Cheryl Miller's All-Star Coaching Gig Is a Full-Circle Moment for Women's Hoops

The basketball icon will lead Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese in their All-Star matchup against Team USA.

Miller will lead the WNBA All-Stars against Team USA in Saturday night's main event. / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

PHOENIX — Cheryl Miller wants to be clear. Her decision to coach at the WNBA All-Star Game is not meant to be the start of a comeback. The basketball legend says that she has no interest in returning to coaching, so much so that when she first got the call about this weekend, she was ready to shut it down as soon as she heard the word coach. “I was like, no, I don’t want to coach,” Miller laughed. “I don’t want to get back into coaching.” But she kept listening and decided that if she was going to make an exception, it might as well be this. 

“I mean, what coach on the planet wouldn’t want to be in this situation?” Miller said. “How cool is this?”

Miller’s group of All-Stars will play against Team USA on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET. That will put her on the sidelines for the first All-Star game for rookie luminaries Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, and it will allow her to participate in what has been a transformative season for the league, with significant bumps in viewership and gate revenue and a new media deal waiting in the wings. “Holy smokes, what an opportunity,” Miller said. But her players may be even more excited than she is.

“Just to be in the same gym with her and on the same sideline is an honor,” Connecticut Sun forward DeWanna Bonner said of Miller. “All of this is because of her. She started this.”

Miller, 60, never played in the WNBA. Her playing career ended due to knee injuries years before the league was launched. But what she did in high school in Riverside, Calif., and in college at USC was enough to solidify her as one of the most electric talents in the history of the game. Miller was among the first women to become a true national star and household name as a basketball player. (She was also the first women’s player on the cover of Sports Illustrated.) She was too early to help build the WNBA. Yet she was one of the most pivotal figures in laying the groundwork for it. She eventually spent four seasons coaching in the league. But she has not held any formal position in the WNBA since she left the Phoenix Mercury in 2000. That makes this All-Star weekend feel like a rare chance for modern players not just to learn from her, but to get to know her as a person, rather than a figure in the record books. 

“Her personality just radiates,” Clark said. “Being around her just makes you smile. She’s just such a cool human.”

Miller has gotten the opportunity to work with young WNBA stars like Clark, many of whom are too young to have ever seen the former USC star play. / Patrick Breen/The Republic / USA TODAY

Her All-Star roster is too young to have seen Miller play. (The oldest player in the group, 36-year-old Bonner, was born the year after Miller graduated from USC.) But they know how good she was. They can tell by looking at her even now. 

“You can just tell that she was a hooper,” said New York Liberty center Jonquel Jones. “Even before knowing who she is, you could just look at her and be like, there’s something about her.”

The league has changed dramatically since Miller was last on the sidelines. When she was coaching, for instance, a team having its own practice facility was unthinkable. Earlier this week, Miller attended the grand opening of the Phoenix Mercury’s new $100-million, 58,000-square-foot practice space. “This amazing facility, just for women,” Miller marveled. “Just for women.” That change has been slow in some ways—decades in the making—and very fast in others. In the space of just a few seasons, players have seen their working conditions transform, with long-time headaches such as flying commercial finally disappearing. And that shift has enhanced their sense of gratitude for those who came before them.   

“What she’s done for us and paved the way for us to even be here, we’re eternally grateful for,” Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell said of Miller. “And I think we can do right by her by competing as best as we can.”

That last part certainly is not lost on her players. The WNBA traditionally did not host an All-Star weekend during Olympic years. (The league goes on break for several weeks to allow players to join their national teams.) But that changed with the Tokyo Games in 2021: The WNBA structured the weekend as something of an Olympic send-off, with a game between the national team and the remaining All-Stars, and it brought that format back this year. The arrangement is naturally a bit spicier than the average exhibition. It’s Team USA’s first time playing together since the Olympic squad was named in June, a significant opportunity to build chemistry, get reps and tinker with rotations before they head to Paris. And it’s a chance for the All-Stars to prove they can hang with the Olympians. 

“I was excited—like, really, really excited,” Miller said of deciding to take the coaching gig. “Until I found out the team I’m coaching wants to beat the brakes off the Olympic team. I’m like, okay, pressure’s on. Now we’ve got a game, folks.”