{"id":784745,"date":"2026-07-26T02:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T02:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/784745\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T02:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T02:15:11","slug":"teresa-weatherspoon-fired-by-the-sky-in-2024-absolutely-wants-a-second-crack-at-coaching-in-the-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/784745\/","title":{"rendered":"Teresa Weatherspoon, fired by the Sky in 2024, ‘absolutely’ wants a second crack at coaching in the WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Sky<\/a> coach Teresa Weatherspoon didn\u2019t like it when members of the media called her by her first name during press conferences and interviews. \u201cCoach,\u201d \u201cCoach Spoon\u201d or even just \u201cSpoon\u201d was the way she felt it should be. Using her first name was too familiar or not quite reverent enough, seemed to be her position on the matter.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t like that she didn\u2019t like it. Or more like I didn\u2019t care. I rolled my eyes so hard at it, they might still be rolling.<\/p>\n

But you know what? I can be a real ninny. As I learned just this weekend \u2014 nearly two years after the Sky fired her<\/a> \u2014 Weatherspoon\u2019s objection wasn\u2019t about ego or hubris. It was nothing more than where she comes from and how she was raised.<\/p>\n

I picked this up watching her seven-month-old appearance on former Sky star Angel Reese\u2019s podcast, \u201cpologetically Angel.\u201d In it, Weatherspoon described her childhood in rural east Texas, in a tiny town where the two most oft-spoken words were \u201csir\u201d and \u201cma\u2019am.\u201d All adults were addressed that way, according to Weatherspoon, who is 60. It wasn\u2019t an expectation but rather a demand.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019d have figured this out sooner had she been here for longer than one season before the Sky showed her the door. One year isn\u2019t much time to get to know anybody in any setting, especially if you\u2019re a know-it-all columnist showing up around a team only every now and then.<\/p>\n

Weatherspoon was at the United Center Saturday in the capacity of \u201cgeneral manager\u201d of one of the WNBA All-Star teams \u2014 a nod to her excellence as one of the 30-year-old league\u2019s first star players \u2014 so I asked her about it. No, not about the name thing. About the kicked-to-the-curb-after-only-one-year thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing stops the show,\u201d she said twice. \u201cI\u2019m not the only person in the world that this has happened to, you know? I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut one thing about me, it doesn\u2019t hold me down. Nothing holds me down and I move forward, and that\u2019s the most important thing is moving forward and knowing who you are and what you bring. \u2026 No one can stop that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weatherspoon has a job coaching in the Unrivaled league, but she would \u201cabsolutely\u201d like to get another crack at the WNBA.<\/p>\n

She won a national championship as a point guard at Louisiana Tech, where she later took the reins as coach. She was the WNBA\u2019s first assists and steals champion as a rookie and became a five-time All-Star. Before going to the Sky, she was an NBA assistant coach with the Pelicans. But when it comes to being a WNBA head coach, all she has on her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 is a one-and-done with the Sky in 2024.<\/p>\n

Talk about a kick in the gut. It had to hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tremendous shock for me,\u201d Weatherspoon said on Reese\u2019s podcast.<\/p>\n

The stuff of coaching and leading has coursed through Weatherspoon\u2019s veins since she first picked up a ball, she recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it,\u201d she said. \u201cI love just studying it. I love the grit and grind of it all, and then the wit \u2014 like how quickly [things] have to happen \u2014 and the challenge of it all, and then playing chess. If you\u2019re playing checkers, you\u2019re going to get beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weatherspoon meant a great deal to Reese and still does. At All-Star media day on Friday, Weatherspoon surfaced in a crowd of reporters around Reese and asked a couple of admiring questions \u2014 neither having to do with herself \u2014 but Reese took it as a chance to reflect praise onto her first WNBA coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing into my rookie year, I didn\u2019t know what I was going to be,\u201d Reese said. \u201cI think you put a lot of everything into me, from energy to love to support. I was the No. 7 pick and didn\u2019t [know if] I was going to do anything \u2026 [but] you put a lot of conscience into me and I\u2019m thankful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The player-coach relationship didn\u2019t last, at least not officially, but they continued to talk \u201cevery day\u201d during Reese\u2019s second and final year with the Sky, according to Reese.<\/p>\n

And after news broke that the Sky had fired Weatherspoon, the first text and first call came from Reese.<\/p>\n

Weatherspoon seems to have gotten over the sting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to sit in a place where I\u2019m holding a grudge,\u201d she said on the podcast. \u201cI can\u2019t do that [or else] you win. I\u2019m not going to do that. I\u2019m going to move to the next phase of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she definitely doesn\u2019t appreciate the manner in which she was fired \u2014 over the phone, rather than face-to-face \u2014 as she articulated to Reese.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to always be respectful regardless of situations and circumstances, and I expect the same,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause of what I give, I really want to have it back. But I didn\u2019t get that. I got a phone call.\u201d<\/p>\n

That just wouldn\u2019t have flown back in the day in east Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon didn\u2019t like it when members of the media called her by her first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-784745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}