The Connecticut Sun are entering a new era under first-year head coach Stephanie White in 2023, and her former player is coming along for the ride.

The Sun hired recently retired WNBA guard Briann January as an assistant coach, the team announced Tuesday, adding her to a staff that already includes White and assistant coach Abi Olajuwon. January played for the Indiana Fever while White was an assistant and then head coach of the team from 2011-16. She also returns to Connecticut after playing for the Sun from 2020-21.

January finished her WNBA career with the Seattle Storm in 2022, which served as a homecoming for the native of Spokane, Wa. White welcomed the opportunity to bring January on her staff after she was hired in November, saying she has wanted to coach alongside January for years.

“Bri is one of the hardest workers and toughest competitors I have ever been around,” White said in a press release. “She leads by example every day through her discipline, passion, competitiveness and humility. Her experience as a player and as a coach will impact our team and staff in so many positive ways.”

The player-to-coach pipeline is strong in Connecticut.
Welcome back, @BriannJanuary! pic.twitter.com/EV1UjoTxDd

— Connecticut Sun (@ConnecticutSun) January 3, 2023

January was known as a defensive specialist at guard during her 14-year WNBA career with the Fever, Phoenix Mercury, Sun and Storm. The 2009 sixth overall draft pick won a WNBA championship with Indiana in 2012, earned an All-Star nod in 2014 and was named to seven WNBA All-Defensive Teams throughout her career.

She also brings extensive playoff experience to the Connecticut staff, having appeared in 13 postseasons of the 14 seasons she played. That included three straight trips to the WNBA semifinals in her final seasons with the Sun and Storm.

“It feels like a homecoming since I was fortunate enough to have played for Steph, the Sun organization, and in front of the amazing Sun fans,” January said. “I look forward to the opportunity to help this franchise add a championship to its winning legacy with this team and staff!”

January, 35, served as an assistant coach with her alma mater, Arizona State, for two seasons while still an active player in the WNBA. She said at the time that the experience strengthened her desire to coach, but she stepped away from the Sun Devils in 2019 to refocus on her playing career.

Now, January joins a Sun team coming off six straight postseason appearances under former coach Curt Miller. The Sun have made two trips to the WNBA Finals since 2019 but have come up short both times, including last year to the Las Vegas Aces. Miller left in October to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks, cutting short a four-year contract extension he signed with the team in 2021.

January’s appointment bolsters an improving player-to-coach pipeline in the WNBA, with six former players now serving as head coaches in the league.

As the WNBA plans to implement league-wide charter flights, the NWSL is struggling with some travel issues of its own. 

Missed flights, inclement weather, and a stretch of midweek games have spurred workload and logistical concerns for a number of NWSL teams. Last week, three games were played Wednesday night, while another three games are set to be played tonight. 

"You can't play your best XI right now because of the amount of games you have," said Red Stars head coach Lorne Donaldson after last Wednesday's 4-2 loss to Washington. Donaldson emphasized the importance of rotating through the team’s depth so as to avoid injury.

"You have to get to about 16 deep where you can," he continued. "Or else your best XI is going to be injured or walk off the field and they can’t finish the season."

Kansas City has faced some of the league's most extreme turnaround times this season. On Sunday, the Current missed an evening flight to Seattle due to a multi-hour rain delay in Houston, throwing off their training schedule ahead of their midweek match against the Reign. The NWSL eventually gave them the green light to charter a plane, but not before frustration spread throughout the team.

"We lost the whole day of the opportunity to recover," said Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski after the Current's weekend draw against the Dash. "So the schedule, it's already challenging to begin with. We have by far the worst schedule in the league, and this just made it even worse.

"We don't have a hotel, we got to figure out a hotel. We don't have flights for tomorrow, we got to figure out flights. We had trainings for some players that we believe needed training time to be able to perform on Wednesday.”

While the team was given permission to charter a plane, navigating such approvals has proven difficult in the past. This past July, the NWSL fined Kansas City $55,000 over the unauthorized use of a charter flight.

Recently retired WNBA superstar Candace Parker has her next gig lined up: president of women’s basketball at Adidas.

Parker announced her retirement at the end of April, bringing a close to a 16-year professional career spanning three WNBA championship titles with three different teams. And now, she’s stepping into a slightly different role — this time off the court — with longtime sponsor Adidas.

"The brand and I have grown together, and we’ve done some amazing things," she told Fast Company in an exclusive interview published Wednesday morning. "I’m excited about what the future holds on this side of things, because I’m so passionate about growing the game of basketball."

Parker initially signed with Adidas at the end of her first professional season in 2008, going on to spend the vast majority of her illustrious WNBA career linked to the German athletic brand. In 2010, she became the first woman to receive a signature Adidas shoe: the ACE Commander.

