Unequalled’s Phil Helpful is swapping LeBron James for Breanna Stewart this winter

For six consecutive NBA Finals — from 2015 to 2021 — Phil Helpful served as a fixture on the sidelines. Helpful, a longtime NBA assistant who beforehand performed skilled basketball abroad, was there by means of all of it.

First, he served as an assistant on the Cleveland Cavaliers that received all of it in 2016. Then, he was with Toronto Raptors after they received their title in 2019, after which with the Lakers for 5 seasons, together with their 2020 championship. By his tenure, he established himself as a three-time NBA champion and one of the vital highly-regarded assistant coaches within the league, working intently with stars like LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, and Anthony Davis.

Now, in a significant pivot, the 53-year-old is becoming a member of Unequalled, the brand new 3-on-3 skilled ladies’s basketball league co-founded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart.

In Unequalled, Helpful will lead the Mist Membership, the place he’ll coach Jewell Loyd (Seattle Storm), DiJonai Carrington (Connecticut Solar), Breanna Stewart (New York Liberty), Courtney Vandersloot (New York Liberty), Rickea Jackson (Los Angeles Sparks), and Aaliyah Edwards (Washington Mystics). He joins WNBA legend and former Chicago Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon, and 4 different coaches with intensive participant growth backgrounds.

The league, which suggestions off in Miami on January seventeenth on TNT, is groundbreaking in some ways, together with its monetary mannequin:

Unequalled’s whole wage pool is above $8 million. With 33 gamers at present slated to take part, the common wage at present is available in at round $242,000. Compared, the common WNBA wage is lower than half of that determine, regardless of the WNBA season being greater than twice as lengthy. Actually, the common Unequalled wage is larger than the WNBA supermax, which was $241,984 in 2024. That $8 million determine doesn’t consider fairness or income shares, each of which can be added to gamers’ salaries.

Unequalled is a significant shift from his years of teaching within the NBA. For one, he can be teaching 3-on-3. For sure, he’ll be teaching ladies. And, he’ll be the top coach for the primary time in his profession.

How Phil Helpful landed in Unequalled

Helpful’s NBA teaching profession started with a participant growth place on the Lakers in 2011, and it resulted in 2024 after he determined to take a 12 months away from essentially the most aggressive basketball league on the planet.

After making that call, he was approached by Unequalled President Alex Bazzell — who he’d identified for years — a few potential teaching alternative.

“I’ve been part of ladies’s basketball for a very long time,” Helpful mentioned. “However, as soon as me and my staff had an opportunity to essentially dive into Unequalled and actually pull again the layers of what they had been attempting to perform, I used to be actually fascinated by the entire idea.”

It simply occurs to be that Helpful has appreciable expertise with a number of of his upcoming gamers on the Mist Membership; throughout his tenure as an assistant coach on the Lakers, he did consulting work with the Storm, a training alternative that allowed him to work straight with Breanna Stewart and Jewell Loyd, who had been each in Seattle on the time.

Photograph by Steph Chambers/Getty Photographs

“Jewel and I’ve all the time tried to select our spots the place both she will get to LA for 4 or 5 days,” he mentioned. “We do a variety of speaking on the cellphone over time.”

Helpful mentioned considered one of their collective objectives has been enhancing her effectivity: “Jewell and I’ve had conversations over time… how can she proceed to be an environment friendly basketball participant, proper? Simply persevering with to enhance her dealing with, her capturing, with the ability to end within the paint.”

He’s intrigued by the remainder of the roster, too, noting that even a extra veteran participant like Vandersloot can use Unequalled as an impactful progress alternative.

“Sloot has had a fantastic profession,” Helpful mentioned. “She’s a savvy vet, however even vets can be taught new methods.”

Phil Helpful expects a collaborative teaching type in Unequalled

Helpful mentioned he needs to comply with the gamers’ leads in the case of their particular person progress; no matter which areas of their sport a participant needs to enhance, Helpful needs to play a assist position in that pursuit.

“Once I begin to work with gamers, I don’t attempt to put them within the field — I wish to attempt to get an thought of the place they wish to enhance,” Helpful mentioned.

The Mist roster is an illustrious one; it consists of final 12 months’s Most Improved Participant in Carrington, a two-time MVP in Stewart, and the 2023 WNBA’s prime scorer in Loyd. It additionally boasts youthful expertise like Jackson and Edwards, each of whom are contemporary off of efficient rookie seasons. And, Vandersloot is third on the WNBA’s all-time profession assists listing and is a two-time WNBA champion.

Breanna Stewart is the Mist’s official captain; the three-time WNBA champion, contemporary off of a title with the Liberty, can be a useful useful resource as Helpful will get his ft moist. He famous that he and the gamers will all be “pulling in the identical path” — and collaboration has all the time been his method in the case of teaching.

“I’m a coach who believes in studying out of your athletes and collaborating with them,” he mentioned. “What have you ever all skilled? What do you see? What do you are feeling?”

Regardless of the expertise and mixed accolades on Helpful’s Mist squad, he’s not feeling any stress.

“Look, I’ve coached in Los Angeles for the final six years,” Helpful mentioned. “There’s no greater place — being part of the Lakers group — for stress. The one method you are feeling stress is for those who’re not ready. For me as a coach, [I] can be very ready, and my teaching workers can be ready.”

So for Helpful, what started as a 12 months away from the NBA become a doubtlessly large alternative with a brand-new league that goals to shake up the ladies’s sports activities panorama. Now, relatively than working with LeBron James and the Lakers, he’ll be working with a number of the largest stars in ladies’s basketball.

“I all the time say timing is all the pieces,” Helpful mentioned. “I’ve been a giant fan of the W and girls’s basketball, so this was a fantastic alternative for me to step in with each ft and get slightly bit extra activated with ladies’s basketball on the highest degree.”