It’s mid-November, and there is only one month more before the Unrivaled starts in January next year. As the league has expanded to 36 players, announcing 32 of them, Chicago Sky star Angel Reese awaits a special reunion. According to the latest reports, her former head coach Teresa Weatherspoon has signed with one of the teams and will be joined by LeBron James’s former coaching assistant.

According to AndScape, the LA Lakers’ former assistant coach Phil Handy will be joining as the head coach of one of the teams in the Miami-based league. Similarly, fans will get to see T-Spoon in action once again as she will also be coaching one of the 6 teams in the Unrivaled. Other than the two, there are four more head coaches Adam Harrington, Nola Henry, DJ Sackman, and Andrew Wade.

While Harrington was the assistant for the Brooklyn Nets from 2016-22, Henry is the LA Sparks Player Development Coach. Meanwhile, Sackman is an NBA Skills Coach, whereas Wade is the player development assistant coach at the Washington Mystics.

The league is expected to tip off on January 17 and will be broadcast on TNT, TruTV, and MAX. The games are expected to be on TV three times a week which gives enough time to Handy and T-Spoon to prove their mettle.

Handy is a 3x NBA Championship as an assistant coach, winning his most recent one with the LA Lakers in 2020. In fact, Hnady shares a very close friendship with Bron and also called him “one of the most coachable dudes.”

According to an interview in 2020, Handy mentioned he has “an insane amount of respect for him, his body of work and how he approaches taking care of himself and how he approaches being available for his teammates, being available for the organization. He’s just a different breed.”

Notably, that season, Bron was the Finals MVP. Plus, one of the major concerns surrounding the 4x NBA champion is that he is not coachable. However, Handy dispelled all such rumors, further proving his loyalty to the Lakers icon.

Clearly, the 2000 BBL Champion shares a great bond with LeBron, but unfortunately was fired from his job after Darvin Ham’s exit in 2024. Hence, this will be a good opportunity for him to prove his skills. Meanwhile, T-Spoon is facing similar situations.

After an abysmal season in which the Sky failed to qualify for the WNBA playoffs, their then-head coach Teresa Weatherspoon was fired. According to Annie Costabile of the Chicago Sun-Times, the HC failed to maintain cordial relationships in the locker room. Plus her coaching skills and  strategies were also questioned according to Costabile as her “inability to keep the team schematically prepared was evidenced by her rotations and poor late-game play-calls.”

Meanwhile, Phee’s husband and President of the 3-on-3 league Alex Bazzell had shared that T-Spoon “has the experience of being a head coach in the WNBA. She’s well-respected. She’s a former player, a legend in her own right, and she understands player development.” So with this latest announcement, Weatherspoon will be having a reunion with her former mentee Reese who would be happier to play in the league.

Angel Reese ‘excited’ to play in the Unrivaled

The WNBA has received a lot of flak for the salaries it pays the athletes. Hence, the stars used to look for opportunities abroad during the off-season, However, with Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier forming the league, two problems were solved. Firstly, they gave an avenue to W players to ply their trade in the off-season in the USA itself. Secondly, every player was given equity in the league and the minimum salary was expected to be above $100K. Thus, now athletes could earn enough in the offseason without going through different hassles in a foreign land.

During one of the media sessions, Reese expressed that she was happy “to be in Miami from January to March, not having to go overseas… Nobody wants to go overseas. A lot of us never wanna have to go overseas, but some people do have to go overseas unfortunately, so being able to make six figures within three months, being able to be housed in Miami, just being able to get better.”

Furthermore, the Chi-Town Barbie also shared that “3-on-3 is something that I love to do, I haven’t been able to play competitively but I think I can work on some of my individual skills because 3-on-3 exposes everything. So I’m excited for it.”

And now the latest news about TSpoon joining the Unrivaled gives a possibility of the 1988 NCAA Champion showing her coaching skills and proving herself. Moreover, it is a possibility that TSpoon once again coaches Reese, and maybe this time has favorable results.