Vickie Johnson not retained, but what does it all mean

The Dallas Wings chose not to bring back head coach Vickie Johnson, signaling that it's biggest enemy is itself.

Vickie Johnson was informed she wouldn’t be coming back as the Dallas Wings’ coach early last week.

The news was shocking.

In her two seasons in Dallas, Johnson went 32-36, making the playoffs in both years. She also lost in the first round of both years.

Not bad.

When the organization announced the decision to move on from Johnson, what Wings president and CEO Greg Bibb had to say was equally confusing.

“While our organization has taken steps forward this season, at this time I believe a change provides our team with the best opportunity to achieve our long-term goals of advancing in the playoffs and ultimately competing for a WNBA championship,” he said. “I would like to thank Vickie for her work on behalf of the organization and wish her the best in her future endeavors."

Make that make sense?

To make matters worse, Johnson was informed of the decision by way of a zoom. Brutal.

“I thought I was leading in the right way,” Johnson said last week to The Dallas Morning News. “I wasn’t perfect and my players are not perfect, but I felt like we were gonna grow together and build something special in Dallas.”

Despite Johnson holding the highest winning percentage of any Wings coach since leaving Detroit (.471), and despite making the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, it still wasn’t enough.

The team credits a lack of playoff success as the reasoning for the dismissal. But how can a coach build a winning culture when not guaranteed a lengthy tenure?

Yes, the Wings slumped during the middle of the last season. But the team also managed to piece together a playoff push without star Arike Ogunbowale.

There was some contentiousness between players and Johnson, who typically displayed an old-school mentality when it came to leading, but winning cured all ills.

Johnson is now the second coach in succession to only last two seasons with the organization.

That says more about the organization than it does about the coach. Building a winner takes time. Dallas is trying to take shortcuts. When those shortcuts didn’t work, Johnson became the scapegoat— the person to blame.

Now, Dallas is looking for its fifth head coach since the team moved to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Besides Fred Williams, who coached the final two seasons in Tulsa and most of the first three seasons in Dallas, no head coach has lasted more than two seasons with the team since 2010.

It’s hard to win when the front office keeps taking shortcuts. Coaches are often to blame because they tend to be the face. However, moving on from Johnson only makes Dallas’ quest to be competitive next season more difficult. Not only will new players be getting acclimated to the team during training camp, but so will the head coach.

And in a WNBA offseason that features players like Candace Parker, Nneka Ogwumike, and Breanna Stewart hitting the open market, it’s hard to believe Dallas looks like an intriguing stop with the seemingly constant turnover at head coach.

Johnson didn’t get a fair deal in Dallas. Few do. Now, it comes down to who Dallas hires to fill the self-created vacancy.

“The reason why I haven’t gone to college or had an opportunity to go to the NBA to do player development like other players is because I believe in this league,” Johnson, who played or coached in 25 of the WNBA’s 26 seasons, said to the DMN. “I sacrificed so much for this league and I put my heart into it.

“Just like I put my heart into the Dallas Wings.”