Cheryl Reeve: From South Jersey to La Salle to WNBA royalty

When Geno Auriemma put together his USA women's basketball staff for the Rio Olympics, the University of Connecticut coach wanted a pro coach as one of his assistants since he would be coaching pros.

Auriemma went for the top, choosing the coach who has won three of the last five WNBA titles. He also chose a coach who, like Auriemma, is from the Philadelphia suburbs, with deep area roots (a mom who went to West Catholic, a dad who grew up in Gloucester City) and a local college alma mater.

Auriemma said he wanted Cheryl Reeve's insight into the mindset of pro teams, "what goes into the ebb and flow of dealing with a pro team."

Like Auriemma, Reeve is a talker who encourages conversation. Reeve, who turned 50 on Tuesday, is a 1984 graduate of Washington Township High School who went on to La Salle, and her path includes a Chinatown meal she can't forget with her first Explorers coach, Speedy Morris.

Reeve started 110 games at point guard for La Salle - the Explorers won 89 of them and reached the NCAA tournament twice - and she still is fifth on the school's all-time assist list.

With an Olympic gold medal now on her ledger, Reeve is back in Minnesota going for WNBA title No. 4 with the Lynx. That would tie for most titles in league history. If you say Reeve's team - about to begin the playoffs after accruing the best WNBA regular-season record - has the best players, she won't argue. Four Lynx players were on the USA team in Rio, led by Maya Moore, already a great of the sport.

There was also a brief detour for the Lynx this season into social protest, which Reeve calls "probably her proudest time" with the Lynx.

Before the first Lynx preseason game, in the pregame locker room, the words CONNECT AT ALL TIMES were written on a whiteboard. "What are ways we can connect?" Reeve asked her players before that game. "Communication, touching, eye contact. . . . Huddles, as soon as a play stops, right? Especially if you see somebody, maybe something didn't go their way, maybe you lost them for a second. Bring 'em back."

The talk was more than a scouting report, like a mini-clinic on how the Lynx play ball, a reminder for the veterans but more of a catch-up for newcomers.

Reeve went through more defensive principles: Icing wing picks, "guards getting close, right?" She explained how she wanted the defense to force the action. "If you get dragged way down, it's not going to be you going back to your player. We're going to rotate for you . . . "

Another point: "We need deflections. We're charting them. We chart them every single day in practice, games, preseason, whatever. We're charting them. Get deflections. Big key."

In that room, you couldn't tell the veterans from the rookies. Just before walking in, Reeve had asked an assistant, "What time is it?" She was told that it was 28 minutes, 27 seconds until the tipoff. (Really, the assistant mentioned the seconds). Standing in a hallway, Reeve noted they were late (They'd switched rooms, costing 93 seconds). It didn't seem to bother Reeve as much as make her talk quicker.

Before Reeve took over the Lynx, she was an assistant under Bill Laimbeer when he was in Detroit. He has three WNBA titles of his own, with Reeve on his bench for two of them.

"A good fit right from the start," Laimbeer said, sitting on his bench before facing the Lynx. "She's a spirited individual, and she'd been in the league. Came well recommended as far as preparation, which is what we needed. Knew personnel. Really understood college personnel, which we also needed."

The former Detroit Pistons bad boy added, "Very competitive, which is right up our alley. She can swear with the best of them."

Reeve's high school days in South Jersey? They weren't supposed to happen. If her father's Air Force orders hadn't changed, her life would have taken a different path. In 1980, he was packing up the family to move from Georgia to Alaska, had the orders already.

"We were all set to move there, had a big four-door truck and and a camper," Reeve said.

The orders changed. Go to Japan. It was time to go home, he decided. Twenty years in the Air Force was enough. After a year in Ocean City, they found a place in Washington Township. A lucky move, Cheryl said. The town was full of high-level female athletes.

Reeve remains convinced her best sport at Washington Township High was softball until the basketball coach told Reeve there was more scholarship money in hoops. Reeve believes La Salle took interest because their coaches came to look at a sweet-shooting teammate who ended up at Temple.

She was recruited to La Salle, half scholarship, but there was a coaching change before she got there. New coach: Speedy Morris.

"That summer, Speedy invited me to lunch over in Chinatown," Reeve said.

She'd never been there and doesn't remember eating much Chinese food anywhere before. Morris pointed to the yellow sauce and the red sauce and told her which one was the hot sauce.

"He makes me put a ton of sauce on my egg roll," she said.

She never forgets now the yellow mustard sauce is most definitely a hot sauce - a good lesson on appearances being deceiving.

