It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously claiming that Anne Donovan is the best coach for the American Olympic team, or even a very good one, but it’s depressingly likely that she will still be in charge when the U.S. team goes to Beijing next summer. Which means we’ll see more perplexing in-game strategy, more odd personnel decisions and more lack of leadership – and most likely, the most talented team again not winning the gold medal.
This is not meant to take anything away from the Australians, who won the world championships in 2006, or the Russians, who beat the U.S. in the bronze medal game, but the Americans are dominant at all levels of the women’s game (22-0 this summer in FIBA competitions) and had won every world championship or Olympic gold since 1994 – until Donovan took over the team.
To review, let’s begin with the 2006 loss to Russia. The Americans struggled throughout the game, in part because the Russians were raining three-pointers. But Donovan stayed in a zone, allowing the Russians open looks, and making rebounding (another issue) even harder.
When the Americans finally started to press, they got right back in the game – but why didn’t they press earlier, given their depth and athleticism? No answer has ever been forthcoming.
And given the rebounding issues, why were Cheryl Ford and Michelle Snow on the bench, with undersized DeLisha Milton-Jones and Tina Thompson getting overwhelmed? Granted, Ford and Snow hadn’t played well up to that point, but there’s no question both have the ability to take over on the boards – and since the U.S. was losing, why not change things up?
Another job of the head coach is to make halftime adjustments, and use timeouts wisely. After a struggle in the first half, the Americans came out of the locker room and were just as lackluster as before. And after a key late-game timeout, the U.S. simply didn’t execute, which can also be laid to coaching.
Donovan’s decision to use Alana Beard as the backup point guard instead of Katie Smith is simply inexplicable, as Smith had just led the Detroit Shock to the WNBA title, and Beard had never really played the point.
But most of all, the coach supplied no leadership and no spark to a team that desperately needed one. Whatever the players needed, Donovan didn’t deliver it, and a game that could have been won, even with all the tactical blunders, was lost.
Now, let’s look at Donovan’s Seattle career. Her overall record is 91-77, with a WNBA title in 2004 – but both her 20-win seasons, and the title, came when Jenny Boucek was an assistant. Why is that important? Boucek is now the coach of the Sacramento Monarchs, who are 18-13 this season to Seattle’s 15-17, and the difference is instructive.
First, Donovan’s players have complained about her in Seattle, while Boucek, just 33, has won the respect of veterans and rookies alike in Sacramento. More important, she has taken a team with inferior talent and led it to a much better record. Consider: Donovan has the best player in the world in Lauren Jackson, and America’s best point guard, Sue Bird. The Storm also has Betty Lennox, an emotionally combustible but immensely talented guard who was MVP of the WNBA finals, and Janell Burse, a more-than-competent center. Finally, Iziane Castro Marques is the best Brazilian, and is a legitimate WNBA starter.
Sacramento, on the other hand, lost its best player (DeMya Walker) five games into the season. Its point guards (Ticha Penicheiro and Kristin Haynie) are much worse than Bird, and the aging Yolanda Griffith is, at this point in her career, not as effective as Burse. Nicole Powell might be slightly better than Castro Marques, but Chelsea Newton is nowhere close to Lennox in terms of talent. Yes, the Monarchs’ bench is better, but that is because Donovan has proven herself unable to judge talent (Jackson and Bird came to the team when Lin Dunn was in charge).
In short, Sacramento should be the team hoping to win its last two games to reach .500, not Seattle. The difference? Boucek, who was a key figure in the 40-28 two-year run for the Storm and concedes she has no relationship, positive or negative, with Donovan, is both an exceptional inspirational and tactical leader. Donovan is neither.
But Boucek, at this point, is not a candidate to coach the national team, She lacks experience at the international level, but there is one person who has all the credentials: Dawn Staley. Staley has played and coached at the highest levels, and her most impressive achievement came this past summer when she guided essentially the third-best American team to the Pan American Games title – an event the U.S.A. hadn’t won since 1987.
And remember, the Pan Am opponents weren’t youth teams – they were the national teams of Brazil and Cuba and Argentina, and they were getting ready for the FIBA Americas’ championship in September, which will give the winner a berth in the Olympics. (And yes, the U.S. must qualify, thanks to the bronze medal finish at the World Championships.) But as one person close to USA Basketball said, ‘As soon as I knew who was coaching, I knew we’d win.’
