Indiana Fever's Briann January looks ahead to offseason as Arizona State assistant coach
INDIANAPOLIS — Briann January grew up, as she likes to put it, in a house full of ninjas.
Her father teaches karate and owns his own martial arts studio out in Spokane, Wash. Her mother is a second-degree black belt. Her younger sister has a black belt — and got hers before January did, which spurred January to finally earn hers in Taekwondo at the end of her freshman year of high school.
Martial arts were just one of a handful of hobbies that dotted January’s childhood; she played soccer and softball, ran track and played the trumpet in the marching band. Of course, she also played basketball, and played it well.
January, 30, now realizes that what her father told her about martial arts and basketball — it will help you when you fall, for example — has been true. And perhaps it’s helped her, over the course of her exceptional collegiate career at Arizona State, her now nine-year WNBA career and her foray into coaching, more than she ever could have imagined.
“There are so many things that you learn within martial arts that carries over into not only just basketball, but life,” January says. “One of the major things for me is just to be able to recenter myself. There's so much going on — when you're on the court and you have a few bad possessions. Or somebody's not shooting well. You've got to get somebody locked in. There are a lot of moving parts and you just sometimes just got to take a second and be able to regroup, center yourself real quick, and then focus, really lock in at the task at hand, which probably is the next possession. That is the biggest thing for me, as well as just being able to move my body. To avoid body contact and just roll off of people. Whether it's a post player trying to post you up and pulling the chair, swimming over. Keeping your balance. Those type of things.
“And then, when you fall on the floor, knowing how to fall properly without getting a huge impact. If you fall wrong, you're getting a ton of impact on your body. If you fall correctly, you can roll out of it. You can brace yourself.”
It’s easy to extrapolate; these lessons translate into, essentially, every area of life. They’ve worked well on the basketball court for January as a player. Now, we’ll see how well they work as she begins her coaching career in earnest, too — at the same time.
January isn’t the first WNBA player to pull double duty, playing the full season and coaching in college in the offseason, but she will do so in her prime. January is the face of the Indiana Fever and in the middle of her ninth season with them. Neither she nor Arizona State head coach Charli Turner Thorne knows how many years she’s got left in the tank, but neither one is concerned.
If anyone can do both things and do both things well, it’s January. She’s braced herself well for this.
CORE VALUES
January never cared if she started, her coach said. And she probably could have started during her freshman year, though the team’s rotation worked better if she came off the bench — which didn’t really bother January at all. She led the Sun Devils in assists and steals anyway.
“I’m sure in her mind she wanted to start, but she played because she loved the game,” Turner Thorne said. “She never cared. … That's why I like her selflessness, who she is. It's what our program stands for, and it's probably what every coach would want one of their assistants to represent and emulate.
“I use her as an example all the time with my own team and in clinics. She was incredibly refreshing. She exemplifies our core values. How we feel like we talk about ourselves, what we strive to be, who we are is very, ‘giving ourselves over to the greater good.’ ”
January remains Arizona State’s career leader in assists and free throw percentage. She’s second in steals and ninth in scoring. Her college career spanned 2006 to 2009 — she was the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year twice — which included an Elite Eight run in 2009. She was drafted by the Fever sixth overall in the 2009 WNBA draft, became the team’s starting point guard in 2011 and has spent the entirety of her WNBA career with the same team. (The Fever won the WNBA title in 2012.) In the offseason, like most WNBA players, she played overseas.
Still, there has always been time to squeeze in the Sun Devils. January had been in the habit of coming back for camps and spending time with the current Arizona State team in informal settings. Each of the last three offseasons, Turner Throne has offered January the chance to speak to her team about whatever she’d like. Each time, she knew exactly what and how to connect with the players — one of a number of signs Turner Thorne has noticed during the past few years as she’s watched January unintentionally (and intentionally) prepare herself for coaching.
