Derek Fisher Reportedly Hired as Head Coach of WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks

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The Los Angeles Sparks announced they have hired former NBA point guard Derek Fisher to be their next head coach.

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN first reported the news.

Fisher played 18 NBA seasons with five teams and most notably started for the Los Angeles Lakers during their NBA championship stretch from 1999-2000 to 2001-02.

Fisher retired in 2014 and was hired as the New York Knicks head coach. The Knicks fired him midway through the 2015-16 season after he amassed a 40-96 record.

Since then, he’s worked as a television broadcaster on TNT for national NBA broadcasts and Spectrum SportsNet for Lakers games.

Fisher replaces Brian Agler, who resigned on November 30 after four seasons of leading the Sparks. During Agler’s tenure, the Sparks made the playoffs four straight years and the WNBA Finals twice, winning in 2016.

Fisher has some work to do to get the Sparks back to their championship glory days. The Sparks regressed in 2018 as the 19-15 squad finished sixth out of 12 teams and was knocked out in the second round.

Los Angeles does have a solid core with Candace Parker, Nneka Ogwumike and Chelsea Gray leading the way, with Parker having one of the more decorated resumes in basketball today.

However, the days of a couple of teams dominating the WNBA landscape year after year (a la the Sparks and Minnesota Lynx in the past) appear to be over with there being more parity in the top half of the conference.

While the Seattle Storm led the league with a 26-8 record en route to a Finals win, they were nearly picked off by the Phoenix Mercury in the semifinals. The second-through-seventh-placed teams all had one more win than the next team in their group in succession. In other words, the Sparks aren’t getting many easy breaks on their schedule barring a seismic change in the WNBA landscape.

Given that it’s a smaller league with 12 teams, the squads in each city are packed with talent as opposed to other leagues where the star players are more dispersed. The competition makes it tougher for Fisher, although his extensive basketball resume could be a huge asset for the team.

Furthermore, he’s no longer locked into running a system that his team’s president of basketball operations forced him to execute, which was the case in New York with Phil Jackson and the triangle.