A man? <\/p>\n
A freaking man?!<\/p>\n
In a league built on the world-class talents of underpaid female athletes, it was understandable that there would be backlash to the Portland Fire hiring a man with virtually no experience in the women\u2019s game as the franchise\u2019s first head coach. <\/p>\n
And it could have been easily avoided.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of qualified women already working in the WNBA and beyond who could have credibly stepped into the role.<\/p>\n
But this wasn\u2019t some flub. Hiring 30-year-old Cleveland Cavaliers\u2019 assistant Alex Sarama, who was introduced Tuesday in a news conference<\/a> at the Multnomah Athletic Club, wasn\u2019t a failure to read the room by general manager Vanja Cernivec.<\/p>\n Instead, it was a strategic decision made<\/a> with full awareness that it could likely open the franchise to criticism. <\/p>\n \u201cYou know this was coming,\u201d Cernivec told me shortly after the news conference ended on Tuesday.<\/p>\n She was familiar with the backlash received by the Dallas Wings after hiring career assistant Chris Koclanes last year (and replacing him with longtime college coach Jose Fernandez this week) and the Phoenix Mercury after plucking Nate Tibbetts from the NBA.<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t Portland have known better?<\/p>\n After all, the ownership group behind the Fire, RAJ Sports, has self-branded Portland as the \u201cglobal epicenter of women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n You can sympathize with those who felt that hiring a male head coach would be out of step with that ethos. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the hardest thing as a woman,\u201d Cernivec said. \u201cYou always want to empower women.\u201d<\/p>\n Portland\u2019s WNBA franchise is a team with a female governor, Lisa Bhathal Merage, and a woman, former Nike executive Clare Hamill, as its president. Cernivec and Ashley Battle, a former WNBA player who previously worked for the Boston Celtics, are the team\u2019s top two basketball executives.<\/p>\n But the decision to hire Sarama as head coach raised eyebrows around basketball and led to backlash on social media.<\/p>\n None of that was unexpected.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people in my circles have asked me, \u2018Why are you risking this?\u2019\u201d Cernivic said. \u201cAnd I just say, \u2018Because I so passionately believe this is the right way to go.\u2019 And there is no innovation without risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Cernivic said she believes in the hire with her \u201cwhole body.\u201d<\/p>\n And that level of conviction is what should inspire confidence in Cernivec as a decision-maker. She eschewed a safe decision in favor of one that has a chance to be transformative and game-changing.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t that what every fan wants out of their team? A willingness to be aggressive and to take risks? To be innovative when it is attempting to shape its identity? <\/p>\n Sarama is an outsider to the WNBA, which makes who he surrounds himself with all the more important. If he provides the high-level basketball philosophy, who will bring it down to earth for players? <\/p>\n He will hopefully hire experienced WNBA assistants to give the system credibility and vouch for the philosophy that he and Cernivec share and develop the next wave of WNBA head coaches.<\/p>\n I am sensitive to the fact that I am perhaps an imperfect messenger for this particular message. A man explaining why it\u2019s good that another man \u2014 an underqualified man, even \u2014 was elevated to a leadership position in a women\u2019s league.<\/p>\n That is not what I am trying to do. I have no idea whether Sarama will succeed in Portland or if Cernivec will get to hire his replacement if he doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n I simply admire that the GM has such a clear vision for how she wants to build the expansion franchise and is willing to stake her reputation on the evidence-based coaching model in which Sarama is an industry leader.<\/p>\n Cernivec\u2019s level of conviction bodes well for her future here and gives her tremendous credibility as a decision-maker. That she is willing to go out on a limb to hire the right person rather than stick to an expected archetype.<\/p>\n Cernivec believes Sarama\u2019s system will lead players to Portland. And that the Fire will develop assistant coaches who will take the model elsewhere and spread a system that will extend players\u2019 careers. <\/p>\n Her vision is much more complex than a single coaching hire.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be the easiest thing for me to sit up here and introduce not only a female coach, but also an experienced (head) coach,\u201d Cernivec said. \u201cIt would just be, here we go, it\u2019s safe. We win that day and you look good, you look smart. You look like you\u2019ve attracted a big-time name in coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n But Cernivec was willing to sacrifice optics in favor of philosophy.<\/p>\n Sarama is a pioneer in the constraints-led approach to training (CLA), which remains far from the mainstream. Nowhere has it been so totally integrated into a team\u2019s operations as Cernivec envisions it being deployed in Portland.<\/p>\n \u201cI just couldn\u2019t wait for the opportunity for someone to say, \u2018Go all the way,\u2019\u201d Cernivec said.<\/p>\n The Bhathals and RAJ Sports gave her that green light.<\/p>\n Will it work?<\/p>\n That\u2019s the unknowable. <\/p>\n But it\u2019s the complete and total commitment to live or die by the belief that it will work that I find so encouraging for the Fire\u2019s future.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man? A freaking man?! In a league built on the world-class talents of underpaid female athletes, it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":339802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1339,62,67,132,68,232,3357],"class_list":{"0":"post-339801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wnba","14":"tag-womens-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}