There is a moment after every player moves to the coaching chair when they begin to realize the error of their ways. Something that they used to give a coach grief about now draws their ire when the tables are turned.
For Rachel Banham, it was pick-and-roll reads. The Minnesota Lynx guard is pretty confident in her ability to make the right play out of ball screens (she’s averaged 0.905 points per possession as a pick-and-roll handler over the past three seasons, what Synergy would classify as “very good”), but it’s something Banham and Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve have gone back and forth about during her three seasons on the team. Now a member of the University of Minnesota coaching staff, Banham can see her WNBA coach’s point while watching the young Gophers guards.
“Now watching the guards and seeing the way they do it, I’m like, oh, that’s so annoying. I get it,” Banham says. “But before, I was like, whatever, I’m doing it right. But now when I see it, I’m like, oh my gosh, yeah, that is like that. I see it now.”
If you know Banham, you can hear the sing-song way she says “I’m doing it riiiight” in your head. That works as a player, not so much as a coach, and she’s getting a crash course in the difference during her WNBA offseason. Banham is…
