CHICAGO — Tyler Marsh wasn’t sure it would be the right year.
Marsh has wanted to be a head coach for as long as he can remember. But he was happy with his role as an assistant coach for the Las Vegas Aces — and his mentorship under former WNBA Coach of the Year Becky Hammon.
So every call Marsh received from a WNBA team this offseason was based on curiosity, not complacency. He knew what he was looking for in a new team. And by the end of his first call with Chicago Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca, Marsh began to feel like he had found the right opportunity.
“I wasn’t in a position where I felt like I had to rush into a head coaching job,” Marsh said. “I was very transparent about it and I knew that for me to leave, it had to be with an organization and a situation under the right leadership that had to make sense for me. It had to be a good fit, and that’s what I felt in Chicago.
After hiring Marsh as their third head coach in three years, the Sky want to leave the coaching carousel for good. The last two seasons have been marked by the sudden mid-season departure of James Wade in 2023 and an unsuccessful debut by Teresa Weatherspoon this year, with the upheaval leaving the team struggling to find a foothold in the league landscape. league.
Pagliocca said he is committed to building a long-term future with Marsh. And despite the team’s recent history, Marsh said he didn’t need any assurance of longevity to buy the Sky. He felt a connection with Pagliocca that reminded him of his first conversation with Hammon — a shared vision for how a team and a franchise could move forward.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about building the culture of who we want the Sky to be and what pieces, what people, what personalities fit that mold,” Marsh said. “We aligned a lot on how we perceived the treatment of people.
“It was just a connection between the way we perceive life and the way we perceive people and communication. Once you connect on that level, the basketball part kind of becomes second nature.
Marsh was impressed by aspects of Sky’s identity last season: effort, intensity, fearlessness. Individual players knew who they wanted to become in this league, but they lacked the mechanisms to make that vision a reality.
That gives Marsh a simple task in his first season: build a plan for success in Chicago.
So what does it look like? Marsh doesn’t want to open his playbook to the public just yet, but the big picture is already coming into focus.
Shooting is a major concern. The Sky took the fewest 3-pointers in the WNBA last season — 14.9 per game, barely half the volume of the league-leading New York Liberty. And the Sky didn’t make up for that disparity elsewhere on the field, finishing with the second-worst field goal percentage in the league (41.8%).
Addressing this weakness will start through free agency and the draft, as Marsh and Pagliocca work in tandem to form a stronger shooting group. Marsh described his approach to scouting the stacked 2025 draft class as being “all hands on deck.”
Besides improving the backcourt, Marsh has another big task: maximizing the potential of Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese.
Both 2024 first-round picks were out of town for Marsh’s introduction Tuesday: Cardoso in Shanghai while playing in the Chinese Women’s Basketball Association, Reese in Miami as she prepares for the season without rival. But Marsh said he was encouraged by early conversations with the two players, whom he called “cornerstones” of the franchise.
“They’re convinced,” Marsh said. “They want to be great. They’re not just in the WNBA. They want to be a force to be reckoned with. And I think they’re a tandem that can definitely continue to do great things in this league.
Although both earned All-Rookie honors last season, Cardoso and Reese often found themselves flattened into one-dimensional versions of themselves on the court. They relied heavily on their strengths in rebounding and working the low post while struggling to finish from point-blank range, create movement with the ball, or connect with guards for post-ups.
Marsh wants to change that. He views Cardoso and Reese as more fluid players than last season might have indicated. A key part of his vision is to use both as active facilitators in the paint, opening up the linebackers with their passing and capitalizing on the 6-foot-7 Cardoso’s high level of mobility despite his size.
“They both have the ability to be multidimensional,” Marsh said. “We want them to be effective in different phases of the game while showcasing the strengths of what they do.”
Wealth of mentors
Experience was a key factor for Pagliocca and the front office throughout the coaching search.
