Friday , 24 May 2013

Atlanta Dream fire GM/head coach Marynell Meadors, owners give in to McCoughtry?

Posted by: Jānis Kacēns 2012-08-27 23:21 in Featured, WNBA

WNBA’s Atlanta Dream has announced that team’s general manager and head coach Marynell Meadors has been fired (or “replaced” in their release), assistant coach Fred Williams has been promoted to head coach and general manager.

News were originally broken by University of Connecticut and USA National Team head coach Geno Auriemma with this tweet:

(He misspelled her name and she’s not on twitter)

It doesn’t require much to see that this revolves around Angel McCoughtry, who sat out two games last week for “personal reasons”. Even with McCoughtry available on Saturday she saw just bench player’s minutes.

Maybe you can read that tweet otherwise, but it seems to suggest that the owners were forced to choose between the inmate (McCoughtry) and Meadors.

One can easily see why such decision would be made in that situation. Coaches are easier to replace than star players. Fans don’t go to watch the coaches they go to watch the players. Had they shipped McCoughtry or had she decided to sit out the rest of the season, Atlanta would see a decrease in attendance which right now is 1800 under the league average (only Tulsa and Chicago are worse).

In the press release by the Dream, Williams said that the team will continue to play as they did under Meadors. What no one else right now can predict is what will happen in the Dream locker room. Are the players behind this move or has McCoughtry split the locker room?

As for Meadors, Washington Mystics could certainly use someone like her, having shown that she, at least, is competent in combining coaching with general manager duties.

 

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  • Kandra Booten

    Crazy

  • Pepe Matanza

    Remember Angel’s tweet about Ratgeber being a racist…

  • George Miller

    I love Angel McCoughtry. There are times where she can be an almost unstoppable offensive player, and, to her credit, she works hard on defense. With that said, there are other times she forces the issue on offense, taking shots from outside even when she’s clearly not on – she is a streak shooter at best, and ignoring her teammates, getting away from the team concept on offense.

    I don’t know what her beef was with Coach Meadors, but if Marynell told her to stop “hogging the ball”, then that’s what she should have told her. Tamika Catchings, Diana Taurasi, and Seimone Augustus are great players who can take over a game; but they also can play within the flow of the game, trust their teammates to do their part, and can be the “go to” player in the final minutes of a game if they need to be.

    McCoughtry came off the bench for the Olympic team. She played well, but it was well within the team concept. She actually passed the ball well, and was selective with her shots. In fact, a lot of her points came off steals and offensive rebounds and put backs. If Angel had deviated from the team concept, she would have had a permanent seat on the bench, because Geno Auriemma wouldn’t have put up with her foolishness.

    Fred Williams shouldn’t either. Yes, as a star player, Angel has to be somewhat assertive, but she also needs to mature to the point of making her teammates better. If she does, Atlanta could do damage again in the playoffs. If she doesn’t, as much as she can bring to the table and as hard as it might be for the Dream to seriously challenge for a championship, she may need to be traded. (Trade her to Tulsa for a chance to get Brittney Griner…, like that’s gonna happen!).

    As it stands, the real star of the Atlanta Dream is Lindsay Harding, who, too many times, takes a back seat to McCoughtry.

    • JamesT32

      Harding is a fine player, but she’s no more the “real” star of the Dream (Katie Smith would perhaps agree with you) than say Candice Dupree is the real star of the Mercury or Kara Lawson is the real star of the Sun. This whole situation of the unceremonious and seemingly odd dismissal of Meadors (shameful for the co-owners to hide behind their silence in failing to give ANY explanation for this firing, but you can get away with that in a league that, sadly, few honestly care about) likely surrounds her plain and simply losing a direct power struggle with McCoughtry and if that’s the case you can bet the underlying reasons are much more unpleasant and deeper-rooted than Angel becoming irked by Meadors wanting her to pass more often. Talented as she is, Angel has something of a rough and tempermental personality that has rubbed more than a few folks the wrong way over time. I have no inside info and could be dead wrong, but my best guess is that at the end of the day these were simply two people who had reached a point where they could barely stand one another anymore and that this has likely been a festering and uncomfortable, if unspoken, circumstance within the Atlanta organization for a good while.

      • George Miller

        I thought better of my comment about “the real star” of the Atlanta Dream, especially after Angel McCoughtry dropped 24 points on Connecticut, playing only half the game. The Sun had no answer for her. (I said she has games where she is unstoppable.) She even had a pretty good all around game passing the basketball. She seemed very happy, very much into the game, even when she was on the bench enthusiastically encouraging her teammates. She truly is a star, and if the maturity continues to compliment the talent…,well, let’s just say that we still could have an exciting season in Atlanta.

        Of course, I still think that Lindsay Harding is the “spoon that stirs the tea”, but, I must also confess that it was less about me being objective and more about me being enraged at McCoughtry. Ironically, I’m probably mad at Angel because I like her, and know the kind of player she could be if she reigned in some of her eccentric ways.

        A championship this year…, only if we don’t run into another “team of destiny”, which Seattle and Minnesota were for the past two years.

        • JamesT32

          Championship this year? That would be a heck of a prediction as, while I could see them coming out of the East despite the mediocre record, Minnesota (yes, they will represent the West again barring a spate of injuries) is a talented, deep, professional, focused, well-coached, machine-like group that is more than likely going to repeat. I honestly believe what you witnessed with them last year, beyond simply a team of destiny, was actually the beginning of a bona fide dynasty, a group that could easily be on the way to winning three or four titles through 2015 if the league keeps breathing that long. They handled Atlanta comfortably last year and there’s no real reason to believe that wouldn’t happen again as they’d be a large favorite just on home-court advantage alone as envisioning the Dream winning a Finals game there with everything on the line is a stretch to say the least.

  • cardman330

    Marynell doesn’t need another job. Carol Ross was the real brains in the ATL.

    • George Miller

      I love Carol Ross, and am glad she got a much deserved head coaching position with LA. Marynell wasn’t “chopped liver”, but clearly Carol had her footprint on the Atlanta Dream while she was here. It sort of says a lot about Meadors to recognize Ross’ talent and give her free reign in the team huddles.

      Marynell would probably still have her job as General Manager if she had let Carol have the job as head coach. Then Carol would have had the job of handling Angel.

      • cardman330

        …and it wouldn’t have been a problem to handle, if Ross were still there.

  • NoahMiller

    Totally agree friends.. Maybe Marynell can find better luck elsewhere …. He needs more capacity .. Luck