Katie Smith was the first star Lynx fans saw donning a Minnesota jersey.
Smith’s first season with the Lynx came in 1999 after two seasons in the ABL. In those two ABL seasons, Smith won two championships.
From 1999-2005, there weren’t many better at scoring the basketball as Smith was. The 5’11 shooting guard averaged a career-high 23.1 points per game in 2001. In total with the Lynx, she made five All-Star games.
Smith remembers the fans for embracing not only her, but the Lynx and women’s basketball as a whole.
“We lived downtown a little bit, just like leaving the games they’d hang out right outside, we’d go grab a bite… It was just that whole interaction and that bond that you have, that kind of love for the game and love for what we were doing,” Smith said. “That connection with the whole community, and Mr. Taylor and Roger [Griffith], just how much they cared about it and were excited to have a team.
She earned All-WNBA First Team honors in 2001 and 2003. In 2005, she became the first American female basketball player to score 5,000 points in a professional career.
Unfortunately for the Lynx and Smith, Minnesota just wasn’t able to put a winning team around Smith. The team made the playoffs in just 2003 and 2004 with Smith on the team.
“We were in the West, and our records, we’d always say if we were in the East we’d be in the dang finals! Our records were that good, but in the West with Houston and L.A. and everybody, we almost had to be perfect,” Smith said. “We were always competitive, but we just had to play flawlessly. Getting into the playoffs was big, it was big for our franchise in general, and obviously for our fans. Yeah, we were always so competitive, but the West was so difficult! We loved playing the game, played hard every night, sometimes it just doesn’t always work out, but we were just really happy we could get ourselves in the playoffs.”
That led the Lynx to blow things up, sending Smith to the Detroit Shock along with a second-round pick for Chandi Jones, Stacey Thomas and the Shock’s 2006 first-round pick.
A year later, Smith won a WNBA Championship. She won another in 2008 and was named the Finals MVP.
Smith ranks third in Lynx history with 3,605 points and fourth with 496 assists.
She was capable of erupting for big games, like when she scored a career-high 46 points against Los Angeles on July 8, 2001.
Over her 15-year career, Smith averaging 13.4 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game while shooting 40.4 percent from the field, 36.7 percent from the 3-point line and 85.9 percent from the free-throw line.
In the last year, Smith was named to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and was named as a finalist for the Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2018.
The Class of 2018 will be announced March 31 at the men’s NCAA basketball Final Four in San Antonio. This year’s enshrinement at the Naismith Hall in Springfield, Mass., is set for Sept. 2.
Smith is currently in her first season as head coach of the New York Liberty.
She’s still incredibly fond of her time in Minnesota and the memories she made there.
“Every time I come back to Minnesota I see a lot of familiar faces, the fans, obviously, Reeve is a good friend of mine,” Smith said. “Just as I said great memories of my time here back in the day, this is the longest tenure of any of my teams professionally, I was here for six and a half years, so definitely feel a special connection with these guys.”