‘If you’re a coach, you’re a coach’: Becky Hammon wasn’t hired to make history
Mar 9, 2021 11:30:14 GMT -5
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Post by WBBDaily on Mar 9, 2021 11:30:14 GMT -5
There is a particular fusion of tension and chance, of anticipation and possibility, that comes with being a pioneer. Its demands constrict at times, even though it’s the dream, both in the immediate and the spectacular long view. It still continues, even now as Becky Hammon is in her seventh year on Gregg Popovich’s staff in San Antonio. Most recently, after Popovich got tossed from a game late in the second quarter against the Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 30, he pointed to Hammon on his way out and said, “You got ’em.”
And that was that. She was the active head coach of an NBA team. In-bounds plays were hers to draw up, offensive sets were hers to call, defensive adjustments against LeBron James and Anthony Davis, already her forte with the Spurs, were going to be a mammoth task, as it is for any opposing staff. Afterward, James said as a player out on the court it was beautiful to hear Hammon patrolling the sidelines. Hammon, of course, wanted the win, saying on the postgame press conference that while it was a night to remember, it would’ve been better had the Spurs eked one out against the reigning champs.
Hammon, 43, acknowledges that she actively tries to avoid thinking of the firsts she’s been a part of and the more to come. “It can be overwhelming,” she said.
Vickie Johnson, now the head coach of the Dallas Wings, spoke with her former teammate and friend just last week. The entirety of the moment came up. Hammon told Johnson she no longer bears the monotony of that daily pressure, but that she’s just more anxious about the next step. That next step everyone in the NBA knows is inevitable — Hammon becoming an NBA head coach.
“Everything happens in God’s timing; we just have to trust and believe that,” Johnson said. “But it’s all about being prepared for that moment. I know she will be. I know she will be.”
On the NBA’s historic “You got ‘em” night, Hammon’s friends, former teammates and former players found themselves glued to the TV or tethered to their phones. Those who were going through the motions of 2020 received calls and texts from one another, telling them to find a way to turn on NBATV or get to ESPN for that night’s SportsCenter. If they couldn’t do that, they wanted to read the gamers; if possible, they wanted to watch her postgame availability. That night was just another step toward what they all believe is coming sooner rather than later: Hammon getting a head coaching job.
“I really do believe what she’s doing now? She’s been practicing for this,” said former teammate Marie Ferdinand-Harris. “She has always been the person that had to prove it to someone or had to prove it because of her height. She’s been in a training camp, pretty much the very first time she picked up a basketball. She’s been training to defeat all odds.”
Near a San Antonio strip mall, where the main attractions are the neighborhood grocery store, a Torchy’s Tacos and a frozen yogurt pitstop, is an unassuming white-brick building barely 15 minutes north of downtown. It’s there that a colorful mural shows Hammon looking out over the Alamo City, above its skyline, above the Tower of the Americas. On the side of this random building in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, Hammon isn’t alone. The mural is flush with green grass beneath the carefully cultivated horizon, and while eyes gravitate to the depiction of the San Antonio Spurs assistant coach, there’s one more component to the piece.
It’s a young girl, a younger version of Hammon, her hair pulled up into a high blonde ponytail as Hammon did during her playing days. She’s wearing a home San Antonio Stars jersey and staring at her older self. She’s in Hammon’s number: 25. She’s wearing her jersey, which was retired by the organization in 2016. A basketball is held up against her left hip by the pressure from her left palm as she looks out on what everything could be, and what’s still to come. It’s a striking piece of symbolism considering its focal point is the person who changed professional sports forever simply by being herself every single day. Atop Hammon’s gaze out above her home base for the last 13 years, written in big blue letters, the kind of blue that matches the hue of the sky on a clear day in south-central Texas, is a directive:
“NEVER STOP”Speaking things into existence
Delisha Milton-Jones’ favorite story to tell isn’t the one that, looking back on it now, is so strikingly prescient that she still labels it one of divinity. No, her favorite Hammon story goes back four years prior. Hammon and Milton-Jones were teammates at Ros Casares Valencia in Spain during the WNBA offseason. Valencia is located in Godella, a shade under four hours south of Barcelona, but like Barcelona, it’s on the Balearic Sea. Off days, Milton-Jones still recalls, were heaven: trips to the beach to relax in the sun, picturesque outdoor cafes, all of it. There were those days, too, where the players would just congregate at apartments and share stories.
Hammon, a renowned dancer in her inner circles, went back in time. Like, way, way back. In an apartment in Spain with her teammates crowded around her, she proved it.
“There’s never a dull moment when Becky’s around,” Milton-Jones said. “She used to break out her old videos when she was younger and she was in a talent contest where she was doing the MC Hammer dances. Oh my gosh, she loves a good time.”
Four years later, Milton-Jones signed with the Stars. Once she got settled in San Antonio, she went to Hammon’s house. This is the second-favorite story, the conversation that Old Dominion’s women’s basketball coach recollected with ease.
