The Liberty nearly reached the WNBA finals last year. Halfway through this season they’re not even close to .500.
The plunge cost coach Pat Coyle her job.
With the team 6-11, the Liberty fired Coyle on Friday and promoted Anne Donovan to interim coach. Coyle had been the coach since the middle of the 2004 season.
“I just felt with a full half of a season left perhaps a new voice would jump-start us to get us game by game out of the hole,” Liberty president and general manager Carol Blazejowski said.
The Liberty play at Atlanta on Saturday, the start of a five-game road trip, and don’t return home until Aug. 14.
“Anne is a proven winner,” Blazejowski said. “The learning curve was here with her when she came to this job, in terms of learning the personnel, learning the tendencies, learning the offensive and defensive sets.”
The change came a day after New York lost its third straight game, 78-75 at home to Washington. The Liberty trailed 34-12 after one quarter.
“The first quarter is a quarter last night I just would love to forget,” Blazejowski said during a conference call. “But after that, when you see the fight and the toughness and the execution, and all the things I believed this team was about from the start of the year is what we proved in the last three quarters. … That still gives me hope and promise.”
Blazejowski wouldn’t pin the latest loss as the deciding factor for the dismissal.
“It was a long, thought-out process, a tough GM moment for me, one of the most difficult decisions in my career,” she said.
New York has lost three straight for the third time this season and is last in the Eastern Conference. The Liberty are a half game behind defending champion Detroit, which beat New Yorkl by two points in the decisive Game 3 of the conference finals last year.
The Liberty are 7½ games behind first-place Indiana and two behind Atlanta and Chicago for the fourth and final playoff spot in the East. They trail second-place Washington by 3½ games.
“When you look at that and you still have 17 games remaining, I just feel let’s make our run,” Blazejowski said.
She wouldn’t single out any one reason for the team’s struggles this season.
“I think consistency, slow starts, and some individual performances of some of our players haven’t quite been to the level of last year,” Blazejowski said. “It’s a combination of things. We’re all responsible for where we are today.”
Donovan joined the Liberty as an assistant this season after leading the U.S. women to a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. She was 138-128 as a WNBA coach with Indiana, Charlotte and Seattle. She left as the Storm’s coach and director of player personnel after the 2007 season. Donovan was 93-77 in five seasons with the Storm, leading them to the league title in 2004.
Coyle was hired as an assistant in 1998 and took over when Richie Adubato was fired near the midpoint of the 2004 season. She led the Liberty to an 11-7 mark the rest of that season and a second-place finish. They beat Detroit in the first round before losing to Connecticut in the conference finals. Coyle was hired on a permanent basis that offseason and compiled an 81-90 record.
The Liberty will be looking to hire an assistant but Blazejowski wouldn’t disclose any candidates.