For the second time in per week, a girls’s school basketball coach has left a crew in season to maneuver to the WNBA, because the Los Angeles Sparks named Lynne Roberts as their new head coach on Tuesday evening. Roberts spent the previous 9 seasons at Utah and was Pac-12 coach of the 12 months in 2023.
Earlier Tuesday, new Atlanta Dream coach Karl Smesko met with the media for the primary time after taking up on Nov. 13. Smesko had simply began his twenty third season at Florida Gulf Coast when he left for the Dream.
Do the hirings sign a brand new pattern within the WNBA? Because the WNBA launched in 1997, the league hasn’t been a lot of a draw for faculty head coaches — particularly established veterans comparable to Roberts, 49, and Smesko, 54 — as a result of the school sport has been thought of extra steady and profitable.
However with the drastic adjustments in school sports activities in recent times — the impression of NIL alternatives and the one-time switch exemption has made recruiting an much more difficult and time-consuming job — many in and across the WNBA have speculated that the league would possibly enchantment extra now to varsity coaches.
Smesko mentioned in his information convention that he has lengthy loved watching the WNBA. He mentioned he needs the Dream to have a “enjoyable and thrilling type of play.”
Roberts may have her introductory information convention on Thursday, however she is understood for her up-tempo offense too.
Three WNBA teaching spots stay open — Connecticut, Dallas and Washington — plus for the 2026 growth franchises in Portland and Toronto.
Will we see some other school coaches make the transfer to the professional sport?
“There is no higher time to hitch the W than proper now,” Smesko mentioned Tuesday. “That is probably the most thrilling time for the league.”
We have a look at how Roberts’ transfer impacts the Sparks and the way she is going to construct out her employees.
Why does Roberts make sense for the Sparks?
Pelton: Like Smesko, Roberts earned a fame within the NCAA for constructing high-powered offenses that relied closely on robust ground spacing.
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Utah has ranked within the prime 10 in HerHoopStats.com offensive ranking every of the previous three seasons, together with third in 2022-23. The Utes have been seventh in Division I in 3-point makes an attempt per sport final season, 5 spots behind Florida Gulf Coast.
A lot of Utah’s success was due to participant growth. Minnesota Lynx ahead Alissa Pili greater than doubled her scoring from her final season at USC (7.8 factors per sport, down from 16.3 PPG as a freshman) to twenty.7 PPG in her first season at Utah, rising as a 40%-plus 3-point shooter en path to being a WNBA first-round choose.
Pili, ranked No. 42 within the ESPN HoopGurlz 100 when she signed with the Trojans, was the highest-rated recruit on the Utes’ rosters as they went 33-17 in Pac-12 play over the previous three seasons.
Utah’s Gianna Kneepkens, unranked as a prospect, is one other success story who figures to be on the WNBA’s radar.
The Sparks will want that sort of talent growth with a younger roster. Los Angeles landed the No. 2 choose in Sunday’s WNBA draft lottery to go together with a pair of 2024 lottery picks, Cameron Brink (No. 2) and All-Rookie crew choose Rickea Jackson (No. 4). These gamers will kind the core of the Sparks transferring ahead. Regardless of the youth, there’s urgency for Los Angeles to make a right away leap.
The Sparks owe their unprotected 2026 first-round choose to the Seattle Storm from final offseason’s commerce to get the choose that turned Jackson.
How will Roberts and Smesko put collectively their staffs?
Voepel: Smesko mentioned Tuesday he’ll look to get some assistants who’ve earlier WNBA expertise, and it is seemingly that Roberts will do the identical. Coping with professional gamers is totally different than with school college students: Coaches cannot micromanage execs. They must construct grownup relationships of mutual respect, not teacher-pupil. Probably the most profitable professional coaches are nonetheless clearly in cost, however they take heed to what their gamers must say about technique. The coaches acknowledge that veterans, particularly, have invaluable data to share.
Roberts and Smesko know basketball X’s and O’s, however they may have loads to meet up with as in comparison with their counterparts who’ve hung out within the WNBA. The 2 newcomers will come to appreciate, as an example, that typically the most effective factor to do for a professional crew is getting the gamers relaxation — even when meaning going mild on apply.
One large plus for the brand new coaches is that they are coming right into a league that established constitution flight journey this previous season. Gamers and coaches have talked about how a lot impression that has made in chopping down fatigue.
Roberts is a Northern California native who spent the primary 13 years of her head-coaching profession at California faculties Chico State and Pacific earlier than going to Utah. She has crossed teaching paths for a few years with Sparks basic supervisor Raegan Pebley, a former WNBA participant who coached within the school ranks from 1997 to 2023. So, Roberts ought to have a right away consolation stage with Pebley, which is able to assist her transition to the WNBA.
What does it imply that one other sitting Division I head coach made the leap to the WNBA?
Pelton: Contemplate this an indication of the evolving relationship between the NCAA and the WNBA. As just lately as 2021, a WNBA head coach (Nicki Collen) left her crew on the eve of the season to go to the Large 12. Now, that change is taking part in out in reverse, with Roberts leaving a crew that reached the Candy 16 two years in the past and now could be off to a 3-1 begin this season.
The Utah job — now within the palms of Gavin Petersen, who was Roberts’ affiliate head coach — is not as interesting because the one Collen took (changing Kim Mulkey at Baylor). However as in comparison with Smesko leaving the Atlantic Solar for the WNBA, Roberts’ transfer is a extra resounding indicator that professional salaries at the moment are aggressive with the next tier of Division I girls’s basketball salaries.
It stays to be seen how profitable Roberts and Smesko will show within the WNBA, however increasing the scale of the teaching pool past the normal teams of former WNBA head coaches and assistants from the WNBA and NBA is definitely a very good growth for the league.
Voepel: Kevin’s level in regards to the expertise pool is well-taken. The NBA up to now decade has step by step opened its doorways to girls assistant coaches. That league hasn’t had a girl as a head coach but, however it might occur.
In one other period, somebody comparable to former WNBA participant Lindsey Harding in all probability would not have gotten a chance within the NBA. Now, she’s an assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers. She is positioned to both keep within the NBA or go to the WNBA, as longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant Becky Hammon did with the Las Vegas Aces.
What all of it means is that the NBA now could be trying to profit from prime teaching expertise that beforehand would have stayed within the girls’s sport. Thus, the WNBA has to maintain increasing its teaching choices and should pay aggressive salaries.