The 2026 WNBA season is just the third time in the league’s 30 seasons that the year began with zero Black women head coaches.
You can count WNBA star Paige Bueckers among the people who want to see Black women back in the head coach role soon.
“I’m for equal opportunity and no discrimination based on what you look like (or) who you like,” Bueckers told reporters after helping the Dallas Wings beat the Chicago Sky on Sunday. The Wings guard was responding to a question about what she’d like to see happen in response to calls to increase the number of black head coaches in the league.
“I think Black women, specifically, I grew up with a lot of prominent Black women in my life that were very important to me, and how I was raised and how I grew up being my stepmom, my AAU coach. So I understand how amazing they are,” Bueckers said.
The last Black woman head coach in the WNBA was former player Noelle Quinn, who did not have her contract renewed by the Seattle after the 2025 season.
The decision to let Quinn go made the 2026 WNBA campaign the first time since 2020 that the league did not have at least one Black woman as a head coach; the only other year that was the case was in 2006.
Black women make up roughly 64 percent of the players in the WNBA, further making it a pointed topic of discussion that there is not a Black woman head coach among the league’s current 15 teams.
There are two Black men coaches in the WNBA as it stands: the Chicago Sky’s Tyler Marsh and Washington Mystics coach Sydney Johnson.
“I think there’s a ton of talented African American players and coaches that don’t always have the opportunity, and so it’s part of the reason why I approach this job in a way that it’s not just a job, it’s a responsibility,” Marsh said in June, per the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.
“It’s a responsibility that I try to uphold each day for my players. It’s what keeps me going. I know what I represent and who I represent and why I work and live for.”
Bueckers, who is having a stellar sophomore season for Dallas, is part of the reason the WNBA experienced a massive jump in popularity in recent years.
Still, Bueckers recognizes that it would not be possible without the foundation Black women helped the WNBA establish.
“(Black women) should get the same equal opportunity as a white woman, as a white man to to be an important piece of this league,” Bueckers said. “And it was built on a lot of Black women, this league was. So it’s definitely right for them to get the same the same equal opportunity as everybody else.”
