Former WNBA first-round draft pick tabbed lead assistant coach for Phoenix

PHOENIX – The three-time WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury today announced the addition of former WNBA player and coach Crystal Robinson to the team’s coaching staff ahead of the 2022 WNBA season. Robinson is the first hire by new Mercury head coach Vanessa Nygaard and will serve as the lead assistant on Nygaard’s staff.

No stranger to the WNBA or its coaching ranks, Robinson joins the Mercury after previous assistant coaching stints with the Washington Mystics (2007-08), Seattle Storm (2018-19) and Dallas Wings (2019-20). Her more than 15 years of coaching experience also includes assistant coaching roles at Utah State (2013-14) and TCU (2015-16), and Robinson served as the head coach at McAlester High School (2009-10), where she guided the Lady Buffaloes to a 5A Oklahoma State title, and Murray State College (2010-13), where the Lady Aggies posted a 79-37 record with Robinson at the helm. While with the Storm, Robinson won a WNBA Championship in 2018.

Prior to her coaching career, Robinson was a standout player at Atoka High School in Oklahoma, where she went on to be named a WBCA High School All-American. She then played at Southeastern Oklahoma City State University, a then NAIA school in Durant, Okla. A three-time NAIA All-American and 1996 NAIA Women’s Basketball Player of the Year, she held career averages of 26.9 points, 10.4 rebounds and 6.0 assists during her collegiate career and remains the program’s all-time leader in points, rebounds, assists and steals.

Following a decorated collegiate career, Robinson played for the Colorado Xplosion of the ABL in 1996 and 1997, where she was named the league’s Rookie of the Year and was named an ABL All-Star in 1997. Robinson was then selected with the sixth-overall pick in the 1999 WNBA Draft by the New York Liberty, where she spent seven seasons, averaging 10.7 points, 2.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.1 steals in 216 games (178 starts). Robinson ranked in the top-five in the league in three-point field goals in four of her first five seasons in the league, finishing first in 1999 after making a career-best 76 triples. After three trips to the WNBA Finals with New York, Robinson signed with the Washington Mystics ahead of the 2006 season. After completing the 2006 season in Washington D.C., Robinson played two games of the 2007 season with the Mystics before retiring and transitioning to an assistant coach in Washington.

Led by the 2021 Olympic gold-medal winning quartet of Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Tina Charles, and coming off the club’s fifth WNBA Finals appearance in franchise history, the three-time WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury return to Footprint Center this summer, tipping off the season with Fry’s Food Stores Opening Night on Friday, May 6, against the Las Vegas Aces.

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