Michael Cooper Becomes Fifth WNBA Head Coach With 200 Wins

Michael Cooper’s basketball career has been marked by feat after feat. From his days playing for the “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers to his days coaching the Albuquerque Thunderbirds in the NBA D-League to his run in the WNBA with the Los Angeles Sparks and the Atlanta Dream, Cooper has been wildly successful. On Wednesday, he reached yet another milestone in his illustrious career.
With the Dream’s 90-60 win over the Los Angeles Sparks – a team Cooper coached from 2000-2004 and 2007-2009 – he became the fifth coach to reach 200 wins. He joins a list comprised of some of the WNBA’s greatest coaches. Washington Mystics head coach Mike Thibault is No. 1 all-time, followed by San Antonio head coach Dan Hughes, former Houston Comets coach Van Chancellor and Connecticut Sun head coach Anne Donovan, who became the first female WNBA head coach to reach 200 wins earlier this year.
For Cooper, the milestone is just one in a long career of success. He was a five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers and was a five-time NBA All-Defensive First Team selection. Cooper was rewarded for his defensive prowess in 1987, when he took home NBA Defensive Player of the Year honors.
Cooper finished his Lakers career in the all-time top 10 in numerous categories: three-point field goals (428), games played (873), total minutes played (23,635), steals (1033), blocked shots (523), assists (3,666), defensive rebounds (2,028), offensive rebounds (741) and free throw percentage (83.3%).
After his career in the NBA, he transitioned into a coaching role with the Los Angeles Lakers beginning in 1994. His first WNBA coaching experience happened just a few years later as an assistant for the Los Angeles Sparks in 1999. One year later, Cooper broke into the head coaching ranks with the Sparks and, as has been the theme for his career, experienced success right away. He led the team to two WNBA championships in 2001 and 2002.
He was named WNBA Coach of the Year during his first season as a head coach in 2000. Cooper later became an assistant in the NBA for the Denver Nuggets and briefly became interim head coach during the 2003-2004 season. From there, Cooper took his talents to the NBA D-League as head coach of the Albuquerque Thunderbirds. He guided them to a championship in 2006.
But an eventual return to the WNBA head coaching ranks loomed. Cooper returned as the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks from 2007-2009 before a four-year stint with the University of Southern California women’s basketball team from 2009-2013. Eventually, Cooper made another return to the WNBA in 2014 with the Atlanta Dream.
The 2015 Dream have struggled at times, but things began to take shape in the latter half of the season. The Dream own the best offense in the league since the All-Star break and are playing solid basketball to end the year. If Wednesday’s win was any indicator, there could be plenty more wins in the future for Cooper and the Dream.