Spurs’ Hammon on verge of a milestone for women
Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon could be on the verge of making history this season, and advocates of gender equity in sports are eager to see it happen.
Should a referee eject Spurs coach Gregg Popovich from a game this season, the reins likely will be handed to Hammon. If that happens, it would make her the first woman to serve as head coach of a major professional North American sports team — even if it is just for the remainder of that contest.
“It will be earthshaking,” said Donna Lopiano, founder and president of consulting firm Sports Management Resources and former CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation.
“Breaking a centuries-old barrier for women is no easy task,” added Lopiano, the women’s athletic director at Texas from 1975 to 1992. “It takes a very courageous and brave person to step through it and become the first one, to be the Jackie Robinson. It’s a tribute to her tenacity. There are going to be little girls who will change forever because of her.” Hammon ostensibly became the top assistant on Popovich’s staff after two more experienced coaches left the team this summer to take jobs elsewhere.
Popovich does not label his assistants, but traditionally, the one who coaches the team in his absence has been the most experi
enced. That’s now Hammon.
“That would be amazing,” Spurs guard Bryn Forbes said. “I’m excited about that. Hopefully, he gets it out of the way the first game.”
Hammon is entering her sixth season as a Spurs assistant and has served as head coach of the team’s Summer League squad several times. The other expected front-of-the-bench assistants are all newcomers to that role, including franchise icon Tim Duncan, who returns to the club after retiring in 2016 as its greatest player.
The president of the National Organization for Women believes that Hammon coaching the Spurs — even if only for a quarter or two — would be a “momentous occasion for women.”
“Women athletes at all levels and ages are often coached by men, while male athletes training under female coaches is less common,” Toni Van Pelt wrote in an email. “This dynamic feeds into the sexist notion that women can’t be leaders and that men won’t respect female authority figures. Women getting high-profile coaching positions, like the one Becky Hammon is in position to take, is an important step toward normalizing female leadership, especially in the traditionally male world of sports.”
Year after year, Hammon has earned praise from her fellow coaches and current and former players for her intelligence, communication skills and work ethic.
“Becky is a star,” Spurs assistant coach Will Hardy said. “She has an incredible basketball mind, knows the game inside and out, and is a fiery competitor.”
Long before she helped Popovich diagram plays for the Spurs, the 42-year-old Hammon proved herself adept at X’s and O’s as a star player in the WNBA during a 16-year career that included stints in New York and San Antonio.
“During timeouts, coaches would draw up plays, and then we would pick them apart,” said Hammon’s longtime teammate Vickie Johnson, now an assistant coach with the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. “We’d say to each other, ‘OK, that may not be open because the defense is going to do this. So, this is how we are going to counter: Look for me in the corner.’”
Dan Hughes, who coached Hammon in San Antonio before becoming head coach of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, said it was obvious she was a coach in the making while excelling as a 5foot-6-inch point guard.
“She was a teacher who developed the ability to communicate to all kinds of people,” Hughes said. “She just has a presence with people.”
Popovich recognized those skills when he selected Hammon to serve as a coaching intern for the Spurs during the 2013-14 season, when they won their fifth NBA title. The next season, she became the first female to become part of an NBA team’s bench coaching staff and since then has done all the grunt work required of assistants as they work their way up the ladder.
Her apparent promotion to top lieutenant on Popovich’s staff isn’t a token achievement.
“You are talking about Gregg Popovich — there is nothing in his life that spells token next to his name,” said Nancy Lieberman, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and a championship-winning head coach in the Big3, a 3-on-3 league whose rosters consist of former NBA players and international players.
“She has worked her tail off, done it the old-fashioned way and excelled at every level,” added Lieberman, who became the first woman to coach a men’s pro basketball team when she chosen to lead the developmental league affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks in 2009.
Van Pelt, the head of NOW, joined Lieberman in stressing that Hammon’s rise is solely about ability and merit.
“Focusing on Becky Hammon’s qualifications is good, but it becomes dangerous when it is tied to the idea that a woman might get a job she doesn’t deserve due to tokenism or publicity stunts,” Van Pelt said. “When women get promotions, we should not default to questioning their qualifications or whether they deserve it. Becky Hammon should get credit for all the work she’s done to get to this point. She shouldn’t have to continually show off her resume to be taken seriously. Her title should be enough.”
Forbes said what stands out most about Hammon is her knowledge of the game.
“She was a great player, just like Timmy (Duncan),” Forbes said. “She knows a lot and, like Timmy, has that player’s perspective.”
Such comments underscore the belief that Hammon will someday become the first female head coach in NBA history.
Hammon is one of eight women on coaching staffs among the league’s 30 teams and the only woman to lead a team at this year’s Summer League in Las Vegas.
“I’ve said it before, half the population has not been tapped for their basketball knowledge. It’s an untapped resource,” Hammon told reporters in early July in Las Vegas, a few weeks before it became clear that she was in position to become Popovich’s top assistant.
Supporters of women’s athletics believe the time is right for a woman to become a head coach in the NBA. In 2018, Hammon became the first woman to interview for a head coaching position in the NBA, when she sat down with the Milwaukee Bucks.
“The guys in the NBA don’t care if I am a woman. They don’t care if Becky is a woman,” Lieberman said. “They just care, ‘Can you get me to my next contract? Can you help me do better?’”
Sports Management Resources’ Lopiano pointed out that Hammon’s promotion comes 47 years after President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments Act into law. The landmark civil rights law leveled the playing field for female athletes by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.
“It takes three generations for cultural change of this magnitude, and we are 47 years into this,” Lopiano said. “With the first generation, you still have people angry about the change, and they are in the majority. You have to go through this gradual turnover until you get to a critical mass (of men) who grew up playing (sports) with women, who grew up marrying women athletes, who are of a different generation.”
Johnson, Hammon’s former teammate, agreed, saying the “old generation” that believed women “should be cooking, cleaning, taking care of the house, having babies” is being replaced by one that includes many male athletes raised by single mothers who defied traditional gender norms.
“They saw how hard their mom worked and that she could do whatever a guy can do,” Johnson said. “So, they don’t view (Hammon) as a female coach. They just view her as a coach who knows basketball. Every player at every level just wants a coach who can make them better and make them be successful, and that’s what she brings to the table.”
Although Hammon is proud to be known as a trailblazer, her main goal is just to succeed at her profession, those close to her say.
“She is aware of all the (history),” said Hughes, her former coach. “But she is a basketball coach. That is what is wonderful about Becky Hammon’s story. She is a trailblazer, and we all know that. … She wants to be a basketball coach. She loves the game . ... The essence of her is, ‘I want to do a good job. I want to be a good coach. I want to share the knowledge of the game, and I want to continue to learn.’”