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The WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury hired Nate Tibbetts as its new head coach in October, after a few years of turmoil and a season in which they finished last in the league. Mercury ownership appears to be trying to stress their investment in the franchise, and the hiring of Tibbetts as head coach is meant to be another sign of this commitment. However, this news raised some troubling questions about pay equity within women’s sports, and the ways in which sexism and racism can bleed into spaces even when they are majority-woman and majority-Black.
With his hire, Tibbetts, a white man, reportedly became the highest paid coach in WNBA history—a position that had previously been held by Becky Hammon (a white woman) when she was hired to coach the Las Vegas Aces two seasons ago. (Tibbetts’s salary has not been made public, but Hammon earns $1 million per year and unnamed sources told ESPN that Tibbetts will make more. When reached for comment, the Mercury declined to confirm or deny these reports.) Tibbetts has spent several seasons as an assistant coach in the NBA but has no women’s basketball coaching experience. For comparison, Hammon played 16 seasons in the WNBA and spent eight seasons as an assistant coach of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs; in her first two seasons coaching the Aces, the team won the WNBA championship. (Hiring a woman to coach is obviously not a fix-all; the Aces are currently under investigation for pregnancy discrimination and Hammon was suspended without pay for two games in May after the WNBA found she violated the team and league’s Respect in the Workplace policy through comments she made about Dearica Hamby’s pregnancy.)
To add insult to injury, the Mercury announced this hire by adding that Tibbetts is a “Girl Dad” and also his dad coached women’s basketball, as if that somehow qualifies him to coach women’s basketball—a game that has real, fundamental differences from the way men play it. Have we learned nothing from the tire fire that was Derek Fisher’s time as the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks? NBA experience, as a coach or a player, does not necessarily translate into the skills necessary to coach the WNBA, from both a technical basketball standpoint and a cultural perspective. As I’ve written before, the idea that men suddenly care about women’s sports or women’s rights once they have daughters is, frankly, a crock of shit. It should not take having daughters of your own to see the value in all women or to see that they deserve respect that they are too often denied. (Imagine if “Boy Mom” was used as a qualifier for a head coaching position in the NBA.)
Unsurprisingly, the women’s basketball community had some strong reactions to this hire. As former Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw said on X, formerly Twitter, “Breaking news: white man hires white man to coach WNBA team AND makes him the highest paid coach in the league. Gender bias is real.” (The first white man McGraw is referring to is likely billionaire mortgage lender Mat Ishbia, who bought a majority stake in both the Mercury and the NBA’s Phoenix Suns in February.)
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