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Nicki Collen leaves Atlanta Dream for Baylor Bears – how did we get here?

Photo Credit: Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images

With 10 days to go prior to the tip off of the 2021 WNBA season, we were somewhat expecting that the only major news to be on the lookout for would be training camp cuts as our 12 teams finalize their 11- or 12-woman rosters.

But sometimes when one is traveling on a long interstate en route to that destination, one spots something someone was not expecting to see. Such as a stalled car in the middle of the road. Or a collapsed bridge.

Or a wild bear.

Here is the thing – we were close to reaching that destination on May 14 with the WNBA waters relatively tranquil. But as the W teaches us time and time again, if the waters are tranquil they are perhaps too tranquil.

With 10 days before tip off, Nicki Collen, formerly the head coach of the Atlanta Dream stunned the women’s basketball world by announcing that she would be going west to the Lone Star State and becoming the head coach of the women’s basketball program at Baylor University.

The same Baylor where Kim Mulkey recently left to go to LSU after 24 seasons and three national championships in Waco.

The Dream announced that Mike Petersen will assume interim coaching duties.

How does all of this happen? It may very well go back to the mid-2010s when Baylor was embroiled in a sexual assault scandal involving its football program. It was the very scandal that cost former football coach Art Briles his job and why his name is forever associated with that scandal.

According to a recent report out of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Mulkey’s falling out with Baylor began when Briles was fired. She clearly did not think Baylor should have let go of Briles and that sentiment was solidified in many of her controversial public comments she made surrounding the scandal. It eventually led to Baylor hiring its first woman president in Linda Livingstone (replacing Ken Starr…yes, THAT Ken Starr) and Mack Rhoades replacing Ian McCaw as director of athletics.

Mulkey later apologized for those comments, but her having many a Karen moment since then should indicate that the apology was probably half-hearted.

In 2017, the Dream announced a change in its front office when the organization had hired former Connecticut Sun executive Chris Sienko to be its team president and general manager. The 2017 season would also be the final season of Michael “Showtime” Cooper’s tenure as Atlanta’s head coach. The Dream had made three previous Finals – all with Angel McCoughtry as the team’s on-court leader but none during the Cooper era.

After the 2017 season, a change was in order at the Dream’s coaching position. Collen, previously an assistant to Curt Miller in Connecticut, went south on I-95, then west on I-20 to the ATL to reunite with Sienko at the Dream.

Speaking of Miller, this is what he said to the media following a recent Connecticut scrimmage with the New York Liberty.

The 2018 season was a successful one for the ATL’s resident WNBA team. The team came within one victory shy over the Washington Mystics shy of returning to the Finals only to see Elena Delle Donne and company dash Atlanta’s championship…well…dreams in five games. Collen was also named the 2018 WNBA Coach of the Year.

A few months later, Mulkey had coached a Baylor team that included Chloe Jackson and current Dream Kalani Brown to another national championship – the Bears’ third national title in the Mulkey era. As that Star Telegram article proved, Mulkey still was coaching while beefing with athletics brass over the Briles ouster and a new basketball arena Baylor wanted to build in downtown Waco as opposed to remaining on the Baylor campus. There was also an issue on if the venue should have been named after Mulkey.

As for Atlanta, Collen, Sienko and the Dream began realizing the reality of what the team looked like without McCoughtry – and a rebuild was in order. Or for Sienko, a reload.

Sienko engineered moves prior to the 2020 season that lured in Glory Johnson and Kalani Brown to don Dream colors. Fittingly, a pair of ex-Connecticut Sun in Courtney Williams and Shekinna Stricklen also joined ATL’s ranks.

While Collen may have departed the Big Peach with a 38-52 record, she won only 15 games between the 2019 season where the Dream returned to State Farm Arena after two seasons at Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion and the 2020 season in the bubble. By the way, that 2020 season saw McCoughtry return to the Finals – this time alongside A’ja Wilson with the Las Vegas Aces.

Those were not the only moves Sienko engineered over his Atlanta tenure. He was behind the drafting of Chennedy Carter out of Texas A&M with the fourth overall pick in the 2020 draft. He was behind the selection of Aari McDonald out of Arizona with the third overall pick in this year’s draft. He also brought in other veteran players such as Odyssey Sims, Tianna Hawkins, Cheyenne Parker and Yvonne Turner.

That 2020 season was notably tumultuous for Atlanta as they were dealing with the Kelly Loeffler situation where she made critical comments that were anti-Black Lives Matter. Dream players were at the forefront of the Loeffler backlash as they and others from the WNBA backed her opponent in that year’s Georgia senate race – Raphael Warnock.

Warnock later won in a January runoff – and that victory also led to Loeffler and Mary Brock officially selling the Dream to a new ownership group that included Larry Gottesdiener, Suzanne Abair and ex-Atlanta Dream Renee Montgomery (who won two championships with the Minnesota Lynx).

One of the first moves made by the new ownership group immediately off the bat was the announcement of Brooklyn Cartwright as the Dream’s new Director of Basketball Operations. That move, while significant, appeared to be relatively pedestrian compared to when Atlanta announced during one of its recent media availability sessions that Sienko had been let go as general manager – the week following the draft.