Her most recent Adidas collaborations include basketball sneakers Exhibit B (2022) and Exhibit Select (2023) in a variety of different colorways, as well as limited edition off-court apparel.

In 2022, Parker led a mentorship program for the brand’s first class of NIL-sponsored college athletes, a stacked roster that involved the likes of rising star Hailey Van Lith, among others. In her new position, she’ll be "overseeing pretty much everything" when it comes to the brand’s women’s basketball operations.

That "everything" includes weighing in on shoe and clothing design, navigating new and existing athlete partnerships, and taking control of Adidas' grassroots growth strategies. She’ll also help with "how we actually speak to the women’s basketball consumer," Eric Wise, who leads the brand’s global basketball business, told Fast Company.

According to Parker, the decision to accept the offer hinged on her desire to be more than just "the face" of Adidas women’s basketball.

"I said to [Adidas], 'I don’t want to be a mascot,'" Parker said. "'I really want to be in the meetings, and I want to be a part of making decisions.'"

Charter flights are on the horizon for the WNBA, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert saying on Tuesday that the league will provide teams with full-time private travel services beginning as soon as this season. 

The move is set to address years of player safety concerns, among other issues. Engelbert told AP Sports Editors that the league aims to launch the program "as soon as we can logistically get planes in place."

The initiative is projected to cost around $25 million per year over the next two seasons.

The WNBA has previously provided charter flights on a limited basis, including during the postseason and when teams were scheduled to play back-to-back regular season games. Individual owners seeking to independently provide their teams with private travel — such as the New York Liberty’s Joe and Clara Wu Tsai back in 2022 — faced significant fines for using unauthorized charters.

While players and team staff have been calling for league-wide charters even before Caitlin Clark and other high profile rookies joined the league, Engelbert has routinely cited steep year-to-year costs as the reasoning behind sticking to commercial flights. 

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However, the WNBA's surging popularity means increased visibility, and a subsequent uptick in security concerns — especially when it comes to big name newcomers like Clark — has Englebert reconsidering her previous decision. 

WNBA Players Association president Nneka Ogwumike called the move "transformational," and credited the WNBPA as well as the league for its implementation. 

"Our league is growing, the demand for women's basketball is growing," Ogwumike told ESPN. "That means more eyes on us, which is what we want, but that means more protection from the organization that we play for, the whole W that we play for.

"Chartering flights not only is a safety measure, the biggest thing, and then obviously what it means to be able to play a game and go home and rest and recover and be the elite athletes that we try to be every single night when we step out onto this court."

Aces coach Becky Hammon called the immediate response to the charter announcement "great" but noted that there are still kinks to be worked out. 

"What it all looks like, we’re still gathering information, we don’t know," she said Tuesday.

Several players emphasized the importance of safety, highlighting how last season the Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner was harassed in an airport while traveling commercial.

"All these players and these faces are becoming so popular that it really is about that as much as it as about recovery," Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said.

"Above everything else, I think it's the safety of our players," Mercury player Natasha Cloud added. "We have a prime example with BG on our team that needs to be safe. At airports, it's like a madhouse. You see Caitlin Clark walking through airports, people following her, people trying to touch her, get pictures with her. It's just a safety measure, through and through. You would never have an NBA team walk through an airport."

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, the league had said it would charter flights for the playoffs and back-to-back games via a program introduced last year. The latest news, however, promises that teams will also be provided charters to and from all regular season games.

"Our safety is being taken seriously now, finally. In no world should our security not be a priority," Griner told ESPN. "If we want to be the league that we want to be and have the respect that we have, it comes with some risks. Sometimes people want to get close to you and it's not people you want, so I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with that anymore."

Deja Kelly has landed on her final destination, with the former North Carolina star announcing her commitment to Oregon on Monday. 

A three-time All-ACC guard, Kelly averaged 15.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3.0 assists per game in her four years in Chapel Hill. She led the team in scoring in each of the last three seasons, but opted to transfer elsewhere for her fifth and final year of NCAA eligibility.

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The 5-foot-8 Texas native finishes her UNC career eighth on the team’s scoring list, having helped carry the Tar Heels to a Sweet 16 in 2022. 

Kelly is the seventh new addition for Oregon Ducks coach Kelly Graves this offseason, as the program faced a number of big name departures at the close of the 2023 NCAA tournament. She will join Texas' Amina Muhammad, Arizona's Salimatou Kourouma, Washington's Ari Long, BYU's Nani Falatea, UC Santa Barbara's Alexis Whitfield, and Siena's Elisa Mevius in Eugene this fall.

Kelly wasn't the only noteworthy transfer shaking up women's college hoops this week, with Marquette's Liza Karlen and Pitt's Liatu King both announcing their commitments to Notre Dame within a span of roughly 18 hours.