The Minnesota Lynx have played 122 regular season games since the start of the 2024 WNBA season. A comprehensive scan across all those games will produce a handful of common denominators.
All those games were played under the same coach, for one. Same franchise for another and even more obvious one. Same ownership? Not quite. Same CBA? Nope. What about the same point guard? Well no, but that’s only because Courtney Williams switched positions and then switched back.
Williams has been one of, if not the most, reliable iron women in the WNBA throughout her career. Her 122 straight games without missing one for the Lynx are part of a total streak of 196 games dating back to game No. 3 of the 2022 season.
When she has missed games too, it’s rarely been because of anything injury-related. Williams sat out the first two games of the 2022 campaign with the Connecticut Sun due to a two-game suspension from the league for an off-court altercation in November of 2021. She also missed the first two games of the ‘Wubble’ in 2020 with the Atlanta Dream after testing positive for COVID prior to the start of the season.
In the 122 games Minnesota has played since Williams joined the team prior to the 2024 season, the Lynx have a record of 95-27 overall, making Williams one of the winningest players in franchise history for a franchise that likes winning. She’s averaged 13.0 points, 5.4 assists and 4.9 rebounds per game (so far) and has been selected to two WNBA All-Star Games in that time.
When asked about her ‘Iron Woman’ before the Lynx’s game against the Golden State Valkyries on Aug. 24, Cheryl Reeve credited both Williams and Minnesota’s sports performance staff for how the wiry and ever-available guard is only getting better with age.
“Sometimes it’s being blessed,” Reeve said. “She’s got the type of body that can be durable. I don’t mean from a physically strong type of thing, but that she’s a little more wiry.”
‘Wiry’ is one of many adjectives that describe Reeve’s do-everything, say-anything guard. The prized free agent acquisition of 2024 who has been a match made in heaven with Minnesota.
“She didn’t start taking care of her body until probably the year she got here,” Reeve said with a smile. “So I don’t know that we should go as far to say that there’s been some magical things she’s been doing. She’s been Courtney Williams every stretch of the way. When we got her, so much credit to our sports performance staff because everything is framing. If you ask Courtney Williams to lift weights, she’s not interested. But if you ask her to go through movement exercises, it’s a completely different story.
“Incredible job by our sports performance team to get her to buy into a lot of things she wasn’t bought into before and working on her game,” Reeve added. “We’ll miss her [against the Valkyries]. I’ll certainly miss some of the banter we have during the games too.”
Williams is listed as day-to-day with a mid-foot sprain. She’ll have plenty of time to get back on the mend. The Lynx have a few days off before their next game in Atlanta on Sunday, the team’s final game before the league pauses two-plus weeks for the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin.
Minnesota will play their final four games of the regular season starting with the New York Liberty at Target Center on Sept. 18, which gives Williams plenty of opportunity to start the next 196-game streak.
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