As the WNBA has enjoyed a surge in popularity over the past few seasons, the number of Black head coaches — particularly Black women — has declined sharply.
To begin the 2022 season, seven of the WNBA’s 12 head coaches were Black — three among this group were women: Tanisha Wright, Vickie Johnson and Noelle Quinn. But just a couple of years later, despite a pair of expansion franchises joining the league, Tyler Marsh and Sydney Johnson are currently the only Black head coaches in the WNBA, both men.
This is the first season since 2020 that the league has no Black women in head coaching positions.
After posting 22 points and 11 rebounds in Sunday’s win over Chicago, former UConn women’s basketball star Paige Bueckers used her postgame media availability to call attention to the league’s declining number of Black head coaches.
“I’m for equal opportunity, no discrimination based on what you look like, who you like and anything of that nature,” Bueckers said after Sunday’s comeback win over Chicago. “Specifically, I grew up with a lot of prominent Black women in my life that were very important to me in how I was raised and how I grew up, being my stepmom, my AAU coach.”
“I understand how amazing they are and how they should get the same equal opportunity as a white woman, as a white man to be an important piece of this league. And it was built on a lot of Black women, this league, so it’s definitely right for them to get the same equal opportunity as everyone else.”
Advocacy isn’t new for Bueckers. While at UConn, she used her acceptance speech after winning the 2021 ESPY for Best College Athlete in Women’s Sports to criticize the lack of media coverage for Black women athletes.
The point guard entered the WNBA, a league comprising nearly 80% players of color, ahead of the 2025 season, joining a Dallas Wings franchise that had cut ties with former head coach Vickie Johnson three years earlier despite consecutive playoff berths. By the end of Bueckers’ rookie year, the Seattle Storm fired Noelle Quinn after five seasons in charge, leaving the WNBA without a Black female head coach.
Quinn actually went on to coach Bueckers with Breeze BC in Unrivaled this past winter, a 3×3 women’s basketball league co-founded by UConn alums Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart. There were five Black female coaches in Unrivaled during the 2026 season, a contrast that Quinn believes is deliberate.
“It’s not by accident; I believe it’s intentional,” Quinn said last year, per Meghan L. Hall. “… Representation is possible when leadership chooses to make it possible.”