Courtesy of OfficialBeckyHammon/Flickr
On September 18, first-year head coach Becky Hammon and her Las Vegas Aces won the first major championship in Las Vegas history. While there are plenty of storylines to come out of this series, one of the biggest was how stupid NBA owners looked for overlooking Hammon as a head coach for multiple programs.
Hammon’s career started as a player, going undrafted out of Colorado State in 1999 but made her way onto a roster. She played the first half of her career in New York and the second half in San Antonio. She’s a 6x All-Star, Olympic silver medalist, and was named to the WNBA’s 15th, 20th, and 25th-anniversary team. And while Hammon was a fantastic player, it’s her coaching that has left her mark in history.
While recovering from an injury in 2013, Hammon was invited to numerous San Antonio Spurs practices as a guest coach, and a year later, the Spurs offered Hammon a full-time assistant coach position, becoming only the second woman on an NBA coaching staff.
Hammon was the head coach of the Spurs summer league team that won the summer tournament in 2015. Over the next 6 years, Hammon interviewed for numerous positions as a head coach in the NBA but was overlooked every time. After she won the championship as a first-year head coach with the Aces, it has become even clearer that she was qualified.
Hammon isn’t the only one who has been overlooked. Kara Lawson was an assistant for the Celtics but took a head coach job at Duke shortly before a coaching shuffle at the Celtics organization. Dawn Staley was interviewed for the Portland Trailblazers head coaching job in 2021, and after not being offered the position, went and won a national championship with her South Carolina Gamecocks.
There are numerous examples of women in men’s sports outside of basketball too. Katie Sowers made history as the first female coach to coach in the Superbowl in 2020 as an offensive assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers. Dawn Braid became the first full-time female coach in the NHL as a skating coach with the Arizona Coyotes. Kim Wyant was the first woman to coach a men’s NCAA soccer team to the NCAA tournament as the head coach for NYU. Kim Ng became the first female general manager of an MLB in 2020 for the Miami Marlins.
These women are trailblazers, but there is even more evidence of their excellence when talking to their players. In a Players Tribune article in 2018, Pau Gasol wrote “I’m telling you: Becky Hammon can coach. I’m not saying she can coach pretty well. I’m not saying she can coach enough to get by. I’m not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA’s male coaches. I’m saying: Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period.”
After the hiring of Kim Ng, Miami Marlin shortstop Miguel Rojas told reporters “Kim is one of the most qualified individuals for our GM role, and we are grateful to have her as part of our team. I am excited to go to work with her and bring a championship to Miami.”
There are women coaching the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL. Most of the time, women are overqualified for their positions, continuing to perpetuate the narrative that women have to overachieve to receive the same recognition as men. However, the more examples we have of women in sports, the more future generations will see female coaches as normal. The future of coaching is female, and I can’t wait until we longer have to celebrate every hiring of a woman in sports.
