Time for Staley to make leap to NBA
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — My favorite choice to become the Charlotte Hornets' new head coach directed her South Carolina team to an undefeated season and a national championship victory against Iowa on Sunday. Her name is Dawn Staley. She lives 90 miles down the road in Columbia. She's got deep Charlotte roots and she had already won a couple of national titles as the head coach of the women's basketball team at South Carolina before Sunday's victory.
I made this plea publicly before, to no avail, in 2022. The Charlotte Hornets instead hired Steve Clifford, a likable basketball grinder who did what he could for two years while being dealt a horrible hand in terms of injuries to his best players. Clifford was hired by then-owner Michael Jordan to get the Hornets to play better defense more consistently, which they had done the first time he had the same job from 2013-18, but this time that never really happened.
Clifford, 62, stepped down from the head job Wednesday, effective at the end of the season later this month. He said he no longer had the “certain energy level that you need to be able to have a chance to coach effectively in this league.” He will remain with the team in a front-office advisory role of some sort.
ESPN reported Thursday that the Hornets will interview several top assistant coaches around the NBA for the job, including Boston's Charles Lee, Denver's David Adelman, Sacramento's Jordi Fernandez and Phoenix's Kevin Young.
All of that is commonplace. You would imagine the Hornets would go after a top assistant on a good team. It's the way things are usually done. It's what Charlotte tried to do last time, in fact, before assistant coach Kenny Atkinson left the Hornets at the altar and stayed at Golden State instead.
But Staley?! That would shake things up.
I know she is only midway through a $22.4 million contract and has all sorts of other reasons to stay at South Carolina, too. Why leave the best program in women's basketball for a job coaching one of the worst teams in the NBA, even if you got way more money to do it?
So this is all a long shot. I get it. But contracts can be bought out, Staley has always thrived on impossible-sounding challenges and it's an option that should at least be explored by the Hornets.
Staley, 53, is tough, smart and knows basketball inside and out, as both a world-class, goldmedal point guard and a coach who understands how to manage big stars. She's been college basketball's Naismith Coach of the Year for the past three years in a row, the first men's or women's college coach to threepeat that honor. She also once was a star player for the WNBA'S Charlotte Sting.
I asked Staley about the Hornets job once. This was later in 2022, as part of our “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” series and after Clifford had already been hired. Specifically, I asked her if coaching professionally interested her.
Staley said: “No, it never has and I don't know why, because ... I look for the next challenge. But to me, that isn't a challenge for me. Even when I was playing in the WNBA, I never wanted to be (former Charlotte Sting head coach) Anne Donovan. ... My passion is for young people. ... And from an NBA standpoint, it takes a long time to be successful. ... I'm not afraid of it at all (though) … I know basketball. I don't think basketball changes a whole lot.”
That sounded like a “no.” But then again, was it a hard “no?” If I were the Hornets' new owners, I'd at least find out.