Tamika Williams’ key to success is to ‘invest in the community’

Sports Odd and Ends

The MSR is the only local media that has covered the Minnesota Lynx from the start of its 25-year existence, as the team became the Twin Cities’ most successful pro franchise. Before this season, the team chose its top-25 players in Lynx history and held their 25th-anniversary celebration the weekend of June 9-11, where the MSR spoke to several of the honored players. This week: Tamika Williams (2002-07)

Before being named to the Lynx’s All-25 team this spring, Tamika Williams had already earned a place on the team’s legends’ list.

Minnesota selected the 6’2” Williams sixth overall in the 2002 WNBA draft, the fourth and final Connecticut player selected in the same draft in which North Minneapolis native Tamara Moore was also picked (see later). Williams, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Sue Bird, once heralded by Sports Illustrated as “the best recruiting class of 1998” out of high school, were all key members of UConn’s 2002 NCAA championship.

As W rookies, all four UConn alums accounted for between eight and 21 percent of their respective teams’ total points, rebounds and assists.

“We were the worst team in the league when I got drafted,” recalled Williams, now Williams-Jeter, referring to her first pro season with the Lynx.

But her second season with the team is where Williams made history. With the score tied at 72 and less than 10 seconds left, the host Lynx, in their first-ever playoff game, fought back from a 20-point deficit. Williams picked off the L.A. Sparks in-bounds pass and broke for the basket, finishing at the rim to give Minnesota their first-ever postseason victory. That same season, Williams also set a league field-goal shooting record, hitting .668 from the field.

Also, before the 2004 draft, it was rumored that for the Lynx to draft Gopher great Lindsay Whalen, Connecticut was asking for both Williams and teammate Katie Smith, easily the team’s best players, along with future draft picks. This reporter later confirmed that rumor and easily noted that if Minnesota made that trade, it would have handcuffed the franchise for years to come.

Williams played six seasons for Minnesota before she was traded to Connecticut in 2008, where she retired as a player after that season. She finished her W career with over 1,400 points and 1,100 rebounds. 

That single-season field goal record she set in her second year still stands today. Williams also set an NCAA Division I shooting record (.703) that still stands today.

After playing, Williams went into coaching with stops at Kansas, Kentucky, Penn State and Ohio State as an assistant, and Wittenberg and the India National Team as head coach. She begins her second season this year as University of Dayton head coach in her hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

But her part in Lynx history was well-cemented long before the team’s dynasty run. “I was a player, but I was also about community,” Williams proudly told us during the All-25 team celebration in June. 

On-court success, she said, “Is not gonna happen overnight. But if you invest in the community, they’ll start to show up. You start winning games, you get new coaches, then you start to draft the correct way.

“It’s amazing to be able to see and witness a lot of things that we were able to do, even during the hard times. And to see the growth in the organization and that it’s moving in the right direction,” said Williams. “There’s so many trailblazers out there. Just to know that I was one of them, a half of a percent to get this thing moving, I’m speechless.”

North Side’s two Ws

Tamara Moore (Minneapolis North, University of Wisconsin) and Tracy Henderson (Minneapolis Henry, University of Georgia) both remain the only two Northside female players drafted in the WNBA. 

The 6’3” Henderson first played in the old ABL before Cleveland selected her in the third round in 1999, and she played for the Rockers (1999, 2002-03).

The 5’10” Moore was a first-round pick of Miami in 2002 (No. 15) and played for the Lynx (2002), one of seven teams that she played with until her retirement in 2007.

Next featured Lynx Greats player: Renee Montgomery