How LI's Celeste Taylor went from WNBA player to college coach

Celeste Taylor’s basketball journey has taken her across the country and around the world. But her latest stop was somewhat unexpected.

Taylor, a Valley Stream native who starred at Long Island Lutheran, spent 2024 as a rookie in the WNBA. Fast forward to 2025 and Taylor is now among the youngest women’s college basketball coaches in the country.

In June, she was hired as an assistant coach at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Taylor also turned 24 in June.

“This job has given me some sort of stability and peace of mind and I'm just really enjoying a new career and chapter in my life,” Taylor said.

Taylor was Newsday’s Player of the Year and a McDonald’s High School All-American in 2019 while playing at Long Island Lutheran. She was also Newsday’s Player of the Year in 2018. Taylor played collegiately at Texas, Duke and Ohio State before being selected by the Indiana Fever with the third pick of the second round (15th overall) in the 2024 WNBA Draft. The Fever took Caitlin Clark as the No. 1 overall pick in the same draft.

She played just five games with the Fever and then played two games with the Connecticut Sun on a seven-day contract. Taylor, a guard and defensive specialist, signed a seven-day contract with the Phoenix Mercury and ended up finding a home, appearing in 15 games with four starts. She averaged 3.5 points, 1.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.0 steal in 20 minutes per game with the Mercury.

Taylor spent the WNBA offseason playing overseas in Australia for the Sydney Flames of the WNBL. She averaged 10.7 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.8 steals per game. But a foot injury, which Taylor said was a stress reaction, limited her playing ability and hampered her chances to make a WNBA roster for the 2025 season.

That’s when her journey took a different path.

New Grand Canyon head coach Winston Gandy was on the coaching staff at Duke when Taylor was a player. He contacted his former player about a spot on his staff at Grand Canyon.

“When I was fortunate enough to work with her at Duke, certain players kind of stick out to you, through their play, through their work ethic, through their professionalism, how they carry themselves, their ability to relate with their teammates, their ability to be a connector between the head coach and the team, which [Taylor] was for us at Duke,” Gandy said “When you talk about people who can help move the needle for a program, she can do that, so it was a matter of when, not so much if.”

Coaching seemed like a natural progression for Taylor while she sits out the WNBA season. She was part of the training camps for younger players while at Texas and Ohio State.

“The opportunity was there,” Taylor said. “When the opportunity [arose] to be on [Gandy’s] staff, it was kind of a no-brainer, something that I would have loved the opportunity to have. I liked the way that he trained his players and formed a relationship with them, and since this is his first year as a head coach [at GCU], wanting to see what he does and how I can now potentially fill a role he had in my life with the girls here.”

WNBA players working on college coaching staffs during the league’s offseason is nothing new. Mercury guard Kahleah Copper (Rutgers), Minnesota Lynx guard Natisha Heideman (Penn State), and Atlanta Dream forward Brionna Jones (Maryland) are just a few examples.

Taylor could play a key role for Grand Canyon, an NCAA Division I member in the Mountain West Conference, during the changing NIL landscape of college sports. She feels that she can be a guiding force, since she is a recent college graduate and is young enough to relate to the current players.

“A lot of them are at a new program with a new coach, I've done that multiple times, wanting to see progress within themselves quicker,” Taylor said. “Even when I was in college, I do feel like, in some kids, it has changed the way that they approach the game and what they look for in a program.

“A lot of them ask for the money aspect and are not really focused on the roster and the players and the depth chart, but not too much has changed. I also think that coaches have to realize that it’s a new day and age and things have to change. They just got to change with the times.”

Still, Taylor plans to return to the WNBA at some point.

“I don’t think it’s far out of reach,” she said. “A lot of ebbs and flows but I do feel that if I put 100% in it that I’d be in the ‘W’ right now and if I was completely healthy it would be a completely different story.

“I’m not really in that mind frame to put down coaching. I was interested in a new chapter in my life and just going where the mind takes me, so I haven’t really put much thought into that. They both give me a different type of fulfillment, so I wouldn’t really say I prefer one over the other.”

Taylor also knows that there’s more to life than just basketball. She grew up aspiring to be a child psychologist and said she’d still love to get her master’s degree in psychology.

“I’ve been looking into different types of psych degrees and places that could take me as well, so definitely staying within the psychology realm,” she said.

That’s the mindset she brings to her coaching job each day.

Said Taylor: “My number one thing that I keep constant is that, in the job of coaching, is being able to impact these girls in a positive way."