Coach Whisenant installs new defense

GREENBURGH, N.Y.

The first thing they did is look for the white tape.

When John Whisenant arrived at the Liberty's practice facility for the start of training camp this spring, he quickly directed his assistant coach to dissect the court with a strip of tape running vertically from basket to basket. This is the first step in teaching his new team his famous white-line defense.

"Actually, the line is red now. That's the color of tape they have here," the new Liberty coach said with a laugh. "But it's still the same defense."

It was Whisenant's white-line defense that helped make the Sacramento Monarchs one of the most successful WNBA teams of the last decade. Whisenant was the team's general manager for seven seasons and its coach for parts of four. As a coach, he compiled an 85-54 record, went to the conference finals three times and won the WNBA championship and WNBA coach of the year award in 2005.

When the Monarchs franchise folded after the 2009 season, Whisenant retired to New Mexico to run his real estate company full- time. The Liberty, however, coaxed him out of retirement this past October, hiring him to be the team's coach and general manager. He replaced coach Anne Donovan, who moved to Seton Hall, and Carol Blazejowski, the only GM the team had known in 14 seasons.

"New York is a great basketball city with a great history, and I look forward to the challenge of bringing a championship to the city," said Whisenant, 65.

The drive to win another championship is the major reason Whisenant came out of retirement. With the Liberty, he has a lot of tools to work with but also has some big challenges.

The Liberty is coming off a 22-12 season, the most regular-season wins in the history of the franchise. But the season ended in a second straight disappointing loss in the conference finals.

In an attempt to win it all, Whisenant is introducing a new style of defense in a very short amount of time. The players seem to be picking it up fairly quickly, a fact that he attributes to having some players who went to Rutgers, where C. Vivian Stringer runs a similar defense.

"Coach has a lot of coach Stringer in him," Cappie Pondexter said. "They're both very old- school, which I like. The way they drill things and make us work on things that we think are stupid. On a professional level, sometimes you think, why are we working on passing? But I understand it because I came from it. It's all about making things automatic and making us trust each other."

The biggest adjustment has been learning the defense. Whisenant originally imported it from his days as an assistant men's coach at New Mexico; the Lobos were ranked one of the top three defensive squads in the nation, built around future Laker Michael Cooper.

The defense is all about weak-side help. Players imagine a line down the middle of the paint. When the ball is on the left side, players on the right side are supposed to have one foot on this line, and vice versa.

Whisenant clearly is thrilled to be teaching the defense to a new group of players.

"I got out of the game, and I missed it,'' he said. "I've been doing this off and on for a good part of my adult life. I may be a little rusty, but we'll get better as the players get better and more familiar with what we're trying to do as a team. It's very exciting."