The two head coaches that met in the 2025 WNBA Finals have a combined 21 years of experience as NBA assistant coaches. The 2025 WNBA Coach of the Year was on an NBA coaching staff for 10 seasons.
Does the success of the Las Vegas Aces’ Becky Hammon, Phoenix Mercury’s Nate Tibbetts and Golden State Valkyries’ Natalie Nakase mean that NBA experience will become a prerequisite for WNBA head coaching candidates?
The head coaching market scuttlebutt, reported by The Stein Line’s Jake Fischer and The IX
Sports’ Jackie Powell, suggests as much.
Currently, the league has five head coaching vacancies, with the New York Liberty, Dallas Wings and Seattle Storm in search of replacements after dismissing Sandy Brondello, Chris Koclanes and Noelle Quinn, respectively, while the expansion Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire must make their initial hires.
According to Fischer, the Liberty, Tempo and Fire, in particular, are prioritizing NBA experience in their search. Lindsey Harding has emerged as candidate for all three franchises. Now in her second season as an assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers, Harding had worked in the Sacramento Kings organization since 2022, a stint that included serving as the head coach of the Stockton Kings and being named the 2024 G League Coach of the Year.
Fischer likewise cites Kristi Toliver as a candidate who “interviewed strongly” for the Liberty opening. In her second season as an assistant on Tibbetts’ Mercury, Toliver began gaining NBA experience in 2018, working on the staffs of the Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks.
Miles Simon, a current assistant coach with the Miami HEAT who spent two seasons as the head coach of the G League South Bay Lakers, has interviewed for both expansion openings, per Fischer. The Fire also have interviewed Alex Sarama, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ head of player development who previously worked for the Portland Trail Blazers’ G League affiliate, the Rip City Remix. The Wings, however, have not (yet) turned to the NBA in their search. According to Fischer, Brondello is believed to be a strong “contender” in Dallas, as the organization is prioritizing previous head coaching experience.
This collection of reported candidates both substantiates and complicates concerns about who is, and who isn’t, considered to be WNBA head coaching material.
Powell reports that, due the dismissals of “WNBA lifers” Brondello and Quinn, “[T]here’s some concern around the league circles about how front offices are now chasing a shinier, more modern approach to coaching, and in doing so, pushing out the very people who helped build the league’s foundation.” This sentiment, certainly, was prominent when the Mercury hired Tibbetts, who lacked any coaching experience in women’s basketball.
Powell further notes that, “There’s also a concern that with the stakes so high for success in the WNBA, younger coaches won’t have a proper path to grow and find stable jobs in the league.” But as she also points out, “Should it matter that someone like Tibbetts got a job in the WNBA without ever coaching or playing alongside women before? It’s complicated. His hire opened a door for Toliver…”
It seems that, increasingly, WNBA head coaching candidates will not be able to be clearly categorized as a “WNBA lifer” or “NBA outsider.”
Hammon already blurred this boundary, as she was embedded in the culture of the WNBA for her 16 seasons as a player before serving as an assistant coach for San Antonio Spurs for eight years. Harding would follow a similar path, as she played nine years in the WNBA, including playing five games for the Liberty in her final season. Nakase likewise does not fit neatly into any box. After a four-year college career at UCLA, she was a women’s head coach in Germany and men’s assistant coach in Japan before first breaking into the NBA ranks as an assistant with the LA Clippers’ G League team.
Toliver, who has now supplemented her 14-year WNBA career with time on the WNBA and NBA sidelines, spoke to Powell about this emerging reality, recognizing how concepts from the NBA can advance WNBA strategy while also understanding the importance of women, including younger women and former players, receiving equal consideration as candidates. “I mean, that’s what it looks like,” Toliver said. “That’s what is happening and that’s where like for us we have to as women in general in this world, we have to be each other’s greatest supporters, and cheerleaders.”
According to Powell, former Atlanta Dream head coach and current Chicago Sky assistant Tanisha Wright, who also had a 14-year playing career, is looking to bolster her resume through NBA connections, as she was spotted at the Clippers’ training camp.
The Dream’s decision to part ways with Wright after the 2024 season and pluck long-time Florida Gulf Coast head coach Karl Smesko further reminds of the larger pool of high-quality coaching candidates available to WNBA franchises. Smesko, who finished second in Coach of the Year voting, is a women’s hoops lifer, as is Cheryl Reeve, the 2024 Coach of the Year who has four titles and led the Minnesota Lynx to the league’s top record, and Stephanie White, the 2023 Coach of the Year with the Connecticut Sun who steered an injury-ravaged Indiana Fever team to the semifinals.
It would be shortsighted for WNBA teams to become too infatuated with NBA resumes. The head coaching pool is deep and wide.
Although, some other factors could discourage viable candidates from W positions.
Powell reports that the short leash given to Koclanes in Dallas, who, after five seasons as a WNBA assistant under Wings general manager Curt Miller was hired to head the Wings early into his second season as an assistant coach at USC, could make college coaches hesitant to jump to the W.
But Powell also notes that big money, particularly from New York, could entice someone like former Dream and current Baylor head coach Nicki Collen back to the WNBA. Women’s college basketball insider Skim Milkey noted on Twitter/X that the Wings are considering “a current Big 12 head coach.” Collen would qualify. She also goes back with Miller, as both were assistant coaches at Colorado State in the early 2000s, serving under Collen’s now-husband Tom Collen (on a staff that also included a Rams legend and now three-time champion in Hammon, as well as Los Angles Sparks general manager Raegan Pebley); Nicki was also an assistant for Miller’s Connecticut Sun in 2015.
Yet, the possibility of a lockout could complicate teams’ hiring processes, regardless of the background of an organization’s preferred candidate. Fischer reports that, “Some well-placed observers have likewise suggested that a team or two in need of a head coach could ultimately choose to hold off on a hire in anticipation of a possible lockout and thus save themselves some salary.” A league general manager, however, suggested to Fischer that “there is an equal benefit—even if a work stoppage hits—to having already checked the box of making a hire given that the offseason will likely be truncated and followed by a mad dash to get ready for the 2026 campaign once collective bargaining negotiations finally conclude.”
The potential for a lockout, driven by disagreement between the league and WNBPA about how to share growing revenue, like this expanded pool of head coaching candidates with wider experiences, both reflect the league’s growth—and the pains, promises and some complicated combination of two that come with it.
