Thursday, August 25, 2005

More on Gender and Coaching

In a follow-up to a post last week on gender and coaching (8/21), the Houston Chronicle has an article today talking about male v. female coaches in women's' professional sports, namely the WNBA (Blinebury, "Manned workforce," Hou. Chron., 08/25/05). As the article points out, in the WNBA's first season, only 1 of the 8 teams had male coaches. Next year, 10 of the 14 franchises will be run by men. As the article asks, is this an indication of "a negative attitude toward female head coaches or a positive statement about the women's game being able to attract interest from high-profile men"?

My thought: probably a little of both. Last year was the first time a female-coached team won the WNBA championship. The previous seven championship teams all had male coaches, including former NBA players Michael Cooper (LA, 01-02) and Bill Laimbeer (Det, 03). This year, the average win percentage for both male and female coaches is around .500, but the two best records belong to male coaches. It remains unclear whether female coaches have been getting a fair shot, but many teams seem to equate success with having a male on the bench.

It also appears, as the article points out, that many NBA teams are using their associated WNBA franchise as a training ground for future NBA coaches. A number of former NBA players, including Cooper, Laimbeer and now Muggsy Bogues, have been given head coaching opportunities in the WNBA without any previous coaching experience. Many, including Cooper, parlay their WNBA experience into NBA assistant coaching jobs. In the long run, this is probably not great for the women's game -- it would be better for coaches to be interested in the WNBA and women's basketball. But on the other hand, many of these coaches have been successful, lending valuable instruction to their players, and perhaps building local interest in the team.

As I pointed out in last week's post, as the number of former women's players increases, it is likely that the number of female coaches will also go up. But ultimately, teams and fans like to win, so unless more teams with female coaches begin winning championships, the WNBA coaching ranks may be predominantly male for years to come.

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