The Frenchman became the first European-born coach in the league when he joined the Sun. Now he finds himself in a tough rebuild
After achieving three of his biggest career accomplishments in eight months, Rachid Meziane crossed the Atlantic to make personal history.
The native of southern France joined the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun in December as the league’s first European-born head coach. Four months earlier, Meziane guided Belgium to their best finish ever in Olympic women’s basketball: fourth place at the Paris Games. Four months before that, he led French club ESB-Villeneuve d’Ascq to their first national women’s championship since 2017 and their first EuroLeague final ever.
“I knew it was a new challenge, a new story to write,” Meziane says of the move. “When you are a coach, you want to compete against the highest level in the world. I think that the ‘W’ is the best league in the world, with the best players in the world, the best coaches in the world. It was a big opportunity. I couldn’t pass on this opportunity.”
Meziane, who coached Belgium to the 2023 EuroBasket women’s championship, called his hiring a dream come true at his introductory press conference. But that dream quickly turned into a living nightmare.
Meziane’s new team will finish with the worst record in their history and one of the poorest in the WNBA this season. Mix in severe criticism on social media from a former player with the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the Sun’s future, and the ingredients are in place for an exasperating season.
Yet management anticipated the exasperation. The Sun chose to rebuild after six consecutive appearances in the WNBA semi-finals, including two trips to the finals. All five of last year’s starters left through trades or free agency. Only two members of the 2024 roster remain, with five rookies joining them.
“It’s a complete 180,” says Sun guard Marina Mabrey, one of the two returning players. “Last year, there was a lot of seasoned experience, vets sniffing a championship year after year, trying to take a ring. This year, it’s younger players adapting to the league and trying to find their feet. It’s a very different generation.”
General manager Morgan Tuck, also in her first year, believes Meziane possesses the right qualities to supervise the reconstruction.
“We knew our roster was going to really turn over even before we hired Rashid,” says Tuck, who gave Meziane a four-year contract. “I think he had the right characteristics we were looking for. I think he’s a very consistent guy. When you’re having a lot of losses and not a lot of success on the court, it’s easy at times to hit the panic button, to just try anything and get away from the plan. So the one thing I’m very proud of is that he’s sticking to the plan.”
That plan involves fusing the WNBA’s physical play with the European emphasis on tactics and teamwork.
“My style is playing up-tempo and being very aggressive defensively,” Meziane says. “I am trying to integrate my coaching style and my skills to teach my team to play with a team-first mentality, to share the ball, to play with a lot of ball movement.”
But early results made the combination appear as stable as a mixture of Perrier and Pennzoil.
The Sun lost their first five games, then won two of their next three before suffering a 10-game losing streak that gave them a 2-16 record on 6 July. Entering this week, the team ranked last in points per game, three-point percentage, assists and defensive rebounds, and shared last place in victories and total rebounds. With about two weeks left, the Sun could surpass the WNBA record for most losses, set last year by the Los Angeles Sparks at 32.
“The physicality is the most different thing in this league,” Meziane says. “The game is played with more pace here, more rhythm. To play back-to-back and to play every two days is something new for me. Everybody has a lot of talent. You can see in this league that the best teams can lose against every team. Every game is its own story. Sometimes in Europe, you can win all of the games by 20, 30 or 50 points.”
Toward the end of that 10-game streak, one of Meziane’s former players posted stinging criticism on 29 June on X. Kelsey Bone, who played on ESB-Villeneuve d’Ascq’s championship squad, called him “BY FAR the worst coach I’ve ever played for” because “he lacks the aggression and assertiveness needed to rally and lead a locker room.”
Meziane’s response?
“She is not my enemy,” he says. “I helped her a lot when she came to France because she had terrible things to leave. I allowed her to arrive super late when we started our training camp. So if she’s the only one who thinks that about me, I don’t care. I can look at myself in the mirror. I hope that she can do the same thing.”
Meziane’s response reflects a calm, focused perspective in the midst of chaos, whether to social media or to reports indicating a possible sale. One of the two potential ownership groups would move the team to Hartford, Connecticut. The other, led by former Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca, would move the Sun to Boston, where they played a regular-season game this year and last year. But the WNBA has yet to approve any sale, and could purchase the team itself.
“He’s just tuning it out,” Mabrey says about those reports. “He really doesn’t get rattled emotionally. He doesn’t give his energy to social media. I think that’s kind of cool from a United States perspective because [we’re] big on status, ego, stuff like that. But he’s blocked that out and made it like, if you’re hooping, you’re hooping. If you’re not, you’re not.”
Though committed to his system, Meziane seeks to give players the opportunity to create.
“He likes to give people the freedom to play, how they play offensively particularly,” says Sun guard Haley Peters, who played under Meziane for two seasons in France. “He’s going to let players do what they can do and I think that’s a strength of his. We have a system we want to stick to, but we have good offensive players and we want them to be aggressive.”
Though committed to his system, Meziane seeks not to force players into a preconceived template.
“There’s a lot of people that want to change me, want me to be different emotionally, this and that,” Mabrey said. “He’s let me be myself and helped me to channel it, take criticism and move on.”
As his players adapt to him, Meziane faces his own cultural challenges.
“English is not my native language,” he says. “Sometimes when you want to express your emotion, it’s not easy to do it every time when it’s not your natural language. The biggest challenge for me is to try to be natural, to make sure my players are understanding what I try to express to them and try to teach them.”
Sun center Tina Charles, a 16-year WNBA veteran and the league’s most valuable player in 2012, empathizes.
“I played overseas for 11 years,” says Charles, who won three Olympic gold medals for the United States. “Anything that is uncomfortable is growth, even for us as players and for him as a coach. It’s just being patient, having grace and helping him along the way.”
As the Sun goes about rebuilding, patience and grace become Meziane’s most important tools.
“Even if the reflection of our results is not good, I’m still optimistic about how my team can play in the future,” he says. “I think a lot of our new players are growing. I can put my hand on this rebuilding process but I don’t have magic tricks to change everything overnight.”
Category: General Sports
