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A New Coach is In the Cards


lethalweapon3

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As noted on RebKell and elsewhere, the Dream's newest coach was an assistant at Louisville back when Angel Mac was a recruit.

Collen has lots of collegiate ties (her husband, Tom, coached Arkansas until 2014, where she was an assistant), but also a couple years of experience as an assistant under reigning WNBA Coach of the Year Curt Miller at Connecticut. She seems to check off plenty of boxes for the current ownership. Good luck!

http://dream.wnba.com/news/nicki-collen-named-atlanta-dream-head-coach/

Quote

“I am humbled at the opportunity to become the next Head Coach of the Atlanta Dream and incredibly proud to be associated with a league that empowers women in such a positive way,” Collen said. “I want to thank owners Mary Brock and Kelly Loeffler, as well as team President Theresa Wenzel for believing in me and what we can accomplish together. I was blown away by their passion and commitment to the Dream and to the city of Atlanta”

Let's Go Dream!

~lw3

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I am not super excited about this, but then I was a Cooper fan.   Cooper did better at building the roster than getting wins I guess.  Big question, not addressed in the press release is who is the GM or player personnel boss?  Wenzel was a college athletic department administrator so it doesn't seem she has the background to evaluate talent.  Team owners generally don't do well in that department either.  Since the Dream don't have a No. 1 pick this year, the draft doesn't matter much for now.  However, Free Agency comes up soon and the question is who to sign?  Maybe that doesn't matter much for now either since the Dream have almost never signed an important FA (and sometimes are lucky to sign their own players - e.g. Lindsey Harding and Arminti Herrington left town).  So I guess we will see.

 

 

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On 10/31/2017 at 9:12 AM, Randy said:

I am not super excited about this, but then I was a Cooper fan.   Cooper did better at building the roster than getting wins I guess.  Big question, not addressed in the press release is who is the GM or player personnel boss?  Wenzel was a college athletic department administrator so it doesn't seem she has the background to evaluate talent.  Team owners generally don't do well in that department either.  Since the Dream don't have a No. 1 pick this year, the draft doesn't matter much for now.  However, Free Agency comes up soon and the question is who to sign?  Maybe that doesn't matter much for now either since the Dream have almost never signed an important FA (and sometimes are lucky to sign their own players - e.g. Lindsey Harding and Arminti Herrington left town).  So I guess we will see.

 

 

That's an excellent question!

Convention says the Dream will again defy convention. The best candidates to run GM/player personnel would probably have wanted to be in the room when it was time to interview and hire a head coach, so I presume the owners just want to keep things internal, in close coordination with Wenzel and Coach Nicki.

The website staff directory doesn't even bother to have a space for such a position (the assistant coach and trainer spots are there, empty, below Collen's). My pick for the in-house "GM," Natalie White (former VP of bball ops) is also not listed at all and it appears she is out, too (White's Twitter address as an employee, @ATLDreamVP, hasn't tweeted since September 18, a couple weeks after the Coop D'Etat; her LinkedIn cites the Dream as a "Previous" employer). Maybe Camensky Bryson (bball ops coordinator) is about to get a come-up?

~lw3

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We now have an answer - and the answer is "No one knows" at least Ms. Collen doesn't know.  It was the first question asked in this excellent interview.  It does seem as though she will have a lot of say as to who is on the roster, and w/o a FRP this season, scouting draft picks is probably not a super important issue.  And the Dream have typically not been a destination that excites FA's so GM job may be a bit more administrative than anything.  (BTW - Chris Sienko former Sun GM ran the job search for HC, so he is out there as a resource apparently.)

 


https://www.fanragsports.com/dishin-and-swishin-nicki-collen-is-living-the-dream/
 

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