LOS ANGELES — On the night Lakers legend Michael Cooper’s jersey was retired at Crypto.com Arena, 2 miles up Figueroa Street from USC, Spectrum SportsNet analyst James Worthy took to the airwaves to wax poetic on his former teammate. He was more happy for Cooper’s ceremony, Worthy beamed, than he was for his own. Cooper was the understated “pulse” of the “Showtime” Lakers, as Worthy called him.
It struck USC women’s basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, watching on TV at home.
The next day, before USC’s practice on Jan. 15, Gottlieb gathered her aspiring dynasty and played that clip of Worthy. Her Trojans had won 12 games in a row, their most pressing issue seeming to be their lack of cold-weather gear on East Coast road trips. Beneath, though, a new-look roster was trying to grasp individual places in a free-flowing offense that – despite a common goal – has yet to completely gel.
“When we do things that get everyone a ring,” Gottlieb recounted telling her team, punctuating the clip, “the ring doesn’t say how many points you scored, or whether you came off the bench, or started.”
“And that’s what you organically want to get to, when you talk about being happier for someone else than you are for yourself.”
After practice wrapped that day, she dangled her legs off a training table on a practice court at USC, temporarily weightless despite the weight of expectations on her shoulders. These were no longer the days of rebuild, of an empty Galen Center and a mishmash roster. The JuJu Watkins revolution has been televised, and in came as much talent as any team in the country this winter. The vision Gottlieb had, when she first left her post in the NBA for USC in 2021, had arrived faster than anyone could have predicted.
“I would probably say,” Gottlieb told the Southern California News Group then, “it’s unlike any other year, I think, in all my years of being a head coach, of being an assistant coach – it’s very unique.”
The ecosystem at USC revolves around Watkins, a generational talent with the fifth-highest usage rate in the country who has been given complete creative freedom in Gottlieb’s offense. Everyone knows it. Gottlieb has emphasized, unafraid, that Watkins is by no means the only player of importance on USC’s roster, but the TV network frenzy around the program is because of her impact. At the same time, as assistant coach Wendale Farrow put it in mid-January, there are “challenges” to best support the individual aspirations of an overwhelming array of talent on USC’s roster.
Kiki Iriafen, a presumptive top-five WNBA draft pick, has worked to understand the read-and-react nature of Gottlieb’s system as opposed to more set touches in her previous stop at Stanford. Talia Von Oelhoffen, previously a four-year starter at Oregon State, has been open about her struggles to find herself in a more diminished offensive role at USC. Watkins, too, has hit the most visibly frustrating slump of her young career.
The sixth-ranked Trojans are still a juggernaut (21-2 overall, 11-2 Big Ten) unlike few in the game. But they face the toughest test of their season on Thursday night against top-ranked crosstown rival UCLA (23-0, 11-0 Big Ten), a program clicking on all cylinders, a week that Von Oelhoffen called a potential “turning point” for USC to unlock its full potential.
And the Trojans’ ability to hit that ceiling – on Thursday, and into March – will fall under Gottlieb’s steady hand, a coach who has long operated with a greater purpose no matter the level of expectation.
“There’s just no way I can please 14 people with playing time, and with points, and rebounds,” Gottlieb told the Southern California News Group on Tuesday, speaking on her coaching principles. “You can’t.”
“But what I can say is, we’re going to be who we said we’re going to be in terms of the relationships,” she continued, “and doing whatever we can to help them in their lives.”
Years after running more traditional, post-heavy sets in a previous stop at Cal, Gottlieb has fully embraced a pro-style offense at USC, heavily influenced by her two-year stint from 2019 to 2021 as an assistant coach with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Gottlieb’s time in the league was an “unbelievable stop” for Watkins, as Gottlieb’s mentor Joanne Boyle once described last year to the SCNG, giving a high-volume guard full reign to ebb and flow. And USC’s offense began to coalesce in 2023-24, Forbes recalled, around Watkins’ strengths, with frequent touches in the mid-post down the stretch of a scorching Elite Eight run in the NCAA Tournament.
That system requires high-IQ freedom, and defined roles around Watkins. And USC’s transfers, and a top-ranked freshman class, chose to come to USC because of the chance to play with Watkins, a superstar who operates without ego and who Gottlieb has always encouraged to be JuJu.
“You have to have the confidence in yourself – and I think that’s what Lindsay has – where you’re not insecure, and worried about, like, the optics of what it might look like if you’re allowing a player of JuJu’s caliber to be herself and express herself fully,” said Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, a coaching friend of Gottlieb’s and a former colleague with the Cavaliers.
It’s brought plenty of adjustment, to be sure. In early January, Gottlieb and Iriafen sat down for a conversation around her offensive comfortability, Iriafen trying to understand her fit as a star post player. After USC’s surprising loss to Iowa on Feb. 2, Von Oelhoffen went to Gottlieb, the former Oregon State guard opening up both privately and in team meetings about her struggles with a reduced workload (averaging just 6.7 points per game). This isn’t new: Harvard transfer Forbes, who grew into an explosive secondary option next to Watkins, needed the whole nonconference slate in 2023-24 to understand her role, she recalled.
She found it through trust, and Gottlieb’s expressed perspective that basketball “is not the entire world,” as Forbes put it. A few short months after transferring from Harvard in fall 2023, Forbes got on the phone with Gottlieb and told her of a dream she had to one day work in an NBA front office.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Gottlieb told her, then.
Within a week, Gottlieb connected Forbes with Lee Jenkins, the Clippers’ VP of Basketball Affairs. Forbes, subsequently, was invited to a Clippers practice, met Clippers assistant general manager Mark Hughes and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, and had a sit-down with GM Trent Redden.
“Lindsay’s always there,” Forbes reflected, “to answer the call.”
This is how it’s always been. Gottlieb did the same for Recee Fox at Cal, connecting her with Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr and then-GM Bob Myers to land Fox a sort-of season-long internship. She has supported USC backup center Clarice Akunwafo in her goal to become a surgeon, setting up occasional 6 a.m. workouts with assistant Beth Burns to accommodate Akunwafo’s class schedule. She, and new program GM Amy Broadhead, have helped each player on USC’s roster this fall design personalized NIL portfolios to help facilitate brand partnerships.
“It’s that magic of kind of both,” Gottlieb said, in mid-January. “Like, do you know what you’re doing, can you get a team to buy into what you’re doing on the floor and be a good teacher, but can you also kind of coach their whole being where you get them to buy in?”
Iriafen has found a more consistent groove, recently, with early-game touches and aggressive rebounding. Von Oelhoffen’s candor with Gottlieb and the program, the senior guard reflected, put her in a “much better place.” Watkins’ blank stare in the second quarter of USC-Ohio State went viral, amid a recent run of four straight games shooting under 40% from the floor; it was more self-criticism than any external frustration, longtime trainer Phil Handy told the Southern California News Group.
The Trojans haven’t found nirvana yet. But they’re “turning a corner,” as Von Oelhoffen said Tuesday.
And Gottlieb has USC as the ninth highest-scoring team in the nation, in the meantime.
“I think a lot of people would get in line,” assistant coach Burns said, back in late December, “to have our problems.”
No. 1 UCLA (23-0, 11-0 Big Ten) at No. 6 USC (21-2, 11-2)
When: Thursday, 7 p.m.
Where: Galen Center
TV/radio: Peacock/710 AM