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Coaching questions have WNBA baffled
10/20/02

ABBY HAIGHT
The Oregonian

Little girls dream about playing in the WNBA.
But what about the men and women to coach them?

The league, which completed its sixth season late this summer, still is developing its coaching pool and identity. Four teams, including the Portland Fire, have openings for coaches, and team presidents and general managers are juggling questions.

Do you look for someone with a college coaching background? Or someone with an NBA coaching background? Or a former NBA player with no coaching background?

"Right now, the WNBA is looking for success," said Dee Brown, who had only NBA playing experience when he became coach of the Orlando Miracle in the spring. "Whether it's men or women coaching or whether they're a former player or former coach."

Filling the ranks of WNBA coaches has challenged many teams. The nation's most successful college coaches, who would be considered the top choices for a professional league that touts itself as the best in the world, have stayed away from jobs that offer too much risk and too little pay, and that lack the cachet of a good college program.

The league also is still finding its legs and exists only through the financial support of the NBA, although the NBA Board of Governors recently voted to restructure the WNBA and allow local ownership -- in most cases, the existing NBA teams. NBA commissioner David Stern has said repeatedly that the WNBA will stay.

But to the risk, add the league's personnel restraints, the compressed 32-game season that makes it difficult for players to jell and gives little latitude to injuries or a bad stretch of scheduling, and the lack of prestige of a young league, and the pool of possibility shrinks further.

"It's so much in its infancy," said Charlie Turner Thorne, coach at Arizona State University and one of the Pacific-10 Conference's bright young coaches. "I think that there's not too many coaches who are lucky enough to have successful college programs that would trade that for any WNBA job." College to pro The WNBA's youth is a double-edged risk for coaches in the college ranks. There is the accepted instability of being a coach. But in a league where success means attendance means winning, there is little patience for a losing record. A college coach might have several years to right a program. Not in the WNBA.

College coaches are expected to win, but their job description includes a broader scope -- teaching skills, developing young players and team cohesion, ensuring players pursue their educations.

"It's a different value system," Turner Thorne said. "You're in an educational system."

Lin Dunn turned the Purdue women's basketball program into a national power before coaching the Portland Power of the American Basketball League and spending the last three years developing the Seattle Storm into a playoff team.

In college, Dunn said, the coach ideally is another teacher, helping to guide student-athletes to their potential on and off the court.

But coaching professional players means juggling the egos and skills of a team of college all-stars into a cohesive squad with shared goals.

"They're bigger, they're stronger, they're older," Dunn told the Purdue Sports Fan Network. "They're more mature. It's as if you take a college game, punch a button and speed it up 10 times. . . . That's one difference.

"The other difference is, this is a job. This is their career."

With WNBA coaches earning from $150,000 to $250,000, pay alone isn't going to draw coaches from college security.

Carolyn Peck left a successful career at Purdue to coach the expansion Orlando Miracle. After two seasons, she headed back to the college ranks when Florida offered a well-financed program and a six-year contract worth $350,000 annually.

Jim Foster left Vanderbilt for Ohio State and a yearly salary reported at $400,000.

"If you're a young coach, you may have a different outlook relative to money," said Foster, who considered a move to the WNBA several years ago but decided to stay in the college ranks. "Each job is unique unto itself, and some are more attractive than others."

A few top college coaches have dabbled in the WNBA without committing their careers to it.

Tennessee's Pat Summit, who long has declined pro offers, was hired last season as a personnel consultant to the Washington Mystics. Geno Auriemma, whose undefeated University of Connecticut team produced four of the first six players picked in the 2002 WNBA draft, was a broadcast commentator.

Yet the league's most successful coach -- and the only one to lead the same team since the WNBA started -- is Houston's Van Chancellor, who was 439-154 in 19 seasons at Mississippi.

There is a different appeal to coaching pro players, said Jody Runge, the former Oregon coach who resigned in 2001 in the wake of a players rebellion.

"I've been waiting for something to be passionate about," said Runge, who is a candidate for at least one WNBA coaching job. "The challenge of the league is about building it and growing it. For me, it's about being passionate for these athletes and their love of the game." Turning to the NBA Not only does the NBA provide financial backing to the league, but some WNBA teams also have turned to the men's league for coaches.

New York's Richie Adubato and Miami's Ron Rothstein came from the NBA coaching ranks, and the league's most recent hires have been former NBA players, who bring name recognition -- and, teams hope, new fans. But not always success.

Detroit fired Greg Williams after an 0-10 start and hired the original Pistons bad boy, Bill Laimbeer. Except for three years coaching his daughter's AAU team, Laimbeer had no coaching experience. The Shock finished 9-23.

After Peck left Orlando, Brown was moved from a front office position to coach. He had no coaching experience.

"It was two weeks before the draft," said Brown, who played for Boston, Toronto and Orlando in a 12-year NBA career. "I had to crunch in what everyone was doing in the preseason. . . . Everything else, I just learned as I went. I relied on what I'd learned as a player and related that as a coach."

Brown said he took tactics learned from NBA coaches Red Auerbach, Rick Pitino and Doc Rivers -- making players accountable but keeping communication open.

"They just wanted to be treated like professionals," said Brown, whose team finished 16-16. "They didn't want to be treated like a woman. They wanted to be treated like professional basketball players."

Supporters of former NBA players need only point to former Los Angeles Lakers guard/forward Michael Cooper, who guided the Sparks to a second consecutive WNBA championship. But others say recycling NBA players into WNBA coaches for their name recognition is unfair to those who have worked for years in the field.

Utah coach Candi Harvey, while not criticizing Brown or Laimbeer, told the Houston Chronicle she was bothered that worthy candidates, including WNBA assistants, were overlooked.

"Just as a professional, I just want the best people for the job," Harvey said. "But it does concern me, and it has nothing to do with gender, that people who have been in women's basketball, have a history and have spent their lives coaching it, are not getting looked at for some of these positions."

But the league needs success to continue -- however that comes, Brown said.

"You understand the point that it's a women's league and the men have their own league," he said. "I'm not saying every ex-NBA player or ex-NBA coach is going to come in and have success. . . . You just find the best person who can do the job."

That is what Sandi Bittler, the Fire's vice president of business operations, said she is spending most of her days doing -- studying resumes, talking to candidates and contacting references in search of a replacement for Linda Hargrove, the franchise's first coach, whose contract was not renewed in September. Bittler hopes to have a coach hired by November.

Although the team does not release the names of candidates, Bittler has a range of experience from which to choose. Among those who have applied for the job are Runge, former NBA player Jerome Kersey and Tom Newell, a former Fire assistant with extensive international and NBA coaching experience.

"We like (NBA experience)," Bittler said. "Does that rule out someone with a college background? Absolutely not. We like someone who can coach women. Does that rule out the NBA experience? Absolutely not.

"As a young franchise, this is the most important decision we're going to make. There's not just this well-stocked pool of candidates who are waiting for the opportunity. Ten years from now, it will be different." Abby Haight: 503-221-8198; abbyhaight@news.oregonian.com