Black women have helped make the WNBA must-watch basketball, from championship runs to sold-out arenas. But while their names are all over the rosters, not one Black woman led a WNBA team as head coach during the 2026 season.
The numbers are hard to ignore. Black players accounted for 63.8% of respondents in a 2023 WNBA player demographic survey cited by CBS Sports. Yet all 15 franchises entered 2026 without a Black woman in the top coaching job. It was only the third season in league history to open that way, after 2006 and 2020.
Two Black men, Chicago’s Tyler Marsh and Washington’s Sydney Johnson, held head coaching positions. The gap was specifically about Black women.
And players noticed.
Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers spoke up after a July 12 victory over the Chicago Sky, when reporter Landon Buford asked about Black women missing from the league’s head coaching ranks.
“The WNBA was built on a lot of Black women,” Bueckers said. “It’s definitely right for them to get the same equal opportunity as everybody else.”
Bueckers, who is white, explained why the issue was personal. Her stepmother and AAU coach were among the Black women who shaped her upbringing. She argued that qualified Black women deserve the same opportunities as white women and men.
Made to order and shipped to your door.
Her comments put a high-profile player’s voice behind concerns former WNBA coaches have raised for years.
In 2024, three Black women held head coaching jobs: Teresa Weatherspoon in Chicago, Tanisha Wright in Atlanta, and Noelle Quinn in Seattle.
Chicago fired Weatherspoon after one season and a 13-27 record. Atlanta parted ways with Wright after three seasons, despite making the playoffs in 2023 and 2024.
That left Quinn as the league’s only Black female head coach in 2025.
Seattle declined to renew her contract after that season, ending a five-year tenure that included four playoff appearances and the second-most coaching wins in Storm history.
Before her departure, Quinn had described the pressure of carrying that representation almost alone.
“I wish there were more opportunities for Black women to have head coaching jobs in this league,” she told the Storm in an interview.
Replacing those coaches didn’t lead to new Black women in charge.
According to CBS Sports, 13 of the league’s 15 franchises hired head coaches between the end of 2023 and late 2025. Eight jobs went to men; none went to Black women.
Teams have increasingly looked toward NBA assistants for head coaching candidates. NBA experience can be valuable, but that creates another challenge when women have historically had fewer opportunities to hold NBA coaching positions themselves.
Retired WNBA players can find themselves competing against candidates from a league that has rarely given women its top coaching jobs.
That doesn’t prove discrimination in any individual hiring decision. Coaching records, experience, interviews, and team needs matter. Still, the overall pattern raises questions about which candidates receive serious consideration.
And it’s not like qualified Black women are missing.
Former WNBA player Roneeka Hodges has coached on professional benches and led Phantom BC in the women’s three-on-three league Unrivaled, earning 2026 Coach of the Year honors.
Rena Wakama, a WNBA assistant, guided Nigeria’s women’s national team to its first Olympic quarterfinal in 2024. She has also served as an Unrivaled head coach.
Unrivaled gave leadership opportunities to Weatherspoon, Quinn, Wakama, Hodges, and Nola Henry, placing five Black women in head coaching positions while the WNBA had none.
“Representation is possible when leadership chooses to make it possible,” Quinn told CBS Sports.
That contrast matters because the WNBA isn’t short on experienced women who understand its players or the pressure of professional basketball.
The harder question is whether franchise decision-makers are giving those women meaningful consideration.
The league has attempted to strengthen the coaching pipeline, including allowing teams to add an assistant position for a former WNBA player beginning in 2020. However, those opportunities only go so far if experienced assistants cannot advance.
As the 2027 hiring cycle begins, the Los Angeles Sparks and New York Liberty have head coaching vacancies. Those openings provide another chance to examine how teams evaluate candidates.
Bueckers wasn’t arguing that anyone should receive a job simply because of race. Her message centered on fair consideration for the women who helped build the league.
Black women are already central to the WNBA’s success on the court. The question is why that influence hasn’t translated into more opportunities to lead from the sidelines.