But Staley isn’t eligible to coach at the Olympics. According to the USA Basketball selection guidelines, the Olympic team coach must be a WNBA coach at the time she’s selected – and Staley coaches at Temple.
Another stumbling block to replacing Donovan is the widely held, though officially unacknowledged, belief that USA Basketball is committed to having a woman in charge of the team. Van Chancellor was the first male to coach the women’s Olympic team in 2004, and the consensus is that a woman had to be the coach this time around.
Given those two criteria, the only available candidates are Donovan, Boucek, New York’s Patty Coyle (who will be lucky to keep her job with the Liberty) and Houston’s first-year coach, Karleen Thompson. Sadly, Donovan is the only one qualified to be the Olympic coach in 2008 (though Boucek probably would do a better job), so as long as the WNBA requirement is retained, she’s pretty much the only choice.
If males were eligible, then Mike Thibault (an assistant in 2006) would certainly be a good pick – and one of the best coaches in the WNBA is certainly Bill Laimbeer. Michael Cooper has shown he can coach elite athletes as well, and Dan Hughes wouldn’t be a bad choice either. It’s certain that all have done a better job in the WNBA than Donovan, but USA Basketball would have to make a bold step to fire Donovan and replace her with a male.
Of course, that assumes that Senior National Team Committee recognizes that there’s a problem. That committee -- Reneé Brown (WNBA, who does not have a vote), Pat Summitt (NCAA), Carol Blazejowski, (WNBA) Kelly Krauskopf (WNBA), Roger Griffith (WNBA), Penny Toler (WNBA), Jennifer Azzi (athlete representative) and Teresa Edwards (athlete representative, though she coaches for Minnesota) --
chooses the team and the coaching staff, and has been notably silent since the World Championship debacle.
The group could, however, do its work in silence. It could approach the executive board about replacing Donovan with a male coach, or beginning the process to change the selection criteria so that Staley would be eligible. The latter would undoubtedly have to get approval from the USOC, but if USA Basketball was willing to push for the change, there’s a good chance it could happen.
But that brings it all back to the first question: Does anyone care enough to push for a change? Certainly if the Storm do well in the playoffs, (which, given their talent and the injuries that have dogged the other teams, is possible), there will be less impetus. And it’s of course hard to imagine the senior national team losing a game to opponents Dawn Staley’s team handled so easily at the Pan Am Games, so it’s unlikely an upset in the FIBA Americas will serve as a goad for change.
Let’s say, however, that the Storm go quietly in the playoffs, and then the senior national team plays adequately in the FIBA Americas, the two most likely scenarios. Will anyone on the Senior National Team Committee step forward and push for serious consideration of replacing Donovan? Does it matter to anyone enough that the U.S. might finish behind Australia again, in Beijing this time?
It certainly doesn’t seem likely, given the passivity of the public towards women’s basketball at the international level. There’s no outcry, at any level, about Donovan’s proven record of underachievement, and without any outside pressure, the committee can be expected to take the path of least resistance. After all, why insult a hard-working coach who’s a good person? Why go through the drama and emotional turmoil that would inevitably result from an attempt to remove Donovan?
There’s only one reason: To give the United States the best chance to win Olympic gold in 2008. Donovan’s record, domestically and internationally, is proof that she is not the coach to do that, but unless several members of the Senior National Team Committee decide it’s important enough to take the heat and push for Dawn Staley or Mike Thibault to take over, nothing will change.
It’s possible, of course, that the U.S. will win the gold in spite of Donovan, and that the American talent advantage will overcome her several deficiencies. But that didn’t happen in 2006, and there’s no reason to believe it will in 2008 either.
It’s simple, really: If the committee members care about women’s basketball as much as they profess to, they will understand that winning the gold medal is crucial for a struggling sport’s hopes of becoming a bigger presence on the nation’s athletic radar screen, and that Anne Donovan makes it less likely that will happen. In which case, their only option is to replace her, one way or another.
But if the committee members close their eyes and hope for the best, then they’ll let things slide. They won’t try to have a male coach two Olympic teams in a row, and they won’t battle the WNBA and NBA to get the rules changed so Staley can run the team.
And they, not Donovan, will be to blame if the United States fails to win an Olympic gold medal for the first time since 1992.