Seattle Storm turn the page with a historic coaching hire originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
After Sandy Brondello opted to join the expansion Toronto Tempo and highly-respected college coach Jose Fernandez accepted the Dallas Wings job, only the Seattle Storm remained without a new head coach in this edition of the WNBA’s coaching carousel. Following a disappointing 2025 season that ended with a first-round loss to the Las Vegas Aces, the Storm chose not to renew Noelle Quinn’s contract — and for the first time since 2021, one of the WNBA’s premier jobs was open.
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The Storm have won four WNBA championships; no franchise has won more. Seattle is a basketball-crazy city, and their fans have watched a number of elite players represent their team; Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson, Jewell Loyd and Breanna Stewart are among them. So any hire that Storm general manager Talisa Rhea was going to make had to have an appropriate pedigree.
The Storm on Friday got their target, as New York Liberty assistant Sonia Raman is leaving the Big Apple for the Pacific Northwest on a multi-year contract.
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Raman has just made history as the first person of Indian origin to be hired as a WNBA head coach. She was previously the first Indian-American to serve as an NBA assistant coach; before joining Brondello’s staff in New York in 2024, Raman spent four years in Memphis as an assistant with the Grizzlies.
Though she spent the past two years in New York, Raman’s hire is the continuation of a new NBA-to-WNBA pipeline that began with Becky Hammon’s appointment in Vegas in 2022. Since then, the Phoenix Mercury (Nate Tibbetts) and the Portland Fire (Alex Sarama) have also hired respected NBA assistants as head coaches.
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Raman, who won a WNBA championship with the Liberty in 2024, takes control of a team that features a premium prospect in frontcourt phenom Dominque Malonga; the Storm are also expected to re-sign All-Star wing Gabby Williams, who is one of the league’s top defenders.
However, the rest of Seattle’s roster is in a state of flux. All-Stars Skylar Diggins and Nneka Ogwumike are pending free agents, while six-year veteran Ezi Magbegor had a down year in 2025.
