Raptors: Donaldson takes her own route to NBA coaching job
The best thing about the news that the Toronto Raptors are promoting Brittni Donaldson to an assistant’s role on Nick Nurse’s coaching staff is that her gender isn’t really news.
The Raptors have joined a growing list of NBA teams with women as assistants on their staff, but it’s what Donaldson can do and how she has done it in the past that has earned the Iowa native her spot for the 2019-20 season.
“There isn’t a discussion of whether we’re capable or not, we are,” Donaldson said in a telephone conversation Monday. “It’s an exciting time in the sport.”
It has been circuitous route to an NBA coaching role for Donaldson, a former high school and college standout. After graduating from Northern Iowa — the same school as Nurse, although the two were not acquaintances in the small world of Iowa basketball — she spent time in the business world as an actuarial and data analyst. But a move to the basketball data company STATS LLC started her on a journey that eventually landed her in Toronto in 2017.
She impressed not only Nurse with her basketball acumen, but also Raptors president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster. After two years in the team’s analytics department — as well as working on-court with players in practice and before games — Nurse, Ujiri and Webster saw enough to promote the 26-year-old to replace Eric Khoury, who will join the G League Raptors 905.
Donaldson will be involved in all facets of the game with the Raptors — player development, statistical analysis, game preparation and scouting — and will have a seat behind the bench when the season starts next month.
“It’s been a different route,” she said.
Donaldson’s promotion just keeps with the Raptors’ progressiveness in getting women into what might have been untraditional roles at one time. Teresa Resch is the franchise’s vice-president of basketball operations and player development, Shelby Weaver is the manager of player development, Jennifer Quinn is the director of communications.
Donaldson is the fifth woman hired as an NBA assistant this summer, joining Kara Lawson in Boston, Niele Ivey in Memphis, Lindsey Harding in Sacramento and Lindsay Gottlieb in Cleveland.