Courtney Williams (and her dad) are ready for the WNBA Finals

MINNEAPOLIS — Courtney Williams quite literally couldn’t miss. After each shot, the trademark grin across her face widened. Just a few feet away was her father, Don Williams, well-known at Target Center for being her biggest fan. After each made basket, Don’s dancing becomes more pronounced, his yells more jubilant, and the list of nearby fans he high-fives grows longer.

The scene was a familiar one: Don has been celebrating his daughter’s buckets for 23 years, ever since she was a tiny 7-year-old, lighting up all the boys in her hometown of Folkston, Georgia.

“He’s been there all my life,” Courtney told SB Nation before Game 5. “I’m used to him acting the way he act. That’s not no distraction — that’s just him. You don’t even notice it, I ain’t gonna lie. He’s just been doing it all my life.”

In Game 5 between the Minnesota Lynx and the Connecticut Sun, Williams was the unequivocal X-factor, starting the game a perfect 6-6 from the field, and finishing the night with 24 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals.

It has all panned out exactly as Don envisioned: his little girl — naturally joyful and athletically gifted — was a star. The difference is that she was now doing it on one of the biggest stage in basketball, a win-or-go-home in front of a raucous crowd at Target Center.

An hour before Game 5 — in which the Lynx stamped their first trip to the WNBA Finals since 2017 — I chatted with Courtney Williams to get a sense of where her head was at.

The 5‘8 guard is well-known for her infectious personality, and while most players would be all business before such a big game, Courtney is as loose as can be. (I spoke with several players on both sides pregame, and Williams’ energy was noticeably different from the rest).

She begins our conversation by asking me about my trip: about how I’m liking Minnesota, about my early impressions of Target Center. I normally try to keep pregame interviews to just a couple of minutes, but Williams has seemingly lost track of time. She’s greeting fans. She’s telling jokes. She’s giving me recommendations for the area. She’s making an unprompted Bridget Carleton Most Improved Player case (the award was announced two weeks ago). She’s cracking herself up — and I’ll admit, cracking me up.

Despite the magnitude of the moment, Courtney is strikingly relaxed.

That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

“When she’s like too serious, she’s not really good,” Don Williams told me pregame as we both watched Courtney prance around the arena with a grin, dancing to the beat of pregame music.

Luckily for Minnesotans, a serious Courtney Williams is not on display very often. And, what Lynx fans witnessed on Tuesday night was the most joyful version of the 30-year-old guard.

From the jump, Don Williams knew that his daughter was going to be a star

Ahead of Game 5, I asked Don if he was willing to talk with me for a couple of minutes. Before I could even finish my sentence, his eyes lit up.

“About Courtney?” he said, his left hand clutching onto a cold beer. “Come into my office.”

“What’s this like, getting to watch your daughter compete at this level?” I asked.

Don, who I can already tell is as extroverted and talkative as anyone, can’t seem to find the words to describe the feeling.

“Outstandingly, wonderfully, great,” he finally says. “That’s what it’s like. Euphoria.”

This entire series between the Sun and the Lynx, Don and Courtney have collectively embodied a sort of unwavering joy. The father and daughter are spitting images of one another: skipping into the arena in unison, donning a similar buzzcut, bantering loudly with each other and everyone around them.

And, every time Courtney flamboyantly celebrates a made basket, Don somehow one-ups her enthusiasm on the sidelines.

“Where the rest of the dads at?” Don asked me. “How can you miss this type of euphoria?”

Don always knew Courtney had this in her. In the tiny town of less than 5,000, he and her mother, Michelle, taught their 7-year-old girl to play a variety of sports, including tennis, dodgeball, and kickball. Tennis was the initial plan — he was inspired by Serena and Venus Williams’ father, Richard — but courts weren’t often available.

“We couldn’t access tennis courts all the time, so we did basketball,” he said, gesturing to the nearby courts where his daughter sunk pregame three-pointers.

“He had me doing it all,” Courtney told me, explaining that in a place like Folkston, you had to latch onto any opportunity or activity you could find. “Football, dodgeball, kickball, anything that’s competitive, we doing.”

Basketball ended up being a good bet: Williams has been a double-figure scorer in the WNBA for 8 consecutive seasons. Now, she might just be the key to a championship.

As Don and I spoke, Courtney waved at him from a few feet away.

“We’re celebrities to each other,” Don said proudly to me. “I’m saying to her: ‘This was my dream since you were little.’”

But for Don, Courtney’s athletic success was more than a pipe dream. He knew from the beginning that his daughter was destined to be a star.

“I remember the moment I put her on the court,” Don said. “She played with the boys… she was the only one that could dribble. My thing was: put a ball in her hand early, make her dribble, not shoot – just dribble. She was the only one on the court that knew how to dribble the ball. The rest of the kids would get it, and they’d be walking, running with it but she’d be the only one….” he trailed off, pantomiming some behind-the-back and between-the-legs dribbles. Courtney’s handle is a point of pride.

Then, he taught her how to shoot.

“And they started going in,” he said. “She the truth. I’ve been knowing.”

