It turns out that Staley, a basketball hall of famer who has coached the women’s program at the University of South Carolina for 17 seasons, was on the Knicks short list.
According to reports, the Knicks interviewed Staley after reaching out to her school’s athletic director, Jeremiah Donati, for permission.If I were them, I would have called her, too,” Donati said, according to On3sports.
And why not? Here are Staley’s credentials:
As a player, she was a three-time Olympic gold medalist, a six-time WNBA All-Star and a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
As a coach, Staley has a 647-190 record in women’s college basketball, first at Temple, where she started coaching while still playing in the WNBA, and at South Carolina
There is no team in all of professional sports I love more than the New York Knicks, but on their drive to find a new coach, they just missed their shot.
That’s not to say that Mike Brown, the team’s likely new head coach, isn’t a serviceable leader.
He has won more than he’s lost, and he’s taken his teams to the playoffs a few times.
But he’s no — what’s the name I’m looking for? He’s no Tom Thibodeau.She has coached her teams to seven Final Four appearances and won four national championships with South Carolina’s Gamecocks.
In 2024, she had a perfect season, 38 wins and zero losses.
So, what separates Staley from all the other top tier coaches who were on the Knicks’ wish list: Ike Udoka, Jason Kidd. Billy Donovan, Jay Wright, Dan Hurley?
Staley is shorter than all the rest.
Oh, and she’s a woman.
No woman has ever been a head coach in the NBA.What’s unclear is whether Staley even really wanted the Knicks job. Dealing with spoiled NBA stars is not all it’s cracked up to be, and the glare of the New York media can be a little bright.
She certainly doesn’t need the aggravation.
Earlier this year, Staley, 55, signed a record-breaking contract extension with South Carolina that runs through 2030, with an annual starting salary of $4 million.
But the deal does include a clause that lets her leave without penalties if she accepts an NBA or WNBA job.
This isn’t the first time Staley has interviewed for an NBA coaching position. In 2021, she met via Zoom with the Portland Trail Blazers for the head coach job that ultimately went to NBA veteran Chauncey Billups.“I had never had an ounce of me that wanted to coach in the WNBA or NBA, until somebody sought me out, like the Portland Trail Blazers,” Staley told USA Today at the time.
We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the Knicks’ team management hadn’t tried to fix something that wasn’t even broken.
Thibodeau, 67, led the Knicks to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years. How did team executives say thank you? They fired him. They said they needed another coach to get the team over the hump.
That starts with a coach the players respect.
In the 1996 movie “Eddie,” Whoopi Goldberg plays a chauffeur-turned-head coach who turns around the hapless Knicks and guides them to the playoffs. As crazy as that plot sounds, there was one thing that rang true — the players played their butts off for her.
They would do the same for Staley, a Black woman of stature making history coaching mostly Black players on an iconic franchise at Madison Square Garden, the World’s Most Famous Arena.
The Knicks turned the ball over when they fired Thibodeau. Hiring Staley would have been a slam dunk.
