Storm coach Dan Hughes publicizes retirement from WNBA; Noelle Quinn will hold over

Seattle Storm coach Dan Hughes announced on Sunday that he is retiring from the WNBA after over two decades within the league. Affiliate head coach Noelle Quinn will hold over as Storm head coach on a everlasting foundation. Hughes will soundless relief as an assistant coach for the U.S. Ladies folk’s Basketball Team at the Tokyo Olympics this summer. 

“After over 40 years of instructing basketball, I are looking out to carry out my profession with the point of hobby and backbone with which I started,” Hughes acknowledged in an announcement. “The Seattle Storm is in phenomenal shape, after two championships and playoff stoop in 2019, I’d admire to screech my retirement from the WNBA. I imagine now is the honest time since the personnel is performing properly, however the rigors of being a head coach within the WNBA hang taken their toll on me.”

Hughes started his profession as an assistant coach on the now-defunct Charlotte Sting help in 1999. In the time since then, he is served as head coach for the Sting, Cleveland Rockers (also defunct), San Antonio Silver Stars (now the Las Vegas Aces) and the Storm. 

Alongside the methodology, he won two Coach of the Year Awards in 2001 and 2007, and led the Storm to the championship in 2018. In 2019, Hughes changed into identified with cancer and overlooked the personnel’s first nine video games after undergoing surgical treatment to clutch away a tumor from his digestive tract. Attributable to his outdated health issues, he did not chase to the bubble with the Storm remaining season once they won the title again. Hughes retires with 286 profession wins, which is tied for third-most all-time.

Hughes only within the near previous stepped far from the personnel to abet his son’s graduation from the Air Force Academy. In an announcement to ESPN, he acknowledged that the time away helped him come to the conclusion that it changed into time to retire. 

“I be mindful calling [Quinn after she served as head coach in the Storm’s win over the Sun] and asserting ‘I’m so ecstatic with you, watching your presence and what you is also doing,'” Hughes acknowledged. “It’s factual silly how every so often things more or much less descend into put for a cause. I always preach about watching the chase you is also on, whether it be a personnel or an individual, because every so often that chase will educate you and hang moments that you indubitably hang to acknowledge and I belief that changed into per chance one honest there.”

Quinn spent over a decade within the league with 5 varied groups, at the side of two stints with the Storm. She changed into a part of the personnel that won the title in 2018, then retired to begin up her instructing profession. She’s served as an assistant coach below Hughes in 2019 and changed into promoted to affiliate head coach in 2020. Now, she’ll hold over the job in full, and changed into the second dusky lady head coach within the WNBA. 

The defending champion Storm is off to a 5-1 delivery up, and within the mean time sit down in second put.