Which 1st-year WNBA coaches are making best, worst impact?

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Which 1st-year WNBA coaches are making best, worst impact?

Jaren Kawada · ClutchPoints

Sun, Jun 22, 2025 ·

5 min read

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The post Which 1st-year WNBA coaches are making best, worst impact? appeared first on ClutchPoints .

The WNBA annually features a revolving door of head coaches, but the 2025 season marked a complete changing of the guard. Eight new faces took over struggling franchises, with the Atlanta Dream 's Karl Smesko, Chicago Sky 's Tyler Marsh, Connecticut Sun 's Rachid Meziane, Dallas Wings ' Chris Koclanes, Golden State Valkyries' Natalie Nakase, Indiana Fever 's Stephanie White, Los Angeles Sparks ' Lynne Roberts and Washington Mystics ' Sydney Johnson all beginning new eras.

Six of the new coaches are taking over teams that suffered losing seasons in 2024. Meziane is the only first-year coach whose team had a winning year, while White leads a Fever team that went 20-20 a year ago. However, the Sun are an entirely different team than they were in 2024, functionally removing that pseudo-advantage Meziane had over his peers.

Given all the turnover, only six of the 13 coaches are returning to the same club in 2025. The constant fluctuation has led to an unexpected start to the year. While only one new coach, Smesko, has a winning record through the first month of the season, several have already outperformed expectations.

Yet, an equal amount of rookie coaches have sputtered early on. The teams with the four worst records in the league — Sun, Wings, Sky and Sparks — are all debuting new head coaches. Only time will tell whether they should be deemed disappointments or merely amid developmental seasons.

All the attention is on Nakase early on, with the first-time head coach leading the Valkyries to a surprisingly hot start out of the gate. Nakase, a longtime assistant for the Los Angeles Clippers and Las Vegas Aces , has received unanimous praise for her handling of the league's newest organization in her first head coaching position.

Valkyries' Natalie Nakase has been best first-year coach

Semsko deserves a massive shoutout for the work he has done with the Dream early on, but no first-year coach has been better than Natalie Nakase. Against all odds, the 45-year-old coach, whom the Valkyries hired in October 2024 , has Golden State off to a 6-6 start to the year. Nakase is on the verge of pulling off the unprecedented feat of leading an expansion team to a winning record in its inaugural season.

Coaching an expansion team in any league is always a struggle, but exponentially tougher in the WNBA. With most of the league's players participating in overseas leagues during the offseason, Nakase had just a couple of months to gather her troops before deploying them on the court. None of the Valkyries' 12 players ever shared a court before the 2025 season. Only four players — Monique Billings , Tiffany Hayes , Stephanie Talbot and Ariel Powers — have more than five years of experience in the league.

To make the situation more challenging, the Valkyries selected seven international players in their expansion draft. Six of them opted to compete for their countries in the 2025 EuroBasket, depleting Golden State's roster just three weeks into the season.

As if Nakase did not have enough adversity to overcome, the Valkyries were dealt one of the most difficult early-season schedules. Golden State faced the Mercury, the Minnesota Lynx , the Las Vegas Aces and had two games against the New York Liberty in its first 10 games. They managed to go 5-5 in that span while suffering just two double-digit losses.

For an expansion team given the roster it currently has, few head coaches would be doing better with the Valkyries through 12 games. Nakase should already be the frontrunner for the 2025 Coach of the Year award and is already way ahead of where she should be at this point in the season.

Tyler Marsh is WNBA's worst first-year coach

As good as Nakase has been, Tyler Marsh has been the opposite. Preseason expectations for the Sky were not high, but Marsh's 3-9 start to the year has been nearly as poor as possible. Chicago's record is almost worse than it looks, as it is statistically one of the worst teams in WNBA history.

Marsh is far from the only first-year head coach struggling. Koclanes has the Wings looking lost early on, while Meziane is off to possibly the worst start imaginable with the Sun. There just seems to be no coach mishandling his early opportunity more than Marsh is with the Sky.

Under Marsh, the Sky are not just losing; they are losing badly. Chicago is just 3-9 through 12 games with an average margin of defeat of 18.67 points per loss. The numbers get worse the further they go, with Marsh's team posting the second-worst offensive and defensive ratings in the league.

In Marsh's defense, some factors are out of his control. After just seven games, the Sky lost veteran point guard Courtney Vandersloot to a torn ACL . Chicago brought Vandersloot in to lead a young roster in what it hoped would be a resurgent season.

Yet, even before Vandersloot went down, Marsh seemed to have no idea how to deploy his players. He had Vandersloot, a seven-time WNBA assist leader, spend far too much time sitting in the corner while Angel Reese ran the offense. The scheme has led to a career-high 3.6 assists per game for Reese, but having a player with her skill set call the shots is not a recipe that leads to a title.

While nobody expects a first-year head coach to thrive immediately, Marsh is off to an abysmal start. The Sky fired Teresa Weatherspoon and acquired Vandersloot and Ariel Atkins to improve their offense, but the results remain the same. Marsh has not done anything to develop any of his players, with rookies Hailey Van Lith and Maddy Westbeld largely underwhelming.

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