Dawn Staley was ready to be the head coach of the New York Knicks.
In an interview with Candace Parker and Aliyah Boston on their “Post Moves” podcast, the South Carolina women’s basketball head coach confirmed she had a formal interview for the Knicks’ head coach vacancy earlier this summer and was interested in the position.
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“If the Knicks would have offered me the job, I would have had to do it,” Staley said. “It’s not just for me, it’s for women, for … to break open that. It’s the New York Knicks, and I’m from Philly, but it’s the freakin’ New York Knicks.”
League sources told The Athletic that while Staley impressed during her conversation with team president Leon Rose and other members of the Knicks’ front office, she was not considered a finalist to fill the vacancy left when the team fired head coach Tom Thibodeau following the franchise’s first trip to the Eastern Conference finals in 25 years. The franchise hired Mike Brown, formerly the Sacramento Kings’ head coach, to replace Thibodeau.
During the conversation with Parker and Boston, Staley said she went into the interview with the Knicks’ brass with a series of questions of her own, primarily centered around the potential impact of hiring the first woman head coach in NBA history.
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“Would I take any NBA job? No,” Staley said. “I will say this: The NBA has to be ready for a female head coach. You can’t just interview somebody and say, ‘We’re going to hire her.’ I probably lost the job by asking this question.”
“Well, I had a series of questions that I asked them,” she continued. “No. 1 was: Why was I in the candidate pool? I said, ‘Has the New York Knicks organization, in its history, ever had what you’re looking for? They wanted a team. They wanted inclusiveness with management, coaches and everyone. They wanted it to feel like a closely-knit franchise. The answer was really ‘no.’ If you don’t hire anyone different, how are you going to get that? That was No. 1.
“My other question was, ‘If you hired me as the first female coach, how would it impact your daily job?’ Because it would. It would. You’re going to get questions that you don’t have to be asked if you hire a male coach. There’s going to be the media, all this stuff you’ll have to deal with that you didn’t have to deal with and don’t have to deal with when you hire a male. That got them to thinking. That really got them to thinking. ‘Maybe she’s right.’ I felt the energy change after that.”
Staley signed a new contract with South Carolina in January that makes her the highest-paid coach in women’s college basketball. The deal, which extends through the 2029-30 season, totals more than $25 million after signing bonuses and annual increases.
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Staley’s interview was part of an unorthodox Knicks’ coaching search that ended with Brown’s hiring. Team decision-makers reached out to multiple NBA teams to inquire about their head coaches under contract, like Houston’s Ime Udoka, Dallas’ Jason Kidd and Chicago’s Billy Donovan. The Knicks also interviewed NBA assistant coaches like Minnesota’s Micah Nori and New Orleans’ James Borrego, as well as recently-fired head coaches like Taylor Jenkins and Brown.
More women than ever are joining NBA coaching staffs in high-ranking roles, but no woman has ever been the head coach of an NBA team.
In 2019, the Knicks, under a previous regime, hired Lisa Willis, a former WNBA player, as an assistant coach for their G League affiliate.
There are currently three women who serve as NBA assistant coaches: Jenny Boucek (Indiana Pacers), Brittni Dolandson (Atlanta Hawks) and Lindsey Harding (Los Angeles Lakers). In 2024, Harding, then the head coach of the Stockton Kings, became the first woman to be named coach of the year in the G League. Harding was the first woman to be the head coach of a G League team, and she worked under Anjali Ranadivé, the first female general manager in G League history.
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
New York Knicks, South Carolina Gamecocks, NBA, Women’s College Basketball, Culture
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