The Timeout Bozo Is Gone

The New York Liberty have decided to get rid of head coach Chris DeMarco after one season, as first reported Tuesday by ESPN. It may come as a surprise to some, since the eighth-seeded Liberty swept the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx in the first round of this year's WNBA playoffs. Looking at the bigger picture, however, this firing was deserved. After that historic playoff upset, the Liberty hit their heads on the ceiling in the semifinal round against the Atlanta Dream. New York was swept in three games, but Game 2 ended in controversy because DeMarco did not use his team's reset timeout to set up a good look at a potential game-tying shot. Instead, Breanna Stewart settled for a heave, and her team lost in overtime, 101-98. After the defeat, both Stewart and DeMarco said the officiating crew incorrectly told them that the Liberty had no timeouts remaining. (Stewart handled most of the explanation, with DeMarco weighing in toward the end.) The WNBA eventually admitted that the refs screwed up, in the most passively worded statement—"a misunderstanding amongst the various parties"—but the league did nothing further to remedy the situation. It merely shifted Fatou Cissoko-Stephens and Kevin Fahy, the two officials in question, to Game 3 of the Valkyries-Aces series, which ended in a less controversial sweep by Golden State. Although the refs deserve the blame there, DeMarco still should have had a coaching staff member assigned to keep track of the timeouts so that he could at least assertively advocate for his own team.

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