Lindsay Whalen is back at the WNBA All-Star Game, but this time as a coach.
The 2025 WASG is this Saturday, July 19, in Indianapolis. Minnesota Lynx Head Coach Cheryl Reeve is one of the game’s coaches, and Whalen in her first year as Lynx assistant coach is one of the assistants as part of Team Collier’s coaching staff.
Whalen was a five-time W All-Star during her 15-year pro career with Connecticut and Minnesota, where she helped the Lynx to four league championships before retiring as a player in 2018. The two-time Hall of Famer and former Gopher great returns to the sidelines after almost two years away since leaving as Minnesota head coach in 2023 after five years.
It’s about time, she told us before her first season as a first-time WNBA assistant coach. “It’s been two years,” said Whalen of her unexpected hiatus from coaching.
She has been involved in basketball activities such as working camps and USA Basketball events. “[I was] doing a lot of the skill work with younger players [during] that time off.”
It also allowed her time to decide whether to get back into active coaching.
“I was getting into the college [basketball] season. Maybe do I want to [go into] broadcasting?” the Hutchinson, Minn. native recalled thinking before she got an unexpected text from Coach Reeve last fall with an offer too good to ignore or turn down.
Plus, Whalen said she had gotten a better perspective since being away, which uniquely prepared her for her current job. As a head coach, she was too often consumed with ensuring that everything was done.
“Now as an assistant, working with guards and working with different skills and different fundamentals and different roles,” stressed Whalen, “I think having that time not fully coaching a team like I did at the ‘U,’ where you’re focused on [the whole team].
“My individual workouts got pretty sharp, and now, boom! Here I am working with [individual] players, whoever it is. Now I’m just a little bit more comfortable on that than I would have been probably if I just came [here] right from being a head coach into an assistant.
“Now I had the time to develop some of the small group work, some of the skills, some of the fundamentals,” explained Whalen. “The biggest things that I miss was just being in the gym or being on a team.
“It’s great to just do whatever you want and have this free time and have the flexibility [after leaving the Gophers]. But you missed the people. You miss being in the gym. You miss being a part of something that you are accustomed to every single day.”
This weekend in Indy, Whalen once again will be at a WASG — hopefully on the winning side in the league’s midseason classic.
“It’s been fun,” she said.
First-time All Stars
Among the first-time All Stars are rookie Kiki Iriafen (Washington) and veterans Kayla Thorton (Golden State) and Seattle’s Gabby Williams.
Iriafen was the fourth overall pick in this year’s draft and has started every game for the Mystics this season, tied for fourth in the WNBA in rebounding.
Thorton, a 10th year forward, is the second-most veteran player in league history to make their first All-Star contest. She leads the expansion Valkyries in scoring and rebounding.
Williams leads the league this season in steals, thus far posting career highs in points, assists and steals in her fourth season with the Storm.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.