"He got a laugh out of it," she said.

The real reason he wanted to meet with her, Reeve said, is that Morris wanted to up the half scholarship to a full.

Between Morris and his successor, John Miller, after Morris went to the men's side at La Salle, Reeve feels like she got lucky, and the Explorers took off for some successful years while she was there. She was captain in 1987-88 when La Salle won 25 games. Reeve was second-team all-Big Five, first-team all-MAAC. Her work in the classroom was good enough that she was nominated to be a Rhodes Scholar.

Her parents weren't sure about her idea to coach afterward, but she was sold. The path was a typical-enough coaching path. From La Salle grad assistant to George Washington assistant to Indiana State. In 2000, she moved to the WNBA as a Charlotte Sting assistant (where Dawn Staley was point guard). Then it was Cleveland, back to Charlotte, on to Detroit, taking the Minnesota head job in 2010.

Ask Reeve about coaching influences, she talks of coaches she played for and coached under. Scouting concepts brought to the WNBA from the NBA and Laimbeer's high screen actions taken from the Pistons. Rick Adelman's corner offense became a staple. Adelman went to the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Reeve "got my eyes on it."

The Lynx still use elements of it but changed when they got a true offensive force in the low post in Sylvia Fowles. Reeve watches the Warriors "more for the actions they run," is like most coaches in being impressed with what Brad Stevens does in Boston. She ticks off a bunch more, but you get the idea. She's an X-and-O junkie.

"I'm not going to deviate and take a hard right turn completely away from what we do," Reeve said.

And that includes a star in Moore, who, Reeve said, "never thinks she's arrived."

The conversation started, Reeve said, when the issue hit home. When citizens were killed this summer by police officers in Baton Rouge and closer to them in nearby Falcon Heights, Minn. Baton Rouge was home to one Lynx player, Seimone Augustus, who played in Rio for the U.S. team. Reeve remembers Augustus looking at TV coverage from her hometown and saying, "I go to that store."

"The players talk among themselves," Reeve said. "I always want them to know I support them. I want to know about their families and struggles and success. We share this bond about who we want to be and what mark we want to leave."

So part of their conversation, Reeve said, "Let's find a way to use our voices and exact change and basically say enough is enough. I think they basically looked at me like, 'Yeah, we need to have dialogue, look at ways we can shine a light.' I put the onus on them, gave them huge responsibility to be part of a conversation when they want to be."

The talk was about how to do something "in a responsible way." But she added, "Change doesn't come without challenge."

In July, Lynx players wore shirts during warm-ups, black with white lettering, reading, "Change starts with us." In slightly smaller white letter below: "Justice & Accountability." The back had the names of the two men killed and also the words "Black Lives Matter," and also the emblem of the Dallas Police Department, since five Dallas officers had just been shot and killed.

The aftermath included Minneapolis police officers leaving their jobs as off-duty security for the Lynx. Reeve said the outpouring of support also was overwhelming.

Reeve said she was proud of the "grace and class and thoughtfulness" shown by her players.

"When you look back, you can take the easy route. You can just be an athlete," Reeve said. "Which is silly. We all have a voice. When all is said and done, what do you want to be known for?"

Since she was an assistant, her relationship with her four Lynx players in Rio was naturally different.

"Having been an assistant for 10 years, you have a tremendous understanding of what your place is," Reeve said of her time in Rio, when the U.S. women won gold. "I got to revisit with my own players. It was a bit of a break if you will of me having to be the heavy. As an assistant, you get to be the hype person. The head coach, you have to worry about everybody. It was an easy transition. You know exactly when it's time to use your voice, when it's time not to. Waking up, I asked, 'What does Geno want today?' "

"A basketball encyclopedia," said Staley, another Philadelphian on Auriemma's Rio staff. Bouncing things off Reeve, Staley said, pretty much guaranteed a detailed response. "You can just hear her love for the game in each word," Staley said.

Fowles said the experience gave her insight into Reeve without her "coming at us all loud - not rowdy."

Back in the preseason, in that pregame talk, Reeve didn't sound rowdy, certainly sounded ready. Talking about the importance of hockey assists, of the extra pass, and the importance of communication between players as they came in and and out, sharing information, "what the silent cues were [between Lynx players] since they would change."

She also joked about their warm-ups for that game looking like Members Only jackets.

"That's from the '80s," Reeve said, translating her own joke. But there was no time for further reminiscing. The seconds were ticking. Reeve repeated the words on the board.

"Everybody stay connected at all times," Reeve told her team. "Through the good, the bad and the ugly, whatever it is."

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus