Over the next few weeks, WNBA general managers and head coaches will meet for their annual fall competition meeting to review the 2024 season and discuss potential changes for the coming year. In the past encounters there were enough coaches present to theoretically play a five-on-five game. This year it will hardly be enough for a three-on-three game.

Nearly 60 percent of last season’s WNBA head coaches lost their jobs this offseason, making this a busy and historic fall. The seven changes are the most in one cycle in league history.

Three franchises parted ways with their coaches (Tanisha Wright, Christie Sides and Stephanie White) despite making the playoffs. The teams helped the Fever increase their win total by seven games in Caitlin Clark’s record-setting rookie season. White was one year away from winning Coach of the Year honors and just four quarters away from a spot in the WNBA Finals. Curt Miller was just two years removed from a Finals appearance with the Suns and was sidelined after reshuffling the Los Angeles Sparks roster.

Each coaching change has its own context, but some stakeholders draw a line between themselves and point to the larger risks at stake as the league grows at record pace.

“Without the changing WNBA, you would never see this overall volume,” said a current general manager who was granted anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak on league matters. “The amount we have right now is partly because all eyes are on the West owners who didn’t care before.”

The WNBA is in an unprecedented period of growth. It’s a part of the cultural sports consciousness like never before, producing the most-watched Finals in 25 years, the most-watched regular season on ESPN and record viewership for the All-Star Game and Draft. In 2026, a new groundbreaking media rights deal worth more than $2 billion will come into effect. The value of the expansion franchise is significantly higher than it was 18 months ago as the next generation of stars like Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins are on the rise.

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Some suspect that this boom has an impact on coach stability.

“When an owner’s thumb is on the scale, the first thing you have to do is coach,” Fred Williams, a former WNBA head coach, said of the current coaching climate.

The shooting marks a notable change in the WNBA. But the reality is that this essentially makes the WNBA like every other sports league.

Some owners have looked at their franchises and presumably sought a change. And who did they consider expendable?

“The most explosive place when people want change is the head coach, in all professional sports,” said the general manager.

The unfortunate reality for head coaches in various sports is that winning doesn’t always lead to stability. In recent NBA history, coaches have been fired after winning Coach of the Year (Dwane Casey), within a year of reaching the conference finals (Darvin Ham), and two years after winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy (Mike Budenholzer). Still, the NBA and G League have become mining fields for WNBA replacement players; Aces coach Becky Hammon and Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts notably left their assistant positions in the NBA and took executive roles in the WNBA.

For WNBA coaches, the league is no longer an oasis where sustained success leads to job security.

“Are we in unprecedented times? “Are we in an area where people want to capitalize and feel like they need something different?” said Minnesota Lynx coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve. “That could be something like … the energy that you see from these leaders making these decisions.”

Some of the changes may not be unwarranted. League sources suggested that some franchises are trying to get ahead of the WNBA’s biggest free agency season yet in 2026 by trying to build a strong foundation this offseason. (Only two players not on rookie contracts have signed contracts beyond this year.)

The wave of coaching changes spanned more than a month. Some teams that missed the playoffs (Dallas and Washington) waited more than four weeks between the end of their season and the announcement of their moves. Your trainers were in final meetings. The question arises: Does each team have a clear plan for the next step?

Let’s answer that question with another: Who will these teams hire?

While it is prestigious to be one of only 12 to 13 WNBA head coaches next spring, compensation for WNBA coaches varies widely. According to league sources, the rate entering this offseason was around $350,000 to just over $1 million per year. Contracts are often shorter than college coaching contracts. This cycle was a reminder that job stability is often lacking – six of the seven coaching changes involved coaches who had been employed for two seasons or less.

Additionally, coaches have experienced a loss of power across organizations in recent seasons. Not long ago, another shift occurred in the coaching ranks: WNBA franchises began moving away from the dual role of coach and general manager.

Reeve, the league’s longest-serving coach, has the final decision on player rosters but is the only active coach to hold both positions. The move to split GM and coaching responsibilities between two positions signaled that ownership groups were interested in expanding their front offices and investing in top decision-making talent. It was a realization that the jobs were too big and too important for one person. But this change also gave the coach greater responsibility (or at least made him more vulnerable, depending on your point of view). What coach would willingly let go of both roles?

This isn’t the WNBA of the past, where, as one general manager put it, “you can just be a good person and survive for five to 10 years.”

It’s no longer even about the most successful surviving.

It is a new era in several ways. What is happening is a historical anomaly in the WNBA. But it’s not common in the modern sports landscape. The WNBA is no longer a haven for coaches seeking stability.

– The Athlete‘s Sabreena Merchant contributed to this report.

(Photos of Teresa Weatherspoon and Christie Sides: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images, Erica Denhoff / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)