Weatherspoon’s short-lived tenure was marked by a lack of discipline and strategic nuance that left veteran players openly frustrated and the locker room in disarray. The disconnect was visible on the court, where the Sky often ran half-baked offensive sets that underutilized Cardoso and Reese while completely ignoring the 3-point arc.
Still, while experience is a major criterion for the job, Pagliocca feels confident in his decision to hire a first-time head coach – thanks in part to the coaching talent Marsh has been surrounded by for 12 years as an assistant in the G League, NBA and WNBA.
“He really brings a wealth of experience,” Pagliocca said, “and not just experience, but he really played a pivotal and vital role in helping bring championships to these organizations.”
Prior to his three-year tenure with the Aces under Hammon, Marsh worked for two of the NBA’s most prominent coaches, Rick Carlisle of the Indiana Pacers (2020-22) and Nick Nurse of the Toronto Raptors (2018-20), who is now the coach of Philadelphia. Coach of the 76ers. While Marsh primarily served as a player development coach, his responsibilities included scouting and game design – two areas Pagliocca highlighted as fundamental to hiring.
Marsh knows what traits from his mentors he wants to adopt as a first-time head coach.
The intrepid nurse employed to innovate his personnel adaptation projects, quickly earned him respect as one of the most adaptive coaches in the NBA.
The skill with which Carlisle exploited mismatches on both ends of the court to keep opponents uncomfortable from buzzer to buzzer.
The way Hammon bridged gaps within his locker room to forge deep bonds with players, resulting in fierce loyalty on and off the field.
And Marsh has another mentor to lean on: his father, Donnie.
Family foundation
Donnie Marsh has been coaching college basketball since 1980, including as Division I head coach at Florida International (2000-04) and Alabama A&M (2017-18). He rarely misses watching a game Tyler coached – in the G League, the NBA and now the WNBA.
And Tyler usually calls his dad on the way home from the arena, discussing what went well and what didn’t, hatching a plan to learn from a loss.
Tyler doesn’t always agree with his father. They have been locked in the same debate throughout their careers. Donnie is a defense-oriented coach. Tyler embraces the new realities of high-volume filming. And neither will budge from their opinion.
“Those days of 50- and 60-point games that he’s used to — yeah, those days are gone,” Tyler joked. “We want to score and we want to score a lot. It’s a good exchange we have from time to time.
Donnie and the entire Marsh family traveled to Chicago from Birmingham, Alabama, for Tyler’s presentation Tuesday at Wintrust Arena, taking turns entertaining Tyler’s 2-year-old son Jaxxon in the back row of the press conference. Whenever Tyler needed to, he could glance at Donnie in the crowd, recalling the foundations of how he hopes to behave – as a coach, as a father, and as a man .
Marsh knows who he wants to be as a head coach. He’s not the type to raise his voice. His level-headed nature is one of the main traits highlighted by those who have worked with him in all three leagues. This will be a significant change for Sky – and the front office believes it will benefit the development of new and veteran players.
For all the promise of last season, the Sky are a team still searching for an identity – and the players are hungry for it. In their early conversations with Marsh, veterans such as Rachel Banham emphasized their desire to build a rigorous structure for a disciplined culture.
“I told him right away: I’m a child of culture,” Banham said. “I believe the culture of a team is extremely important.”
But it also means Marsh must balance his reserved demeanor with an immediate need to instill discipline. That was a weakness last season for a young team led by a nascent coaching staff. Former Sky goalie Marina Mabrey, for example, noted a big improvement in her professionalism when she joined the Connecticut Sun after a midseason trade in July.
“A disciplined team is like a team that doesn’t fight,” Marsh said. “If you want to lose, you better lose because the other team is simply better than you that night, not because you robbed yourself of a win.
“For us, especially with such a young team, it’s the level of professionalism that we approach on a daily basis.”
Forging this new level of professionalism will be the ultimate challenge for Marsh as he attempts to get the Sky back on track as a WNBA contender.
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