LaToya Sanders won a WNBA championship in 2019 as a starting defensive anchor for the Washington Mystics, and when the Atlanta Dream open the Finals against the Golden State Valkyries on Saturday, October 17, she will try to win one from the bench.
Sanders is in her second season as a Dream assistant coach and her fifth as an assistant anywhere. She played professionally for 12 years, seven of them in the WNBA, and she has said it took her 12 years to reach a Finals and 13 to win a title. She said she would love the opportunity to win the championship as both player and coach.
The part of the job nobody sees is the part she runs. Sanders works one on one with Rhyne Howard and Angel Reese, and Reese shot 87.1 percent from the free throw line in these playoffs. Howard said she hopes she can have Sanders for the rest of her career.
Dream head coach Karl Smesko said she is ready to be a head coach right now. She is still an assistant.
Most of the resume was built where American fans were not watching. She won the EuroLeague with UMMC Ekaterinburg in 2018 and represented Turkey at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Mike Thibault, the second-winningest coach in WNBA history, made her an assistant in Washington in 2022 and his associate head coach that November.
She said you sacrifice a lot as a player and you sacrifice a lot as a coach.
