Dan Hughes misses coaching.
When you enjoy something as much as Hughes loves basketball and you have had success doing it, it often is hard to find something to fill the void.
Hughes didn’t fully understand how much he would miss coaching on April 19, 2016, when the WNBA’s San Antonio Stars announced he would step down as general manager and head coach following the season.
The reality hit Hughes in September following the completion of a 7-27 season that saw the Stars finish sixth in the Western Division and miss the playoffs.
But Hughes has found something to fill the void. It turns out his work as a basketball analyst has been a “blessing” that helps him stay in touch with a sport he has been involved with at the college, professional, and Olympic levels.
Hughes will be in Oxford at 3 p.m. today to work with Bob Picozzi on the SEC Network’s broadcast of the game between No. 4 Mississippi State and Ole Miss at The Pavilion at Ole Miss.
“I am very thankful I have a few games I can prepare for,” said Hughes, who did his first broadcast at a high school basketball game in the Cleveland area with longtime Cleveland Cavaliers play-by-play man Joe Tait. “I come at it as a coach. I love it.”
Hughes said he has worked as a broadcaster every year since that first game in 2000. At the time, he was working as head coach for the WNBA’s Cleveland Rockers. This season, Hughes, who also coached the WNBA’s Charlotte Sting and the Stars, is set to work a career-high 25 games. In addition to the work he does for ESPN, Hughes said he also is like a “pinch hitter” for NBA broadcasts who will fill in for analysts like San Antonio’s Sean Elliott and Cleveland’s Matt Goukas when needed.
Hughes said he never imagined he would love broadcasting so much after such humble beginnings. He said his time with the Rockers enabled him to secure work as a broadcaster for Mid-American Conference basketball games. First, he said he did a lot of men’s games before he started to do women’s games.
“I don’t have any hobbies,” Hughes said. “To me, it was fun. I never worked at getting games. People would call and ask, ‘Can you do this?’ I would do it if I could fit it into my schedule.”
After spending his life as a teacher, Hughes said he grew to love the work because it was about him and it forced him to prepare. He said he “had to be good,” so he studied film and did research to learn about the players and the teams he was going to cover.
“To be honest with you, I would have done it for free, but I didn’t tell them that,” Hughes said. “I got to see a lot of women’s games, which was meaningful to all my gathering of information. It was an escape. Instead of getting a nervous feeling I got an anxious, excited feeling. I had spent a lifetime teaching others to have a presence to be successful. This time it was about me and about me being good in that moment.”
Hughes has seen the game of basketball change just like he has seen broadcasting evolve. He said more players see television broadcasting as an opportunity and are using their on-court experience to become play-by-play announcers or analysts. More coaches — like former Georgia women’s basketball coach Andy Landers — also are moving into the field to help raise the level of the telecasts with more games available due to the advent of the SEC Network.
It’s a great situation for Hughes to be in because he said the development of the elite player in the women’s game has been “dramatic.” In fact, he said the defensive schemes he used to employ 10 years ago likely wouldn’t work because players today are so much better. Hughes hopes that development continues and helps raise the profile of a sport that competes with the NBA and the men’s college basketball for attention.
To reach a goal where basketball fans opt to watch a women’s game between Texas and Baylor or Mississippi State and Ole Miss over a men’s game or a NBA game, Hughes said player development is essential. It remains to be seen where that development will happen, though, because many college standouts find it difficult to make the 11- to 12-player WNBA rosters.
Hughes said WNBA teams used to be able to keep as many as 13 players on their rosters, but the present situation often doesn’t allow teams to draft and to develop younger players who might need a little more seasoning. Former MSU guard Alexis Rack is a perfect example. San Antonio picked Rack in the second round with the 29th overall pick in the 2010 WNBA draft. Rack played point and shooting guard as a senior at MSU and paced the Lady Bulldogs in scoring (17.5 points per game) and led the team with 108 3-pointers and 154 assists. She was second on the team in steals (71). She played an integral role in helping MSU reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament for the first time in 2010.
Hughes remembers Rack and many more players he wishes he could have kept in the organization and developed. Some, though, worked their way back into the league after going overseas. Hughes said the WNBA would benefit from having a D-League like the one NBA teams use to nurture younger players.
“(Alexis) was learning to play with and against that level of guard play,” Hughes said. “If she had time to grow, it would have been interesting to see what she would have done with it.”
Today, Hughes said it is even harder for top college players to make a WNBA roster. That isn’t good news for seniors like MSU’s Breanna Richardson, Ketara Chapel, Dominique Dillingham, and Chinwe Okorie, who have had flashes of excellence in the Southeastern Conference, and might harbor dreams of trying to play professional basketball. As a coach, Hughes said he believed a player who exhibited a skill in the SEC had a “great chance” to carry it over to the WNBA. He equated the step from college to the WNBA to the step a high school senior would make moving to college. More and more, though, Hughes said younger players find they have to go overseas to develop their games if they want to play in the WNBA. He said those players and their agents then have to find the right fit to ensure they will receive the proper coaching to help them meet their goals.
“It’s probably more hit or miss,” Hughes said of player’s ability to find the right fit with a team overseas. “If I was looking to the future of professional women’s basketball, I think it definitely would involve the WNBA merging their young players with teams overseas in some way. I have tried to understand it. I don’t have all of the answers.”
Hughes said relationships like that would enable WNBA teams to have more direct contact with players they drafts or want to develop. A partnership like that also would allow WNBA teams to have a better system to monitor the number of games individuals play. In the current system, players often play basketball all year, so it is difficult for them to care for their bodies. Hughes said he has dealt with a lot of players whose bodies broke down because they played so many games.
“I think some of greatest thinkers need to think about that,” Hughes said. “That to me would be an incredibly healthy advancement. I don’t have all of the answers, but that is where my thoughts have gone looking to the future of the game.
“I think women’s players are getting better. I love more opportunities. I always have been a champion of players that maybe had a blue-collar aspect about them. I always championed those women to have opportunities.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.