Women play key roles in team’s rise

Tori Miller didn’t play college basketball, since she thought standing 5-foot-2 would be a bit of a drawback. Kelly German’s only college playing experience was a brief intramurals career. Janice Koon grew up on a farm in northern Canada, not knowing much about the game.

The College Park Skyhawks might be lost without them.

The Skyhawks — the Atlanta Hawks’ affiliate — are the hottest team in the G League headed into Tuesday’s start to the playoffs, carrying an 11-game win streak into the postseason. And much of their success can be traced back to the work of those three women, who aren’t exactly dissuaded by the fact that most of their colleagues across the league are men.

“All it takes it that one NBA team, that one team to believe and maybe five years from now, we’re not having this conversation,” said Miller, the first female general manager in the G League. “... That’s what keeps me going, the idea that one day, this can be commonplace.”

It isn’t, yet. But Miller, German and Koon all agree it will be, soon.

German is the athletic trainer for the team. Koon is a vice president tasked with day-to-day operations. Miller and German are also both Black and both from the Atlanta area.

“I think it’s tremendously important,” German said. “In the world that we live in today, the society that we’re in, a lot of things are being brought to light and so a lot of people — not just women and women of color, but people across the world — are saying, ‘You know what, I can do that too.’”

The three women all said they’ve never sat together and discussed how they could be considered trailblazers. Quite the contrary, really. For her part, Koon cringes at the notion.

“I just feel like I work with really, really talented people,” Koon said. “For most of my young career — I actually don’t know how to say this — but I almost downplayed my role. I just wanted to do the work. And I never thought about myself being a girl. I thought about myself doing the work.”