HITTING THE JACKPOT
With shades of Popovich, Hammon thriving as head coach for Las Vegas team
LAS VEGAS — Kelsey Plum couldn’t buy a basket shooting from 3-point range at a recent game, so the Las Vegas Aces guard decided to focus instead on distributing the ball.
First-year head coach Becky Hammon had another plan for Plum.
“Shoot the (expletive) ball,” she screamed at the five-year WNBA veteran.
Motivated by the faith Hammon showed in her, Plum successfully fired away in the second half.
“I hit two or three in a row, and I looked at her and said, ‘You like that (expletive)?’ ” Plum said. “That’s the kind of relationship we have. We are both fiery.”
Borrowing at times from Gregg Popovich’s coaching manual, including his salty language, after eight seasons as a pioneering assistant with the Spurs and benefiting from her ability to connect with her players on a personal level, Hammon’s success is one of the WNBA’s top stories.
With the Aces at 15-7 in the Western Conference, she is serving as one of the head coaches at the league’s All-Star Game on Sunday in Chicago.
“It’s going to be a fun weekend,” Hammon said last week. “I am excited to get out there with the girls. I am going to see a lot of people in a much more relaxed setting I haven’t seen in a long time, so I am looking forward to that.”
If anyone in the WNBA could use time in a “relaxed setting,” it’s Hammon.
In a whirlwind couple of months, she’s gone from helping Popovich guide the Spurs into the NBA Western Conference play-in tournament to building a program in Las Vegas she hopes will be as well-respected as the one she left in San Antonio.
“When you come from the Spurs, you are coming from a well-oiled machine,” Hammon said. “Here we are literally building the machine.”
Hammon said she began “behind the eight ball” with construction because she and a couple of her assistants had to finish their NBA duties before they could meet face to face. Once they finally gathered in Las Vegas, she had to spend precious hours outlining to her staff the schemes, practice drills and terminology she wanted to use.
“It was a little bit exhausting in the sense of having to teach the teacher,” Hammon said. “Luckily, they are all smart and bright and go-getters, so it worked out well.”
Hammon, 45, is aided by knowing she has the full support of Aces owner Mark Davis, who lured her away from the Spurs by making her the first milliondollar coach in WNBA history after she reportedly earned $750,000 annually in San Antonio.
Davis, who also owns the Las Vegas Raiders, bought the Aces from MGM Resorts International in 2021. The Aces moved to Las Vegas from San Antonio in 2017 after Spurs Sports & Entertainment sold them to MGM.
Under Bill Laimbeer last season, the Aces finished their pandemic-shortened season a Westbest 24-8 before the Phoenix Mercury bounced them from the playoffs in the semifinals.
“Brick by brick, we are building something special with a super-invested owner who not only talks the talk but walks the walk,” said Hammon, who signed a five-year deal.
Led by All-Stars A’ja Wilson, Dearica Hamby, Jackie Young and Plum, the Aces raced to a 13-2 start this season while using “a lot of Pop’s play calls and lingo,” especially defensively, Hammon said.
“We run some different stuff, but I always felt like our defensive philosophies in San Antonio were just solid,” she said.
Something else that has worked for Hammon: empowering her players.
Regarding the freedom she gives point guard Chelsea Gray, Hammon said, “I joke around that I am her assistant coach and she’s the head coach.”
On whether Wilson consulted her about drafting players for her All-Star team, the one Hammon will coach Sunday, Hammon said, “I consult her on all the decisions. She doesn’t consult me.”
On the Aces roster, “I love this group of women.”
It’s those player-first touches that have helped make Hammon, a six-time All-Star during a 16season WNBA career that included spending the last eight years with the San Antonio Stars, so popular.
“She is really a players’ coach,” said guard Sydney Colson, a Houston native who starred at Texas A&M. “She understands what a WNBA season is all about, what it entails, where your focus level has to be, what people’s bodies need, what their minds need. She has been there. She has done it.”
