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Anne Donovan, Cheryl Reeve, Dawn Staley and the biggest miracle in WNBA history

By Howard Megdal

3 Jul 2001: Head Coach Anne Donovan of the Charlotte Sting talking things over with her staff during the WNBA game against the New York Liberty at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Sting defeated the Liberty 66-61. NOTE TO USER: It is expressly understood that the only rights Allsport are offering to license in this Photograph are one-time, non-exclusive editorial rights. No advertising or commercial uses of any kind may be made of Allsport photos. User acknowledges that it is aware that Allsport is an editorial sports agency and that NO RELEASES OF ANY TYPE ARE OBTAINED from the subjects contained in the photographs.Mandatory Credit: Craig Jones /Allsport
3 Jul 2001: Head Coach Anne Donovan of the Charlotte Sting talking things over with her staff during the WNBA game against the New York Liberty at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Sting defeated the Liberty 66-61. NOTE TO USER: It is expressly understood that the only rights Allsport are offering to license in this Photograph are one-time, non-exclusive editorial rights. No advertising or commercial uses of any kind may be made of Allsport photos. User acknowledges that it is aware that Allsport is an editorial sports agency and that NO RELEASES OF ANY TYPE ARE OBTAINED from the subjects contained in the photographs.Mandatory Credit: Craig Jones /Allsport /
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“We had continuity,” Staley recalled in a phone interview this summer. “We had chemistry. But, we couldn’t finish basketball games. Was it my fault as a point guard? Or was it, just, sometimes it’s like that. But, I will say this, we never pointed the finger, we never doubted that we could turn it around. It just had a weird feeling.”

FORT MILL, SC – MAY 12: Head coach Trudi Lacey talks to Dawn Staley
FORT MILL, SC – MAY 12: Head coach Trudi Lacey talks to Dawn Staley /

Once the season began, the Sting gave very few indications that they’d figured out how to stem the tide of failure. They opened with a 76-67 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks, part of an 0-3 start. An 86-79 win in Orlando broke the string, but more followed. By June 24, the Charlotte Sting were 1-10.

So when Anne Donovan took the microphone at a season ticket holder event, she shocked the crowd by guaranteeing that her Sting would not only improve, but make the playoffs.

“It was ridiculous,” Donovan said.  “We had either never been to the playoffs or hadn’t been there in a long time. Saying it to them we were going to make the playoffs and the players, all this goes back to those players because Dawn and Andrea Stinson, Allison Feaster, Charlotte Smith, all of them instead of looking for a reason or somebody to blame or something to cry about, they just decided they were going to get it done.”

The Sting didn’t stand pat, however, dealing a 2002 second round pick to the Phoenix Mercury for guard Tonya Edwards.

Edwards’ acquisition coincided with moving Sutton-Brown into the starting lineup. But Edwards caught the tail end of the team’s overall frustration, with Sting executive Felicia Hall Allen coming into the locker room following Edwards’ first game, an 85-82 loss to the Sacramento Monarchs to drop them to their 1-10 low point.

“We lost another game at home, and in the locker room, following the game, was our general manger stepping in and challenging each player,” Reeve said. “Very upset, just coming down on each one, just letting everybody know how she felt. We were feeling so bad for T because it was her first day and she had something to say to her. I remember T, ’cause I looked at her eyebrows and she was looking around like, well I just got here.”

MIAMI – JULY 5: Tonya Edwards
MIAMI – JULY 5: Tonya Edwards /

But within Edwards were the seeds of an epic turnaround. She’d played and won multiple championships in the now-defunct ABL with Columbus, playing for a head coach named Brian Agler.

“Anybody that’s come out of a Brian Agler system coach during that time was pretty rugged, physical, will defend really, really hard,” Reeve said. “Tonya was a player off the bench that we really, really counted on defensively. I think it was Allison Feaster, Tonya Edwards and kind of moving the personnel, Sutton-Brown, making those subtle changes that I think started to kind of move the needle in the right direction in terms of the defense.”

Six straight wins followed for the Sting, starting with a 74-50 rout of the Detroit Shock. Nobody reached 70 points against the Sting in that span, and just two opponents topped 60. A 4-4 stretch followed to leave Charlotte at 11-14, but then came seven more wins in a row to get the Sting up to 18-14, a 17-4 finish following Donovan’s Joe Namath moment and into a series against Dan Hughes’ Cleveland Rockers that frankly, no one expected the Sting to win, not even Donovan.

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