Quick Three: Teresa Weatherspoon Hired as Chicago Sky Head Coach
What was venturing on becoming the worst kept secret in women’s basketball is now no longer a secret at all: Teresa Weatherspoon is the new…
What was venturing on becoming the worst kept secret in women’s basketball is now no longer a secret at all: Teresa Weatherspoon is the new head coach of the Chicago Sky. Time (and results) will tell, but Weatherspoon feels like a home run hire. She’s well-liked by just about everyone in the women’s basketball community, she’s well-respected by everyone in the wider basketball community, and she has the coaching credentials to back up her superstar player status. The Sky are likely not the first WNBA team who’ve viewed her as their preferred candidate for a gig, but they are the first to land her (make of that what you will but I see every reason to be optimistic). Let’s dive into three initial takeaways:
1) Chicago Leans Into Their Identity
There’s a lot of comps you could make for the hiring of Teresa Weatherspoon but two names immediately came to mind for me: Deion Sanders and Penny Hardaway. Plenty of former players get hired as coaches across sport, but it’s less frequent that a charismatic superstar of this caliber ends up in a head coaching role. When it comes to Deion and Penny, there’s two key differences with Spoon. The first is that this is the professional game. As a college coach, half of the battle is just getting the talented players into the building. Deion might be a fantastic coach, but his Colorado team wouldn’t have won some of the games they did this season without the phenomenal players he helped get on campus. At the professional level, a degree of recruiting can happen, but it’s hardly line item one in the job description. Instead, it’s all about winning by making use of the pieces provided to you by the front office.
The second difference — and this is far more important — is the way Weatherspoon fits into the Sky’s pre-existing culture. Hardaway and, more so, Sanders represented pretty drastic culture shifts for the teams they took over. To the contrary, Spoon’s M.O. largely aligns with the direction the Sky have been taking their team with Kahleah Copper. As a multi-talented superstar, Spoon brought a lot to the court, but her energy was a big part of what endeared her to the fans. The willingness to bring that energy and do the dirty work is such a large part of what has made Kah a max player and what, now, will likely continue to be the Sky’s ethos. With a clear identity going into next season, you can expect the front office, in collaboration with Weatherspoon, to recruit/resign players in free agency who fit this mold — only furthering the Sky’s commitment to the team they were naturally becoming. Time will tell if that identity can win championships and make a real impression on the league, but the Sky have avoided committing a cardinal sin: hiring a coach who’s mindset doesn’t align with their max-contract superstar.
2) The Point Guard Position
In house, the Sky have Dana Evans under contract while Courtney Williams will be an unrestricted free agent. Externally, there are a few names that could be tossed into the ring for consideration but everyone’s focus seems to be on Skylar Diggins-Smith. On the surface, the hire of Weatherspoon doesn’t really eliminate any of these candidates as all three presumably fit into what she’ll want to do with the team. With Kah, Marina, Elizabeth and Isabelle Harrison all under reasonably-sized contracts for next season, the arrival of another max player like Diggins-Smith would likely require a little bit of a rethink. It’s difficult to see either of the wing players moving — meaning the Sky would likely want to move off one of the two bigs. The issue then is that, with Alanna Smith also a free agent, things could get pretty light in the frontcourt pretty quickly. There are probably other ways to maneuver the situation to make the salary cap work, but I don’t see a path where the Sky keep their three high priced bigs and three $200K+ players on the perimeter without drastic concessions in other parts of the roster. That said, Diggins-Smith is a brilliant player who brings a lot to the table. Perhaps, the new front office will be willing to make some of those concessions if it gives them a chance to win a title.
As for the internal candidates, I see a lot of merit in keeping Dana and Courtney as the primary ball handlers for next season. Williams strikes me as the type of personality who would mesh almost perfectly with Spoon and could once again serve as the extension of the head coach on the court. Dana, on the other hand, is probably ready for a bigger role. If SDS were acquired, Dana would almost certainly be relegated to another season on the bench while re-signing Courtney instead might give T-Spoon a little more flexibility. I’m not saying Courtney is going to love the idea of coming off the bench, but if the minutes are still high and she’s getting a fair amount of opportunities in closing time, how much of a difference does it really make? The Sky’s collection of guards seemed to develop great chemistry in 2023 and all three of them (plus the returning Rebekah Gardner) seem to fit ideologically with Spoon. Acquiring SDS would be a big swing (and potentially a home run) for the new front office, but there’s a lot of added benefit from the continuity and flexibility that the existing guards offer as well.
3) The Offensive System
With Weatherspoon as head coach, the Sky will no doubt expect to build a strong defensive foundation. We saw changing sets under Emre at times and see the Aces (the top dog in a copy-cat league) rotating through a full catalogue of defensive layouts each game. Thus, how they’ll line up on D will likely be subject to change on a possession-by-possession basis. On offense, however, there’s a lot of unknowns. Weatherspoon has been a head coach before, but I’m not sure we can glean a lot from game tape at the college level nearly a decade ago. We could even speculate what ideas she might bring across from the Pelicans, but there’s multiple coaches and philosophies she worked with in the MNBA which make it difficult to draw straight lines to what the Sky might do.
If we reduce that varied sample size to just last season, there’s a couple of things we can look at. One is pace. Kah frequently spoke last season about her desire to get the team moving quickly in transition, but the half-court offensive sets under Emre were obviously a lot more deliberate given the pick-and-roll focus. Given the success the Sky had in the pick-and-roll last year, I would be surprised if Spoon abandons it entirely, but she may lean on it less heavily if she wants to bring the up tempo style north to Chicago.
The second aspect Pelicans coach Willie Green focused on, which goes hand in hand with the pace, is ball movement. Obviously, if you want to play quick and get good shots, you have to move the basketball well. This isn’t rocket science, but the way in which Green went about it put the decision making into the hands of all players — not just a ball dominant floor general. While his averages didn’t see a huge uptick, this resulted in Brandon Ingram delivering some of the highest single-game assist totals of his career. Translating this to the Sky, we can expect to see Weatherspoon bring some of the learnings she has from working with Ingram in this system to the table when crafting Kah’s role in the new offense. Like Ingram, Kah is a wing player capable of carrying the scoring load who also has underrated passing abilities. Spoon won’t have a Zion Williamson in the post to build her offense around like the Pelicans have been trying to do, but there’s still plenty she’ll bring from New Orleans (and I’m sure plenty of her own unique ideas) when she leads the Sky next season.
