New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Drafted into the family
After being selected by the CT Sun, Whalen became part of Thibault clan
An up close and personal experience with Lindsay Whalen in the 2000’s gave two Connecticut kids a unique appreciation for different types of basketball excellence.
1. Whalen was skilled and tough, knifing into the lane and embracing contact before finishing off the glass with shots resembling a pool shark’s massé.
“She was the first female basketball player I can remember who used her body and finished at the rim with physicality and spin on the ball the way she did,” said Carly Thibault-DuDonis, who back then rebounded for Whalen during workouts and is now the coach at Fairfield University. “At that point, it wasn’t common in the women’s game. She was one of the first to get really physical in the paint as a guard like that.”
2. Whalen was also the calm and comic relief a team usually needs, clearly getting a kick out of life and the various stages of her basketball career.
“Over the years people have been able to see it more, that goofy side of her,” said Eric Thibault, who back then participated in Connecticut Sun practices and is now the associate head coach of the Washington Mystics. “You can tell she enjoyed being a pro basketball player, and enjoys being a coach. That sometimes masks competitiveness. You don’t win all those games she won without having that streak in you. But it’s a good example that you can be both of those things. You don’t have to a jerk. You can enjoy it and have fun and still be super competitive.”
Whalen, 40, who retired as a player in 2018 and has since been the head coach at her alma mater, Minnesota, will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Sept. 10. She won four WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx and two Olympic gold medals, becoming and remaining one of the sport’s elite point guards through 15 professional seasons.
The Thibaults, raised in East Lyme, are like family to Whalen. Their father, Mike Thibault, drafted Whalen as coach of the Connecticut Sun in 2004, and Whalen spent her first six seasons with the team.
Whalen, who was the fascination of Minnesota high school basketball before leading the Golden Gophers to a Final Four as an All-American college player, was initially reluctant to embrace the Connecticut experience. She had told Mike Thibault before the draft that she preferred to play for the Lynx.
But Thibault needed a point guard, got the best one available and, the family likes to say, something of a second daughter in the process. Whalen, the oldest of five children, is a familyoriented person and was quickly drawn to the Thibaults. Eric was in high school and Carly in middle school when she arrived. Though they returned for summers and worked with the Sun, both were off to college before Whalen departed, finally getting her wish to play for the Lynx when the Sun realized they needed to rebuild and traded her.
The six years she spent in Southeast Connecticut were so meaningful to all involved. Whalen enters the Hall of Fame for all sorts of reasons. She had 5,523 points and 2,345 and was a five All-Star. She won 323 games, a WNBA record until Sue Bird passed her this season.
Whalen also left a lasting impact on a family, a basketball family, the two youngest members of which are now in the early stages of their own promising coaching careers.
“That period of our lives, it really felt like we were in it together,” said Eric Thibault, 34, who was a graduate assistant at St. John’s and an assistant at Vanderbilt before being hired as an assistant on his father’s Mystics’ staff in 2013. He is expected to succeed his father as head coach, whenever Mike Thibault retires.
Thibault-DuDonis, 30, played at Monmouth, valedictorian in the Class of 2013, and directed recruiting in her role at Florida State in 2013-14. She was then an assistant coach at Eastern Michigan and Mississippi State before taking a job as an assistant at Minnesota under Whalen in 2018.
“I think the cool thing with her is she’s always been a builder,” ThibaultDuDonis said. “Everywhere she’s gone, she’s taken something that’s been not at the top — in college and the WNBA, both franchises — and made them something really special. In college, Minnesota was not very good and then she led them to a Final Four. Sun, two Finals. Lynx, four championships. I think she has always embraced the process of building and doing it the right way. I loved every minute of working with her.”
The Thibault kids liked Whalen immediately, followed her around the arena, Carly trying to imitate one of Whalen’s signature moves, a drive that stops on a dime for a spinning fadeaway. The bond grew really strong in the summer of 2006, which Whalen chose to spend in Connecticut while rehabilitating after ankle surgery. She was at the family’s home often, for dinner, to play video games with Eric and his buddies, to pal around with Carly. She attended many of their basketball games.
“I mean, she is family,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “I’ve made this joke before but I used to say when she was playing for my dad that she was my dad’s favorite daughter. I wasn’t getting him 15 and 8, so of course she was. It was so cool to see her in her early years, how she went about her craft as a point guard, as a connector of people. It was the same working for her as well. She is one of the kindest, most genuine people you could be around.”
Mike Thibault had coached men’s basketball for years before taking the Sun job in 2003. He was a longtime NBA assistant and scout in the days of Magic and Bird and Jordan, and a head coach in the WBL and CBA.
“The cool thing for me is that was really the first time I had seen female professionals,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “First time around female players, female coaches. So she was really one of my first early role models, how she worked on her game every single day.”
Eric Thibault hasn’t worked on staff with Whalen. But her way of operating has shaped the way he coaches. He keeps a Whalen quote saved on his phone and references it from time to time. It was from a Whalen Q&A with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune several years ago, largely about the importance of having fun while you work and remaining consistent.
“In coaching there are losses, road trips, maybe an early flight the next day — but there is value in those moments, collectively, as a team,” Eric said. “She really believed as a team that you could win games throughout the course of a year just by having a good shootaround or a good warmup, just by being a little bit more connected and locked in. Every now and then that quote pops into my head when we’re having one of those days that feels a little like a slog, and you just remember that attitude.”
Whalen has the stats and success to show for the way she played. And she always had the bruises. All over her forearms and legs. She was rugged going to the hoop or contorting her body to find open teammates.
“Everybody would talk about how she kind of played like a hockey player, and it’s so true,” Eric Thibault said. “She knew how to use her body. The way she finished, spinning the ball on the glass, was not something that I remember seeing a lot of in the league at that point and now you see a lot of it. I think about Lindsey driving baseline and finding shooters. Now that’s something you see every team working on. Her and Becky (Hammon) and Sue (Bird) were the ones doing it.”
While with the Sun, Whalen would sometimes do postgame interviews while sitting in an ice bath — where, invariably, she’d casually shoot the breeze and crack a few jokes. Because she enjoyed the entire experience, not just the games.
“She is about people first and she is very intentional in how she makes you feel,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “And she makes you feel important.”