Hammon also makes the game fun, Colson said.
“She lets all of us be ourselves,” Colson said. “We know when to buckle down and get serious, but we are very much loose. We don’t practice like crazy crazy. She says, ‘When you get to the game, give me your all there.’ ”
The players also admire how Hammon works to get to know them better through frequent one-on-one conversations. That includes Plum, who played for the Stars as a rookie in 2017.
“They come up organically,” Plum said of those intimate talks. “They come up in airports, in practices. Nothing is ever forced with her. She has a great feel for people and is super positive. As a player, when you feel empowered, you are going to give the best version of yourself, and Becky has just been tremendous in just letting me be myself.”
Plum described Hammon in the same manner Spurs players speak of Popovich.
“She cares about you as a person, and when we talk, it’s not always about just the game,” Plum said. “It can be about life, spiritually, family. Of all the coaches I have played for professionally, she has made it a point to care about me as a person.”
Aces fans interviewed during the Aces’ 116-107 loss to the New York Liberty last week said they have see more passion from the players since Hammon took over.
“It looks like they are having more fun and having a good time and it shows and that generates to the fans,” season-ticket holder Dawn Branham said. “We loved Bill Laimbeer. But I feel like the girls relate more to Becky.”
Branham attended the game with her wife, Sharon Beatty. They were married wearing their Aces gear June 25 at a chapel in Las Vegas after being together for 24 years.
Immediately after the ceremony, the couple rushed to Michelob ULTRA Arena to attend a game.
“There is just more energy,” Beatty said. “(Hammon) seems to understand the players and what they can bring to the team, and she lets them do that. It’s just totally different.”
Jeremiah Norman, a Las Vegas elementary school teacher, attended the game with his daughter Kennedy, 11. He said he loves that Hammon is somebody young women like Kennedy can emulate.
“She was an amazing player, she’s an amazing leader, seems like she is a great mother,” he said.
Kennedy said it’s “really cool” having Hammon lead the Aces.
“She sends a message to all of us that we can be who we want to be,” Kennedy said of young girls like herself.
Hammon’s return to the WNBA has also been a boon for the league, which has gained sponsors since her return was announced in January.
“I always thought she would make a great coach,” said New York Liberty coach Sandy Brondello, who coached Hammon when she played for the Stars. “She was a really high IQ, very skilled player who just knew the game. She was like a coach on the court.”
Brondello said it’s obvious Hammon has stamped her personality on the Aces.
“You always come into Vegas and you expect a very free-flowing game, a lot of isolations, really an NBA look, to be honest,” Brondello said. “We got the better of them tonight, but they are a very dangerous team. It’s great that she is giving them a little bit more freedom than the last coach did.”
With the Spurs in town for NBA Summer League, several of the team’s coaches and players attended the game against the Liberty.
Hammon became the first fulltime female assistant in NBA history under Popovich. She coached the Spurs to an NBA Summer League championship in 2015 in Las Vegas and became the first acting female head coach in NBA history on Dec. 30, 2020, after Popovich was ejected from a game.
“Becky has got a great basketball mind and a great personality,” said Spurs assistant coach Mitch Johnson. “I think that’s what has helped her in being such a great coach early on in Vegas. She’s just very cerebral and she has a great feel for the game.”
In recent weeks, the Aces have cooled off a bit. Their loss to the Liberty was the fifth in their last seven games.
But just like Popovich, Hammon focuses on her team’s daily improvement rather than its record.
“I don’t think we have played our best basketball yet, and really nor do I want us to be playing our best basketball in July or June,” she said. “I want us to be playing our best basketball in the middle of August into September.”
The good news for Hammon: Her players have bought into her way of doing things.
“It’s been a lot of fun and it’s really good for the game to have her back in the league, with the amount of attention she’s brought,” Plum said. “As a woman and as a leader in this community, she’s someone I look up to very highly.”