- For years, Becky Hammon was expected to become the first woman head coach in major pro men's sports.
- But after NBA franchises doubted her abilities, she took her talents where everyone knows her worth.
- The San Antonio Spurs assistant is headed to Las Vegas to become head coach of the WNBA's Aces.
Becky Hammon is confident she's ready to lead her own team, and that she's ready to do it right now.
So as NBA franchises continuously failed to recognize her aptitude and preparedness for a head coaching job, she decided to take her talents where everyone knows her worth. After eight years as an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs, the six-time WNBA All-Star is leaving men's basketball to become the head coach and general manager of the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces.
"This was not really about the NBA or the WNBA," Hammon said. "This was about me personally being ready to have a team and wanting to have a team and wanting to sit in that chair and then being presented with an opportunity to do so."
"In some ways, I feel like the NBA maybe is close. In other ways, I feel like they're a long ways off from hiring [a woman head coach]," she added. "I don't know when it could happen. What I know is the Aces have a hundred percent of my attention."
Though Hammon — who has long been considered the obvious candidate to become the first woman head coach in NBA history — conceded that she previously "had no intentions of leaving the NBA at this point," the Aces gave her an offer that was too good to refuse: near-full control of her own team.
"A lot did go into this decision. A lot of sleepless nights, to be quite honest," Hammon said. "... [But] I feel like I'm ready to have my own team. And this is the organization that made it very, very obvious they wanted me really, really bad. And so it's always good to be wanted."
So on New Year's Eve, Las Vegas announced that both parties agreed to terms on a historic five-year contract that will make Hammon the highest-paid coach in the league. The retired point guard said she "never closed the door on [returning to] the WNBA because... it's where I'm from."
And assuming the helm of this particular team after spending the latter half of her WNBA career with the San Antonio Stars — the franchise that later moved to Sin City and rebranded as the Aces — is "poetic," Hammon says.
Still, there's little doubt that the NBA's failure to hire Hammon to a head coaching position played a role in her move to the W. Despite several rounds of interviews with multiple franchises, the right-hand woman to perhaps the greatest coach in NBA history in Spurs coach Gregg Popovich never got her shot.
"There's something to being a head coach," Hammon said. "You know, I sat in a lot of [NBA] head coaching interviews, and [there are] two things that people always said: you've only been in San Antonio, and you've never been a head coach."
Popovich has an extensive coaching tree that branches across the NBA and beyond. At least five former San Antonio assistants and players under the sure-fire Hall of Famer became head coaches without head coaching experience, including Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka, former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Brown, and former Orlando Magic coach Jacque Vaughn.
Of that group, both Budenholzer and Vaughn had no professional coaching experience outside of their time with the Spurs organization — 17 years and two years, respectively — before graduating to an NBA head coaching position. Kerr had no professional coaching experience before assuming the helm in Golden State.
Among the 30 current NBA head coaches, eight were appointed to their first head coaching gigs after only one prior NBA assistant coaching experience or no coaching experience at all. Hammon was not afforded that same consideration.
"Well, I can tell you right now, [Aces owner] Mark Davis met me, [franchise President] Nikki [Fargas] met me and said, 'that's a head coach right now. That's a head coach right now. We're going after her. She's the person,'" Hammon said. "And so that's why they got me."
Mere months before pivoting back to the WNBA, Hammon made it to the final round of interviews for the Portland Trail Blazers' open coaching gig. Jody Allen — the chair of the franchise — reportedly believed Hammon was the best option to become her team's next head coach. But the Trail Blazers ultimately opted for Chauncey Billups, a former NBA player with just one season of assistant coaching experience and an accusation of sexual assault in his past.
That decision was fueled by then-general manager Neil Olshey, who has a close personal relationship with the five-time NBA All-Star and favored him for the job. And in justifying that choice, Olshey said that despite interviewing "people that had a bigger body of work, more things we could point to," he put more emphasis on hiring someone with "natural gravitas, leadership skills, [and]... upside."
Hammon can read between the lines.
"Over the course of my career... I'm somebody who was passed over basically because I didn't look the part — I wasn't tall enough, I wasn't athletic enough, I wasn't fast enough," Hammon said Monday. "I didn't look that part, and so I got passed over."
"And so what I'd really like is to get to the point where people are hired based on what they bring — their mind, what's in-between their ears, and what's in here," she continued, pointing to her heart. "... But I've been hit so many times that you just continue to get back up. You don't know any other way. It's just a habit."
"You just keep getting back up because, and I'm not saying life doesn't life hit everybody, but how we respond to it is what is eventually gonna define us, not the hit."