NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers reach out to Dawn Staley about head coaching job

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Virginia basketball legend, now South Carolina women’s basketball coach, Dawn Staley, is expected to be contacted as a potential candidate to take over head coaching duties for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers.

According to The Post and Courier, Shams Charania of The Athletic, tweeted that Staley is one of the top candidates for Portland’s opening, and sources at South Carolina have given permission to the Blazers to talk to Staley.

Staley, who spearheaded three consecutive Debbie Ryan-coached UVA teams to Final Fours, is in Puerto Rico through June 19, coaching Team USA in the preliminary round of the FIBA AmeriCup tournament. From there, Staley will continue her duties as head coach of the U.S. Olympic women’s team, which starts training camp in July, followed by exhibition games in Las Vegas prior to taking the team to the Tokyo Olympics, which begin July 23.

While Staley was unreachable for comment, she has recently shot down interest in coaching outside of women’s college basketball.

“No ounce of me really wants to coach outside of college,” Staley said in March when her Gamecocks fell short of winning their second national title (first one came in 2017). “I don’t know why my level of interest has never been to coach in the WNBA or to coach in the NBA or coach on the men’s side (of college basketball). I don’t know why my competitiveness won’t allow me to go there.

“It may be because I just think there’s too much work to be done in our game. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and I do think about making sure that the players that I coach on this level will take great care of the WNBA so that i’s around another 25 years.”

Should another school or professional team convince Staley to leave South Carolina before March 31, 2022, she would owe the athletic department $1 million. Her current contract runs through the 2024-25 season.

Staley was to be paid $1.7 million last season, but because of the pandemic, she volunteered to take a 10 percent pay cut, although she earned another $280,000 in bonuses for taking the Gamecocks to the national championship game. Next season, she is scheduled to receive $1.8 million, which is believed to be the second-highest figure in women’s college basketball.

Kim Mulkey, who won three national titles at Baylor, was recently lured to LSU for a $2,505 million salary.

Other candidates mentioned for the Trail Blazers job includes another women’s coach, Becky Hammon, a longtime assistant under Gregg Popovich with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. Hammon was the first woman to be an NBA head coach _ although it being for one game _ when Popovich was booted from a game in December.

Mike D’Antoni, assistant with the Brooklyn Nets, has also been mentioned as a candidate along with Spurs executive Brent Barry, and L.A. Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups.