Coaching in WNBA has been a perfect fit for former Washington State standout Shelley Patterson
ARLINGTON, Texas – Between 1981 and 1983, Shelley Patterson played basketball at Washington State and left Pullman with 237 career steals, fourth-most in school history. Patterson’s career averages of 2.8 steals and 3.2 assists per game rank in the top 10 in program history.
Since leaving WSU, Patterson has built an impressive coaching resume, first in the collegiate ranks at several schools including Arizona of the then-Pac-10 before making a successful transition into the professional ranks, working in the American Basketball League (ABL) and National Women’s Basketball League (NWBL) before starting a long, productive run in the WNBA with Houston in 1999.
Now a first-year assistant with Washington, the Mystics are the eighth WNBA team she has coached for, a path which never entered her mind at WSU. “Well, to be honest, at the time, I never thought I’d be a coach. Never wanted to be, never thought I’d be,” Patterson admitted. “The times at Washington State were great. It’s such a small community that all you had was Pullman.”
“We didn’t have big cities. We didn’t have places to go like some of these other schools. I have a feeling that Storrs, Connecticut is kind of the same, where you have your group. Coming from San Jose, California, up to Pullman, Washington, was a little bit shocking because there wasn’t anything to do, but we made our own fun, and we made our own fun with our team. I had great teammates. It was fun, good stuff.”
After graduating from WSU in 1984, Patterson entered the corporate world with a 9-to-5 job in computers. However, she quickly realized her passions lay elsewhere. “I’m a people person. I knew that I couldn’t do that for the rest of my life,” she said. “So, I said what do I like to do? I like basketball. I love people. I love to teach because I’d taught at camps getting out of college.”
“I was a camp director and coach and said I like that. So, I decided to figure out how I could get in (coaching). I told everyone I want to coach basketball, not just basketball, I want to coach Division I basketball. I made that a declaration and ended up doing it. I got my first assistant job at Eastern Michigan sight unseen. That’s how I started my career.”
And like everyone tied to the program, she took great pride in seeing WSU reach uncharted territory by winning the Pac-12 Women’s Tournament for the first time in 2023. “Something they’d never done, I was so proud,” Patterson said. “Actually, my former coach (at Minnesota), Cheryl Reeve, texted me and said hey, congratulations because at the time, I didn’t know. I said what happened? (She said) Washington State won the Pac-12 (Tournament).”
“It was (the) Pac-10 when I played. It was exciting to know that they had the chance and ended up winning the whole thing. I knew that they had been playing well. Proud of them. It’s amazing, just think about how far we’ve come. Washington State was always in the bottom echelon of the league and now to win that thing, I have bragging rights.”
During her over two decades coaching in the WNBA, Patterson has built a stellar reputation as a top league’s assistant and one of the circuit’s top basketball minds. So, when the Mystics hired Eric Thibault as their new head coach last fall, replacing his father Mike, now Washington’s general manager, the younger Thibault knew he had to add Patterson to his staff. “(She brings) institutional knowledge for sure, she knows the whole league. She’s scouted the league a long time, but I think the biggest thing was when we got her, we had just known her as a person for a long time,” Thibault said.
“We’ve always been pretty tight with the Minnesota staff. We practiced with them every preseason. She is one of the great people in our league. We just thought a personality like that would fit well with our group. Everybody knows Shelley. Shelley knows everybody. Just a steady influence that’s seen it all, has worked with great players. She’s a voice for me as a first-time head coach, but also a voice for our veteran players because she knows what that’s like. She knows what it means to compete for a championship and be at the top end of the league. We just thought it was an opportunity to steal her basically.”
Patterson considers herself incredibly blessed to have worked alongside some top coaches during her long and impressive tenure in the profession, names like Van Chancellor, a Hall of Famer who coached the Houston Comets to four straight WNBA titles between 1997 and 2000, fellow Hall of Famer Anne Donovan, and future Hall of Famer Cheryl Reeve, who coached Minnesota to four WNBA titles during Patterson’s decade on the Lynx’s bench.
After last season, which she spent in New York, she was up for the Liberty’s head coaching job, which she ultimately didn’t get. However, she’s quite content being an assistant in a league she knows quite well. “Now I’m like (longtime NBA assistant and Hall of Famer) Tex Winter,” Patterson said.
“When I think back on all the people I’ve coached with, I’m like geez, I’ve coached with a lot of Hall of Famers. You don’t know it until after (the fact) and then you look back and say wow. I’ve had a great career. It’s a great life.”
Stephen Hunt is a freelance writer based in Frisco, Texas.