“I remember getting a super-long text from Turkey when she was playing, too,” Turner Thorne said. “She goes, ‘Hey Charli, watched a couple games. … Then there's just paragraphs of spot on analysis of what she saw and what she liked and some things she hoped we were gonna be getting better at and whatever. I just smiled when I got them like, ‘OK, good. This is good. She's thinking about the next step.’
“I’m just engrossed in my season at that point. I'm not even doing a great job of saying hi and keeping in touch when she's overseas, but she's continued to be connected with our program.
“It's just amazing timing. It's just perfect timing that she's ready and we have a position for her.”
PATH TO COACHING
Turner Throne has long believed January would end up in coaching. But January herself wasn’t convinced until three years ago. She’d known she’d had some incredible coaches in her life, from Turner Thorne to Lin Dunn and Stephanie White, and that they’d had such a huge impact.
But could she do the same? Could this be the way she gave back to the young women who came after her?
In 2014, through a partnership between Adelphi University and the WNBA, January joined the staff of the Division II women’s basketball program for its season.
“I was exhausted, but I loved it,” January said. “I loved every day. I showed up at the gym, and I loved it. I was just fueled up. I was like, ‘Well I guess that's telling.’ I thought I'd just give it a try, just to see what it was about and ended up loving it. Then right after that, I talked to Charli and I was like, ‘Hey, this is something I might want to do.’ ”
Still, at that point, it was somewhat theoretical, tied to some far-off team in the future, and perhaps she’d be lucky enough someday to end up at her alma mater. But that became a real prospect this spring, when Turner Thorne’s assistant, Amanda Levens, was hired as Nevada’s head coach.
Turner Thorne called January at the end of March to check in on her former star who was just finishing up her season playing overseas.
“So, are you ready?” Turner Thorne asked.
“Ready for what?” January said.
“To be a double.”
Inside, January couldn’t believe it. It was what she’d been waiting for — her coach, her alma mater, her program — and it had come sooner than she could ever have imagined it. She called friends who had done the playing/coaching double, such as Alysha Clark who did it with her alma mater, Middle Tennessee State, in 2014.
January realized not only was it possible, it could work well at the right place, with the right coaching staff and the right fit.
“(Current Vanderbilt head coach) Steph White actually told me, ‘Playing made me a better coach, and coaching made me a better player,’ ” January said. “You've got to constantly be learning. For me to be able to go start where they are right now and make it to where I am now, nine years in the league with a championship — I feel like I've really experienced a lot, and I want to give that back to them.
“If I had a WNBA player coaching me, I'd be picking her brain. I'd be in there working out, just asking her everything, just to get there, too.”
While she’s physically apart from the team, January has started to study up. She watched games last season, but she’s rewatching them (plus a lot more film) as she prepares for fall practices and individual workouts to come. She’s also learning about and watching other Pac-12 teams when she has time.
When she returns to Tempe this fall, Turner Thorne hopes January will also take on the role of “defensive coordinator,” which means, essentially, that she can teach the entire team the key elements of the Sun Devils defense. January loves defense, has excelled at it and can make it her area of expertise — which is a win-win for both the coaching staff and the players who will learn from her.
Turner Thorne said the timing works just fine with January’s WNBA season, which if it includes a postseason run, could stretch into October. But Arizona State has other assistant coaches plus graduate assistants and operations staffers who can help out with workouts and recruiting while January is busy. She can make recruiting calls if she has time, too. Turner Thorne said “it’s absolutely worth it” to be short-staffed for a couple of months in order to have January on her staff for eight or nine months a year.
“I’m good with her playing as long as she can in the WNBA,” Turner Thorne said. “I have a really strong staff. We have a lot of the complementary positions. They're non-coaching positions, but people that can do a lot of work for us and gain a lot of experience when Bri’s not here. … We have plenty of woman power or man power to hold down the fort.
“There's probably no better recruiting than your former player/assistant coach getting it done in the WNBA. “