Why is it so hard to find a WNBA coach? The reasons behind the lack of candidates

Never has WNBA head coaching been a more tenuous job.

Qualify for the playoffs? That didn’t spare the Atlanta Dream’s Tanisha Wright, the Indiana Fever’s Christie Sides or the Connecticut Sun’s Stephanie White from losing their positions.

Lead a rebuilding team with budding young talent? That didn’t help Curt Miller’s case with the Los Angeles Sparks or Teresa Weatherspoon’s with the Chicago Sky.

Injuries decimate your rotation? The Washington Mystics’ Eric Thibault and Dallas Wings’ Latricia Trammell were casualties, too, despite plenty of key players missing time.

A record seven coaches were let go since the conclusion of the 2024 WNBA season. Only the Fever and Sky have named their new coaches within the last week. The WNBA coaching carousel continues to spin. But from where will the next group of coaches come?

“There is no established pool for the next wave of WNBA head coaches,” said a general manager, who was granted anonymity due to the lack of authority to discuss league matters publicly. “These coaches will come from all over.”

The dearth of WNBA coaching candidates is not because the league doesn’t have strong tacticians or culture builders. Instead, the shallow pool is due to relatively low pay compared to collegiate coaching salaries, short-term contracts, instability and a failure to mentor future candidates and develop an internal pipeline.

This situation is not entirely new. When the WNBA launched in 1997, hiring NBA coaches was common practice. By 2002, nearly half of the league’s coaches were men, with NBA veterans Michael Cooper, Bill Laimbeer and Dee Brown among those on the sideline.

Organizations were willing to shell out big contracts, but such deals tended to go to NBA stars of the past and a select few high-profile women’s basketball stars like Cheryl Miller, Nancy Lieberman and Anne Donovan. It wasn’t until front offices started to pull back and get penny-conscious that women began to form the bulk of the coaching ranks. For instance, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who just concluded her 15th season in Minnesota, is the longest-tenured coach in the league, but she had to work as an assistant for nine years before getting a shot at the top job.

“Back then, it was the NBA guys that we had to sit and wait and learn from,” Reeve said sarcastically, “because we weren’t that seasoned in professional basketball.”

That waiting period naturally depressed the pool of coaches willing to stick it out in the WNBA. Combined with noncompetitive salaries and a relative lack of job security — six franchises folded during the 2000s — the league struggled to attract quality candidates during its early stages. Each team was allowed to employ only two assistants, making coaching development a challenge.

However, the improved health of the league in recent years has renewed the appeal of the WNBA. New ownership groups are engaging in an arms race to provide better amenities, like practice facilities, and bring on larger support staff and superior coaches. These changes will allow teams to cast a broader net when searching for a new head coach. Multiple franchises are reaching out to NBA and NBA G League coaches in addition to women’s college basketball coaches, league sources said. At least one franchise (the Los Angeles Sparks) hired a search firm.

NBA coaches have once again set their sights on the W, including Becky Hammon coming to the Las Vegas Aces from the San Antonio Spurs in 2022 and bringing two fellow NBA assistants to her staff. (Natalie Nakase was hired by the Golden State Valkyries and Tyler Marsh was hired by the Chicago Sky this offseason.). During the 2023 offseason, Nate Tibbetts joined the Phoenix Mercury after more than two decades in the NBA and the G League (then D League).

Assistants who earn six figures in the NBA aren’t going to leave their jobs for a pay cut, and both Hammon and Tibbetts became the highest-paid WNBA coaches upon their hirings. Hammon reportedly became the first coach to exceed $1 million annually, and Tibbetts reportedly earns an average of $1.2 million annually. Still, compensation for WNBA coaches ranges widely. The rate in 2024 was around $350,000 to just over $1 million annually, said GMs and agents who were granted anonymity to disclose salaries. They estimated the salary range just five years ago was closer to $150,000 to $600,000. Still, the sources said most coaches earned closer to the low end of the range in the 2024 season. It’s unclear how much the three coaches hired in this cycle are making.

Despite the spike in pay for some WNBA jobs, the position still lacks security. Initial contract offers for new head coaches in the WNBA are often only for two years (or two years plus a team option), sources said, which is a drawback for high-profile coaches with options. College coaching contracts regularly offer four-plus years of security, even for younger, less-experienced coaches, which may lead job-seeking coaches to stay in college jobs rather than risk short stays in the WNBA.

