA will be in action again from 8-11 February in the FIBA Women's Olympic Qualification Tournament in Antwerp, Belgium.