Vickie Johnson Introduced As Next Dallas Wings Head Coach, Becoming Only Active Black Female Head Coach In WNBA

At last week’s WNBA Draft Lottery, Dallas Wings president and CEO Greg Bibb maintained that he was not looking for marked change in the direction of the team with his next head coach.

While that may be true of the building process to get Dallas back to the playoffs, the hire was remarkable because of who Bibb installed as coach as well as the opportunity in front of the new coach and the franchise as a whole going forward.

Vickie Johnson, a 23-year veteran of the WNBA as a player and coach, was introduced Wednesday as the next head coach of the Wings as the franchise looks to potentially accelerate its building process in 2021.

While the move to Johnson from Brian Agler is significant for the team’s future, it is also significant for the WNBA more broadly. Johnson became only the second active former WNBA player to be a head coach in the league (Phoenix’s Sandy Brondello is the other) as well as the only Black woman head coach in a league whose players are 80 percent Black.

“I have been where these players are trying to go,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s very important for me as a Black woman to be a role model for the Black athletes in our league but also for the white athletes as well, for all players.”

Johnson will take over a Wings team that finished just on the outside of the playoffs in 2020 and has two promising cornerstones in Arike Ogunbowale and Satou Sabally who fit nicely together and improved over the course of the season. 

“The thing that I love about this team is the passion they have, the willingness to get better,” Johnson said. 

While Johnson outlined specific goals such as leading the league in pace and developing an identity centered on defense, she also admitted she’d bring a light touch to her role.

“The most important thing I have learned through my experience of coaching is allow these players to be who they are,” Johnson said. 

Since taking the position, Johnson has spoken with various players and made a point to let them know they “are enough” and can be great. A league source commended Johnson’s “easy-going” nature as one of her best attributes as a coach and one that would serve her well in her second go-round in the WNBA.

In 2016, Johnson replaced Dan Hughes as head coach of the San Antonio Stars in what would be the franchise’s last season in Texas. That experience taught her to trust her instincts, she said Wednesday, as well as to be a more attentive listener with her players. 

An interview a short while later, when the Wings last had a head coach opening, was also instructive in Johnson’s career. A Dallas native, she was attracted to working with the organization and kept it in mind even as Agler was hired over her and she joined the Las Vegas Aces’ coaching staff under Bill Laimbeer.

Around the WNBA, calls for more opportunities for former players and Black women generally reached a peak in 2020. A source close to the Wings noted to me that it was a priority this time around to consider a large and diverse set of candidates. That made it a logical partnership between Johnson and Wings team president Greg Bibb this time around, potentially a course correction from the previous hiring process.

“A former player for me was at the top of the priority list,” Bibb told reporters Wednesday. “And then having known Vickie a little bit, watched her from afar, I’ve always been impressed how she goes about her job. I understand the level of respect she has in our league, not only amongst her coaching peer group, but also the players.”

In particular, Bibb highlighted how during her first run as a head coach, Johnson handled a challenging environment in the final year of the Stars organization and still made the team better. The humility to then join Laimbeer’s coaching staff as an assistant in the same organization (which relocated) that she had just run was admirable as well, Bibb said.

In many ways, that it took so long for Johnson to get back to a head coaching role in the WNBA is evidence of the structural imbalance present even in a league that is so proudly diverse among its 144 players. Around sports, Black coaches tend to be less likely to get a second chance if they lose their first head coaching job, even if they remain more qualified than other candidates. Recent offseasons have seen accomplished Black female decision-makers like Pokey Chatman, Amber Stocks and Penny Toler lose jobs in the WNBA and not find work afterward.

This places greater scrutiny on the hire of Johnson, though it appears she readily accepts that attention and will build it into how she approaches her new job in Dallas.