Colleges haven’t been a fertile recruiting ground for WNBA coaches for that reason. Of head coaches from the last five seasons, only two had recent head coaching experience at the high-major collegiate level.

“No one is gonna leave their major job at the college level making millions to come here to our league,” said a former WNBA head coach granted anonymity because of their desire to still coach in the league.

The significant turnover in the WNBA also comes amid a period of transition in women’s college basketball. Last winter, more than half of the college head coaches interviewed by The Athletic said that changes in the sport — for instance, NIL and an open transfer portal — would shorten their college coaching careers. Multiple sources said professional jobs are now more appealing, but the highest-profile college coaches are still unlikely to jump to the pros because of the stark differences in compensation and contract length.

Instead, successful mid-major coaches — such as Miller, who had a decorated career at Bowling Green, winning eight MAC titles before jumping to the WNBA – would more likely be targeted because of the more comparable salaries coupled with the fact that changing dynamics in collegiate athletics make sustained success challenging.

The WNBA hasn’t done itself any favors in expanding the coaching supply by often relying on retreads. “It’s not that different from the NFL. Once you get in, you can get recycled,” said one agent granted anonymity to speak freely about the marketplace. Twenty-six coaches in WNBA history have coached at least two franchises in the league’s 28-year history, and five others have cycled back to the same team.

Cheryl Reeve weighed in about the recent coaching changes in the WNBA:

“I do know this — when coaches are released from their responsibilities, it’s not an indication they’re not good coaches.. we don’t have any bad coaches in the league.” pic.twitter.com/faULEC2vM2

— Noa Dalzell 🏀 (@NoaDalzell) October 4, 2024

League-initiated efforts have encouraged WNBA players to pursue coaching. In 2020, a rule change allowed franchises to add a third assistant to the coaching staff if that coach was a former WNBA player. The new policy increased the number of available assistant jobs by 50 percent. At the start of the 2024 season, four head coaches were former players who also had been WNBA assistants, each hired after the league’s adjustment.

At least one former player-turned-coach may get hired over the next few weeks, including current lead assistants Katie Smith (Lynx) and Kristi Toliver (Mercury). But multiple former head coaches wonder if the rapid turnover — six of the seven coaching changes involved coaches who had been employed for two seasons or fewer — will deter younger assistant coaches from wanting jobs this cycle, especially if it’s their first time in the head coaching chair. Being selective about fit might become even more important, especially when there are no guarantees that a coaching tenure lasts multiple seasons.

“If only given two years, it barely gives them time to learn through mistakes and about their own transition to a head coach,” another former WNBA head coach said.

It also leaves little time for mentorship, which can thin out the pool even further. There have been examples in which some established head coaches trained their successors — Lin Dunn did so with White in Indiana when she was first hired in 2015, Laimbeer with Katie Smith in New York and Dan Hughes with Noelle Quinn in Seattle — but such examples seem few and far between.

The precariousness of the position hasn’t deterred two first-time head coaches this offseason. Nakase, the inaugural head coach for Golden State, spent three seasons as a Las Vegas Aces assistant and the previous five working in the NBA and G League.

Marsh, the Sky’s new head coach, has a similar NBA background to Nakase and was with her in Las Vegas for three seasons. While Nakase deals with the uncertainty of an expansion franchise, Marsh will be Chicago’s fourth coach in the last three years.

With two of the highest-profile assistants in the WNBA off the market, the rest of the league is dealing with a further scarcity of new names. A lack of known options doesn’t mean potential candidates aren’t equipped to succeed, but front offices might be confronted with the fact that there aren’t better prospects than the coaches who lost their jobs.

Sides oversaw a dramatic turnaround in Indiana while Thibault had the Mystics one game away from the playoffs despite starting the season 0-12. Weatherspoon was a respected NBA player development coach in New Orleans before the Sky hired her. Miller led the Sun back to the playoffs after a four-year drought and led them to the WNBA Finals twice before his short stint with the Sparks. Trammell is one season removed from Dallas’ recent high point.

When Valkyries president Ohemaa Nyanin was helping the expansion franchise identify its first coach, she said the organization looked across the college, international and professional games before landing on Nakase. Other teams across the league will have to be as thorough and creative in finding the next wave of WNBA coaches. The result might mean that searches are drawn out even further.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos of Natalie Nakase, Stephanie White, Tyler Marsh and Wilson basketball: David Berding, Ethan Miller,  Steph Chambers and Katharine Lotze / Getty Images)