As attached at the hip as Sienko and Collen are going back to the Connecticut days, one had to believe this was a move that could have foretold a departure of Collen as coach. The conventional wisdom could have been that Collen would have been let go after the season if Atlanta had a 2021 similar to 2019 and 2020, making 2018 look more like a McCoughtry-induced mirage.

The Sienko departure coupled with the hiring of Cartwright also made it crystal clear that the rearranging of the deck chairs at the Dream’s front office was well underway under the new ownership group. Who knows what went through Collen’s mind when the Sienko news broke. Was she thinking about her job security? Was she thinking that the ownership group was slowly but surely wanting to get rid of anyone within the front office that were holdovers from the Loeffler/Brock era? Who knows, but given how connected she is with Sienko, his firing had to have her thinking about what her long term future was in the ATL.

Then…another unusual sight happened on that interstate in the form of a wild tiger.

Mulkey took her damn mask off and had something to say for the first time as head coach at LSU – in her home state of Louisiana. This meant that the Baylor job was open – and Collen obviously wanted the Baylor job.

There was speculation that one of the suitors for that job was current Georgia coach Joni Taylor – also the wife of Dream assistant coach Darius Taylor. Baylor may not have lured the UGA coach to Waco, but the Bears apparently had Georgia on its mind when making its coaching announcement.

What does this mean? In the short term, it means Petersen will be the interim coach, but something tells us Atlanta will still conduct a search for its next full-time coach. The Dream could either let the early part of the season play out to see if Petersen is the right person for the job or announce a coach sometime either during or after the season.

As wild as this story was, we would not be surprised if the Dream announced its new full-time coach on the eve of May 14 when Atlanta christens its new Gateway Center Arena home by taking on the team that, ironically, its two most high-profile executives had departed to head to the Peach State – the Connecticut Sun.

As for Collen and Baylor, she may have been thinking that the grass was greener in Waco. Perhaps she felt this season would more closely resemble 2019 or 2020 and had thoughts about her job security – especially after Sienko’s surprising ouster.

The reality is being a coach in college is very much different than being at the helm of a pro team where players are paid to play (even at still relatively meager WNBA salaries). LSU is throwing ~$24 million at Mulkey over an eight-year contract. Who knows how many Brinks trucks Baylor showed Collen.

In the pros, as Collen has found out threw her time with the Sun and Dream, a coach’s success is determined by how a team assembles a roster through trades, the draft and free agency. In college, it is about how a team recruits out of high school as well as attracts players in that are looking to transfer from other schools. Also in college, who the coach is could be more important than the program itself (look at Vic Schaefer and Texas), which is why Mulkey is expected to have lots of success even if she is at LSU instead of Baylor.

Say what one wants about Mulkey because of her questionable societal views, the truth of the matter is she can coach – the three natties she won at Baylor are proof positive of that. It is because of that track record that wherever she goes, recruits are sure to be not too far behind.

Collen was an assistant at the collegiate level before she became an assistant with Connecticut, but she has yet to have a job this high-profile and this highly competitive at the college level. This is uncharted territory for Collen. She may find out quick that the grass may not always be greener (even if the money) is on that other side but part of her pitch to would-be recuits could be the prestige of the Baylor program (built under Mulkey) and that she has WNBA experience.

Something else to consider is the overall state of Baylor culture. Mulkey fit Baylor’s culture like a glove. One wonders if it will be so seamless to transition from a progressive WNBA culture to one at Baylor that over the years has proven itself to be not so progressive.

The Petrino in question refers to former Atlanta Falcons coach Bobby Petrino, who in the 2007 NFL season bolted from the ATL to the Arkansas Razorbacks after a 3-10 start to that season. Petrino’s time in Fayetteville did not end on tranquil waters as he would end up in a motorcycle crash which he revaled he had a secret tryst with an ex-Razorbacks volleyball player.

No matter how one slices it, it is not a good look for Collen to bolt her team approximately two weeks prior to the start of the season especially if the move was made in part because she had concerns about her job security following Sienko. And it is not a good look for the WNBA if it wants to promote stability and readying up for expansion. A coach leaving a WNBA around two weeks before the start of the season for a possibly better-paying college job? As much as we talk about the state of WNBA player salaries, what about those for coaches?

What makes it worse is within Collen gone, it is another woman coach departing the W. When the Dallas Wings hired Vickie Johnson during the offseason, it was a step in the right direction for getting more women head coaches (as well as Black women head coaches) in the WNBA. Collen’s departure means only Johnson, Reeve, Marianne Stanley (Indiana Fever) and Sandy Brondello (Phoenix Mercury) remain as women coaches – unless, of course, the Dream decide to hire a woman to be Collen’s full-time replacement.

Outside of Johnson, there are also only two other Black head coaches in the W in Derek Fisher (Los Angeles Sparks) and James Wade (Chicago Sky).

Also, one never wants to be the coach that replaces THE coach. Because of the track record built by Mulkey, there will be lots of pressure for Collen to live up to the Mulkey standard – just as in the WNBA, there will be lots of pressure to live up to the standard of whoever replaces Cheryl Reeve whenever she decides to call it a career.

Speaking of Reeve’s team, the Minnesota Lynx, the news had to be even more jarring given how the Dream were in a scrimmage against Reeve’s Lynx – and won it. Both Collen and the Dream are hoping that wins (and windmills) are aplenty in their respective new futures.

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