WNBA legend Sue Chicken is ready to change into the brand new managing director of the USA Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Group, taking up a central management function that can embrace overseeing roster and training choices for each the Olympics and FIBA World Cup, sources confirmed to Chantel Jennings and Joe Vardon of The Athletic forward of Thursday’s official announcement.
The appointment marks a structural shift for USA Basketball, which is shifting away from a committee-led method in favor of a single determine with deep taking part in expertise and credibility.
Chicken, 44, is a five-time Olympic gold medalist and four-time World Cup champion who performed 19 seasons with the Seattle Storm. Her hiring mirrors the mannequin used on the boys’s aspect, the place Grant Hill at the moment serves in the identical capability.
Chicken will work alongside Briana Weiss, who took over nationwide crew operations in 2021 following Carol Callan’s retirement. The change comes as USA Basketball goals to make sure continued participant curiosity in main worldwide occasions amid rising international alternatives and endorsements. A supply mentioned Chicken’s identify and affect are anticipated to hold weight when recruiting high gamers for Group USA.
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The timing of the announcement is important, because the qualifying cycle for the 2026 FIBA Ladies’s World Cup begins in November. Chicken’s early priorities will embrace evaluating potential coaches and gamers forward of that course of. Cheryl Reeve, who led Group USA in Paris, may very well be thought of for an additional time period, whereas Duke head coach Kara Lawson — already named to steer the 2025 AmeriCup squad — is one other possible candidate.
Chicken’s new function with USA Basketball comes on the heels of her becoming a member of the Seattle Storm possession group in 2024, following her retirement from taking part in in 2022. Her transfer from the courtroom to management displays a broader funding in ladies’s sports activities, with Chicken additionally investing in NWSL’s Gotham FC.
Because the U.S. nationwide crew prepares for a brand new technology of expertise, together with Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers, Chicken’s appointment is predicted to carry stability and imaginative and prescient to Group USA’s subsequent chapter.