As time passes, more and more ties are broken from the founding of the Atlanta Dream franchise. When Fred Williams was fired on Friday - let's skip the euphemisms, we're adults here - the only person who is either a player or coach still left from 2008 is Erika de Souza - and she didn't even start playing at the beginning of the season due to injury.
So why get rid of Senor Fred? Clearly, the DFO weren't happy about the Dream's oh-for-three again in the Finals. (They had to pay for a game in Gwinnett that they were probably going to lose. That cost money.) That 25 percent or so shooting game in Game One of the Eastern Semifinals might have sealed Williams's fate right there.
The fact is, in basketball a team can get lucky in a short three-game series and more so in the WNBA because there's more parity there than in the NBA. The Noll-Scully Index for the league this year was 1.88 - much better than 2012's 2.49 or 2011's 2.30. (As a matter of fact, 1.88 is the weighted average Noll-Scully across all 17 seasons.)
Not a single team in the league finished with less than 10 wins. The last time that happened was in 2009, the most competitive season in WNBA history.
So with so much parity (relatively speaking for basketball), the Dream escaped the first round alive when Washington handed Game 2 right back to them and the Fever choked. The DFO should have been happy that Senor Fred even got as far as the Finals; it wasn't as if anyone thought the Dream had a chance anyway.
Why was he fired? Who knows? Williams was a player's coach, and sometimes it showed. McCoughtry playing one-on-four against the Lynx in the paint. Thomas jacking up shots less than 10 seconds into the shot clock.
The problem the DFO have is that the current configuration of the Dream won't work with anyone but a player's coach. I suspect that Williams was more McCoughtry's traveling confidante/psychiatrist than anything else. The Dream were playing smart ball the first 11 games of the season; then Lyttle got hurt and it was back to the same old McCoughtry-vs-the-world gameplan.
You could get Corey Gaines as our new coach, I suppose. Hey, the Dream wouldn't even have to play defense under him! But who wants that?
As someone said on RebKell, there are three scenarios that could explain why Williams had to eat boot.
1) "Pump and dump": The owner of the Golden State Warriors has been talking about getting a WNBA franchise to match his NBA toy. However, he doesn't want an expansion franchise that will stink up the joint for 10 years (see: Lynx). So he's in the market for a experienced franchise with talent.
Therefore, the Brock/Loeffler team are going to make one last push. They'll spend what they're allowed to and connive as much as they can. If the team can't win with Williams, they'll get a new coach and a deeper bench to make that push. Maybe another conference championship.
Then, when the Dream stock is high again, they call Mr. Golden State. He offers them a couple of million dollars for their losses over the years and guess what? We have the California Dream. (Hint: if the new coach is Jenny Boucek, players should start looking for apartments in Oakland.)
2) McCoughtry left for Europe and her Turkish season sometime around Thursday. She had a hand in getting rid of one coach, why not get rid of a second one before the European season starts? When Meadors lost her power struggle with McCoughtry, that meant that McCoughtry ran the team in the eyes of the DFO. McCoughtry - never one to blame herself - might have put a bug in Brock or Loeffler's ear.
"Hey, if Williams wasn't our head coach, we could have won." Dolchstoss!
3) It could be that frankly, the DFO is tired of McCoughtry's bullshit.
There are three constants over these three finals - Erika de Souza, Armintie Herrington, and McCoughtry. We got in a new coach; nothing changed. More finals failure. If it's not the coach's fault, then it must be the players.
So who do you get rid of? You get rid of the biggest pain-in-the-ass, McCoughtry. (It's not like we're selling tickets because of her, anyway.) Willliams's dismissal gets rid of her defender. The new coach (whoever that is) is told to deal McCoughtry off. I bet Bill Laimbeer is pounding his pillow at night in frustration, swearing because he has no player of McCoughtry's caliber to deal. Of course, if the Libs get the #1 pick...then he'd get Charles, who isn't the PITA that McCoughtry is.
The idea is that the old order doesn't work, so you blow crap up. No one is safe. Not Williams, not McCoughtry, not nobody. We get a new coach and a brand new team after all the parts are dealt. (Hey, why not get Laimbeer as head coach? He'll call a few friends!)
What do I think about Fred Williams? I think he's a great guy. I think that under the right circumstances, he's a great coach. (Although he's definitely laid back.) He can evaluate talent. With the right mix of players, he's just as capable a head coach as anyone out there.
He's a great person. Easy to talk to. I'll miss him, definitely.
I suspect that Julie Plank is going to be offered the baton next. Rumor I heard was that Fred Williams was let go because Tulsa started asking about Julie Plank and the Dream didn't want another Carol Ross situation to happen. Don't know what Julie Plank is like. I might have the chance to find out.
SIDE RANT: The 2013 Lynx finished 1.377 standard deviations above the mean in the regular season. That won't even get you into the Top 14 WNBA teams of all time, and yet Minnesota's fans talk as if Minnesota is the 1927 Murderer's Row. Sorry, but you need a lot deeper bench and you need to play against a lot tougher competition to be considered a dynasty. (Furthermore, if Minnesota is so great, how did they lose to Indiana in 2012 in four games? The Fever finished fourth overall in the WNBA and no WNBA team to win a championship had ever finished so low overall.)
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