The Dallas Wings took the first step in righting the wrongs of the 2025 season this week, firing head coach Chris Koclanes after one season with the WNBA organization.
Before the finale of the 10-34 season, Wings executive vice president and general manager Curt Miller told The Dallas Morning News the team’s talent level needed to improve. It’s a problem the GM, who made several in-season trades, identified relatively soon in his tenure with the Wings.
“I struggled early in my career to rip the Band-Aid off when there wasn’t a perfect fit or maybe there was a move that was a little bit scary to make,” Miller told The News last month. “Sometimes failing fast is beneficial.”
At some point after the season ended and exit interviews were conducted, Miller appears to have taken his own advice by also dismissing Koclanes, whom he defended but was often at the center of criticism about the team. It seems Miller came to understand that for the Wings to really take flight, they’d have to move on from the first-year coach, a longtime friend of the GM.
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With a new practice facility under construction in Far West Oak Cliff, an eventual move to downtown Dallas’ Memorial Auditorium, unprecedented free agency on the horizon and the No. 1 odds going into the upcoming draft lottery, the Wings were already in rebuilding mode for the 2026 season.
Now, as the WNBA Finals begin Friday, they’re also beginning a national search for a new coach. Potential candidates include Sandy Brondello, who was released from the New York Liberty late last month, a year after winning the championship.
The Wings won just 10 games in 2025, but the job could attract Brondello and other top candidates. Paige Bueckers, whom Dallas drafted No. 1 overall in April, just won WNBA Rookie of the Year and the team’s poor showing this season ensures a lottery pick in the 2026 draft, one of three first-round selections the Wings have over the next two seasons. Dallas’ new coach will have the opportunity to build a team around Bueckers.
In firing Koclanes, Miller and the Wings acted with urgency as they enter a pivotal point in the team’s future.
Owning Dallas’ issues
Miller’s Koclanes hire didn’t work out, and neither did the roster in his first season as the Wings’ general manager.
He brought in veterans DiJonai Carrington, NaLyssa Smith and Tyasha Harris through a historic four-team trade, but by early August, Harris was out because of injury and Smith and Carrington had been traded to other teams.
“You go through your range of emotions as a GM,” Miller said. “What did I miss? Could I have collaborated better with a coaching staff on how the front office thought they would fit and maybe how the coaching staff thought about how they fit?”
The Wings GM said in hindsight, he would still go into the 2025 season believing a backcourt of Bueckers, Carrington and Arike Ogunbowale — who had statistical lows in 2025 and didn’t finish the season because of an injury — would work.
“You had your efficient rookie who could play on or off the ball. You had your shot-maker in Arike and you had your defender in DiJonai,” Miller said. “In my mind, it worked.”
But it didn’t. Now, Miller is tasked with assembling a championship-caliber team for 2026 that will complement that “efficient rookie” in Bueckers, previously trained by legendary UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma.
“[Leading] a franchise that’s down and a franchise that has to build themselves back up is really a part of what she’s motivated to do. It’s part of her legacy now,” Miller said. “And bring other great players to play with her, alongside of her, and build this Dallas [team] into what we ultimately hope is a championship.”
Groundbreaking: See photos of the Dallas Wings beginning construction of their new practice facility
View GalleryWhat’s next for Wings?
The Wings have the rights to three first-round draft selections over the next two years, including a lottery pick in 2026. Dallas has the highest odds in the upcoming lottery, with a 40% chance to win the No. 1 draft pick.
They’ll need to find the right coach to nurture that talent.
Perhaps it’s Brondello, who has coached All-Stars Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart and led the Liberty to a WNBA title in her third season with the team. Brondello also won a WNBA title in 2014, her first season with the Phoenix Mercury. The Liberty decided against renewing Brondello’s contract after the team’s first-round playoff exit.
When the Wings wrapped their season on Sept. 11, Miller still seemed high on Koclanes, even comparing his tenure in the league to that of Brondello and coaches Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx and Stephanie White of the Indiana Fever.
“The thing that’s hard for me to listen to is that he’s not qualified,” Miller said. “Behind Cheryl, Sandy and Stephanie White, he’s been in this league coaching longer than anyone else. He had a true understanding of this league. He’s worked with a ton of players in this league. He was the voice of my defense for years.”
As the Wings try to raise their talent level and search for a new coach, they’re navigating uncertainty around the roster and also around the league.
The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement expires Oct. 31, and negotiations are ongoing between the players’ union and the league on a new deal. More than 100 players will be free agents in 2026, when the WNBA will add two more teams that will build rosters through an expansion draft.
In the 2024 expansion draft, which helped the Golden State Valkyries build their roster, each WNBA team could protect six players as long as they had the rights to their contracts. A Wings spokesperson told The News the organization does not yet have the rules for the 2026 expansion draft, with uncertainty surrounding the CBA and roster sizes.
The players under contract include Bueckers, fellow 2025 rookies Aziaha James and JJ Quinerly and forwards Diamond Miller and Maddy Siegrist. The team has reserved the rights to centers Luisa Geiselsöder and Li Yueru, as well as guard Grace Berger and guard-forward Haley Jones.
Dallas also has the rights to forward Awak Kuier, who has sat out of WNBA competition since after the 2023 season, and Lou Lopez Sénéchal, who elected to sit out the 2025 season.
Ogunbowale, the highest-paid player on the team with a 2025 salary of $249,032, according to the Her Hoop Stats WNBA Salary Cap Database, is an unrestricted free agent. So are Myisha Hines-Allen and Harris. They could walk or return in 2026.
“I’m just excited to build something that the community is really proud of,” Miller said. “To finally be in an organization that’s building a state-of-the-art practice facility that can rival the top facilities in the league is so encouraging, and then a year later a renovated arena and we’ll truly become Dallas’ team. Those are all things I’m looking forward to.”
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