Word got out. People flocked to Courtney’s games as a kid, and by the time she got to high school, her play was the talk of the town.

“She dominated every level,” Williams said. “It was no girls at her age that can mess with her. When she got to the ninth grade, she was like a killer assassin.”

But, in 10th grade, Don made Courtney sit out the entire basketball season. She was regularly getting in trouble — sneaking out, lying, the like — and he didn’t like where things were headed.

“She was an adolescent,” he said, shaking his head as he relived the mischief his daughter got up to.

Still, the punishment — Courtney being pulled out of the sport she excelled in — was unfathomable to those around them.

“Everybody hated me,” he said with a proud grin. Courtney had to watch her team play from the sidelines, and her father was okay with the hit his reputation took as a result.

“I put the hammer down,” Don said, making a hammer gesture. “It’s going to build character.”

It seemed to work: Courtney came back as an even better basketball player in 11th grade.

“She just killed everybody,” Williams said. “She couldn’t wait. She’d been saving it up for a year.”

That season, Courtney exploded for 42 points – breaking her high school’s all-time scoring record of 40 points, which was previously set by her mother, Michelle, 22 years earlier.

Still, much to her father’s surprise, Courtney didn’t receive the kind of collegiate attention that reflected her on-court excellence.

“Guess what?” Don tells me. “Guess what!”

He shakes his head, seemingly still incredulous.

”She had no recruits. Nobody recruited. None!”

Eventually, Courtney got an offer from the University of South Florida. Her father wanted her to explore her offers, go on some college visits. But, he relented to pressure from her mom, and Courtney committed. The rest was history — at USF, she established herself as as a star at the national level, averaging 22.4 points per game in her senior season. She finished her career as the second all-time scorer in the school’s history.

She was drafted No. 8 overall by the Phoenix Mercury in 2016, and enjoyed stints with the Sun, Dream, and Sky, before signing a two-year deal with the Lynx in January.

The closest she’s come to a championship in 2019, when the Connecticut Sun lost to the Mystics in the WNBA Finals. Williams was a beloved member of that Sun team, and her legacy has been long-lasting. I attended shootaround at the Mohegan Sun Arena ahead of Game 3, and watched a longtime season ticket holder approach Williams as she walked to her hotel room.

Courtney lit up when she saw the woman, whom I caught up with after.

“Courtney is just an excellent basketball player and person,” the fan told me. “We miss her so much here in Connecticut.”

For the Lynx, Courtney Williams has meant everything

When Cheryl Reeve recruited Williams to leave Chicago and go to Minnesota last offseason, she knew she was getting a great WNBA guard.

But, the decorated coach didn’t know what Courntey’s off-court impact would be.

“I knew Courtney Williams the player — I didn’t know Courtney Williams the person,” said Reeve after Game 3. “I just knew everybody liked her.”

“Courtney’s way with this team was exactly what was missing from our team last year,” Reeve said.

I spoke to Napheesa Collier before Game 5, and she noted Courtney has only been a point guard for a few years but has still managed to thrive in the role.

“She is such a huge personality — it’s so fun, honestly, just to see what she says every day,” Collier told SB Nation. “And then obviously the impact that she has for our team, on offense as a point guard. She’s adjusted so well. It’s only her second year being a point guard, which is insane.”

This season, Williams averaged 11.1 points and 5.5 assists, shooting a career-best 44.3% from the field. There were bumps along the road, certainly. In her Game 5 postgame presser, Williams recalled a lackluster showing in a loss against the Dallas Wings, in which she scored just 3 points on 1-6 shooting.

“I was ass. Like, I was terrible,” Courtney said. “Cheryl brought me into the locker room, and she said, ‘Court, I feel like you gave into hard.’ And from that moment, I thought like, I would never do that again – you never have to worry about that again. From that moment, I invited hard.”

“I just didn’t want to be that person, to let the coaching staff down, or my teammates down, just giving it to hard. And I think that we embody that – none of us give in to hard.”

Before Game 5, Don Williams all but guaranteed an outstanding performance from his daughter. It’s in her blood, he said.

“We like that stage. This stage right here? This is what she lives for. She’s gonna kill it today.”

Almost on cue, Courtney skipped by. Just a few minutes earlier, she had expressed a nearly identical sentiment.

“You gotta trust the work that you put in, and I trust the work that I put in, so I don’t get nervous,” Don said. “This is what you play for. You play to be on that stage. I think we all ready for the moment, and we are excited to get it done.”

After the win, Don Williams attended his daughter’s postgame press conference. She made him promise to stay quiet while she fielded questions from the media.

“He’s always instilling confidence in me,” Courtney said when asked about her father’s impact. “He’s always telling me I’m the one — to go get it.”

“I try to put on a show for him.”

The semifinals were an important milestone for the Lynx, who hope to secure another championship soon. But the journey doesn’t end at Game 5. Next up, is Game 1 at Barclay’s Center on Thursday night.

There will be a myriad of celebrities seated courtside, but as he has all year, Don Williams might steal the show.

“He on this playoff run with me,” Courtney said.