Locked on Women’s Basketball: A new era in WNBA front offices

It’s time for another episode of the Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast. In this episode, host Jackie Powell is joined by not one, but two guests to discuss the ongoing changes to WNBA front offices and coaching staffs. The Next’s Connecticut Sun beat reporter Jacqueline LeBlanc joins in the wake of the Sun hiring Stephanie White as their next head coach. Washington Mystics beat reporter Jenn Hatfield joins just days after it was announced that Mike Thibault would step away from coaching and remain solely as the team’s general manager.

Jacqueline on how the Sun need to approach filling their open general manager role:

I definitely don’t have a list of general manager candidates. I thought Maria [Giovannetti, Mystics assistant GM] was going to be at the top of the list. Maybe she possibly was until the Mystics kind of decided to lock her in, I’d be very curious. Clare [Duwelius, Minnesota assistant GM] is definitely someone who I’ve read about. But just kind of thinking about the decision that kind of lies in front of this new general manager, of course there’s this offseason … But I just think [the] big overarching question that the general manager will have to think about is, how will they cement this franchise’s future?

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Jenn on why Eric Thibault made sense as the successor to his father Mike:

He makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. He’s come up under Mike Thibault … learning the ins and outs that way. It’s basically like an expert-level apprenticeship that he’s been under ever since he was interning with his dad’s Connecticut Sun team … Eric has learned so much under Mike, and Mike says Eric is a better coach at his current age of 35 than Mike was.

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