NEW YORK — Courtney Williams once joked that it was a big moment when her mom, Michele Williams, admitted Courtney was the best basketball player in the family.
That came more than a decade ago, when the Minnesota Lynx guard broke her mother’s single-game scoring record at Charlton County High School in Folkston, Georgia, about 40 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida.
Williams has been filling up hoops for a long time: at South Florida in college basketball, then in the WNBA starting as a first-round draft pick in 2016. She is playing in the WNBA Finals for the third time.
But Williams’ biggest stage yet came Thursday, when the Lynx completed an improbable rally to win Game 1 of the WNBA Finals 95-93 in overtime over the New York Liberty. Williams had 23 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists.
She hit the shot of the night — a 3-pointer with 5.1 seconds left in regulation — and then the ensuing free throw to seal a four-point play. According to Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first time a team took the lead on a four-point play in the final 10 seconds of any game in WNBA history.
The Lynx needed the extra period to secure the victory. But if Minnesota goes on to win the 2024 title — which would be a WNBA-record fifth for the franchise and first for Williams — her shot will be perhaps her biggest ever.
“I don’t know where it ranks,” Williams said. “It’s [No. 1] right now because we are here. I like to be where my feet are planted.”
Williams is averaging a team-high 5.6 assists per game for Lynx over eight postseason games. She also ranks second on the club in points per game (14.9) and is shooting 58.8% (10 of 17) from beyond the arc (compared to 33.3% in the regular season).
Bottom line, she’s a bucket-getter, a player with the confident effervescence of a born scorer. The higher the stakes, the more willing she is to go for it.
“Courtney has been around for a while,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “She has been in Finals games, and she knows her team needed her to get aggressive.”
Selected No. 8 by the Phoenix Mercury in the 2016 draft, Williams was drafted behind players such as Liberty stars Breanna Stewart (No. 1) and Jonquel Jones (No. 6). She was with the Mercury briefly her rookie season before being traded to the Connecticut Sun. Williams and the Sun advanced to the 2019 WNBA Finals but lost to the Washington Mystics.
In 2020, Williams was traded again, this time to the Atlanta Dream, and she produced her two highest-scoring seasons — 14.6 PPG in 2020 and 16.5 PPG in 2021.
But after the 2021 season, video emerged online of Williams and other Dream players involved in a fight outside an Atlanta club in May 2021. Williams then discussed the altercation on a YouTube video that was soon deleted, and she subsequently apologized on social media. The Dream opted not to bring her back.
In February 2022, Williams signed a one-year deal with Connecticut and was part of the Sun’s WNBA Finals team that lost to the Las Vegas Aces. She played for the Chicago Sky last season.
Williams is with her fifth franchise in nine WNBA seasons but seems to feel at home in Minnesota.
“These people I’m around, we believe in each other so much,” Williams said Thursday. “It’s crazy, man. I’m happy to be here.”
Williams and forward Alanna Smith came to the Lynx this season as free agents from Chicago. Both had breakthroughs last year with the Sky. For Smith, 2023 was proof she could be an effective starter in the league.
Williams’ elevation came in a more specific area: passing. She averaged 6.3 assists, the most in her career, in 2023. That playmaking ability stood out to Reeve in free agency as something the Lynx really needed. Minnesota averaged 19.4 assists in 2023, which was sixth in the league. This season, the Lynx led the WNBA at 23.0 assists per game. Williams averaged a team-high 5.5.
Reeve, who coached four Minnesota championship teams helmed by Naismith Hall of Fame point guard Lindsay Whalen, said this Lynx team is one of the best she’s had in moving the ball.
“We are head and shoulders above any team that I coached to a championship in pick-and-roll,” Reeve said. “The game has evolved so much. We’re completely different than those teams. Three-point shooting wasn’t the strength of those teams.”
It traditionally hasn’t been a strength for Williams in the WNBA, yet she has come through in big moments from behind the arc.
She has averaged less than one 3-pointer per game in her career; her season high is 47 in 2023. This year, she had 23 3-pointers in the regular season, but has 10 in eight playoff games. Two of those came in Game 1 of the Finals, the second in the overtime period after New York had cut the lead to one with 1:16 left.
It was that kind of night for Williams. Whether she’s hitting big shots or making the right pass or engaging with her dad and No. 1 fan, Don Williams, on the sidelines, Courtney is doing what she loves most.
“We have such a tight-knit circle with our families involved as well,” Williams said. “We never give up.”