“We were both at this moment in our lives where we were wanting more and we were trying to figure out what was next,” Milton-Jones recalled. “It was a spiritually-based conversation, because both of us sort of spoke something into existence, now that I look back on it, because we’re talking about dreams and aspirations, and making conditions for those things in our lives to be seeded. Like, manifestations. I told her, ‘My dream is, I want to be a coach in the NBA. I would love to coach men.’”
They both left that talk feeling motivated to press on. The playing days, Milton-Jones said, were approaching their end for both of them. And Hammon, she said succinctly, was always one step ahead.
A year later, Hammon retired from basketball and was hired by Popovich.
“My jaw dropped and I said, ‘No freaking way! No freaking way’!” Milton-Jones said. “And the reason being, I was in pure awe that we had spoken about that, and it happened. I wish I could tell the world what I know. I don’t even know where to begin. I always kept that in the corner of my heart and I revisit it from time to time — or every time I see Becky on TV.”
“She always went with the Eagles”
When Hammon was traded to the San Antonio Stars in 2007 after eight years with the New York Liberty, Ferdinand-Harris remembers how swiftly Hammon became so attached to the San Antonio way. There were nights after games when Stars players wanted to go celebrate a win at a favorite restaurant. Hammon, her teammates remember, opted to keep pushing herself. She’d tell them she was going to get dinner with Tony Parker or Tim Duncan or maybe meet up with Popovich and staffers to talk about what they were doing for their next opponent.
“She always went with the eagles. Not to say the others were chickens,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “But she would always find herself with the eagles. And she soared with them. That was her company. When we’d have days off, most of us would be taking it easy, icing our knees, watching TV. She’s like, ‘I’m going to go meet up with them and watch the Spurs practice.’ Becky was just a step ahead of everyone. She always affiliated herself with the eagles, and when I see her where she is now, it all makes sense.”South Dakota tough
There is tough, and then there is South Dakota tough. That’s how friends describe it. During Hammon’s rookie year with the Liberty in 1999, the Rapid City, S.D., native had to contend with battle-tested teammates Theresa Witherspoon, Sophia Witherspoon and Johnson. She had to figure out how to get around screens by Rebecca Lobo. Johnson, a versatile defensive-first guard, remembers lowering her shoulder into Hammon a couple of times in training camp. Just to see. Afterward, she went into the general manager’s office to ask where they found this new guard.
“I was like, ‘This kid — I don’t know her name — from South Dakota? This little kid is tough! If I go to war, I want to go to war with this kid. I don’t know who she is. She’s short, she’s a shooter, she’s tough. I know I hit her hard a couple of times and she got back up,'” said Johnson. “Ever since that day, we’ve become friends. We’re very close now. It’s like a match made in heaven, in a sense.”
Back then, coaching basketball didn’t come up all that much. Hammon was cutting her teeth amongst the WNBA elite and climbing the ladder doing so. She became a more established, well-rounded guard, going from primarily a 3-point threat to an all-around scorer. It came with effort, but also with the sort of attention to detail Johnson had never really seen in another teammate.
“When we were on the road, we would order our room service to the trainer’s room and we would set up a projector so we could watch film and we would stay there pretty much all night,” Johnson said. “That’s what it was. It wasn’t about coaching but it was about trying to find that edge. We never really spoke about coaching, it just naturally happened.”
“When you get to this point, you are a professional”
C.J. Williams felt a little awkward, a little out of position. The 6-foot-5 guard from North Carolina State was being deployed as a stretch-four under Hammon at the 2016 NBA Summer League. It was Hammon’s second year as San Antonio’s head coach of the summer league team. In her first year, the Spurs won the tournament in Las Vegas.
“They had me playing a little bit out of position, so it was a new feeling for me to be playing the power forward position,” Williams recalls. “I had asked her one time, I told her, ‘I’m setting this screen and I’m not getting open, and it’s extremely hard for me to get open and get a shot.’
“She tells me: ‘Your stance is a little too wide and you need to take a step in the opposite direction first before you go to the ball.’ I was like, ‘OK, I’m thinking that is basic fundamentals, but that’s probably not going to work.’ But she’s a coach. I’m going to do it, and I went and did it and got a wide-open shot. Unfortunately, I missed it. I always tell that story. Because it’s not a matter of whether she’s a female or male. Her overall knowledge of the game is better than a lot of people I know.”
Talk to those who know her, and the subject of her gender is raised by those who played for her or with her before it’s raised by the interviewer. And every time, there is a quashing of all those preconceived notions that run parallel to the way things have always been done. It does not matter.
“The way I look at it is: We are all professionals. Whether it’s summer league or regular season, playoffs, whatever. It doesn’t matter. When you get to this point, you’re a professional,” says Williams, now with the Brooklyn Nets G-League team. “And you know you’re going to work with other people. And all you want out of those other people is to work together for that common goal. Whether we just want to make the playoffs or play for a championship or whether we just want to improve from season to season, if you can prove to me that we both are going to be of equal or greater value to this organization, that’s all I care about. Becky was just so awesome in development. In Xs and Os. It’s not so shocking because she works with the Spurs. She learned, obviously, and was a sponge and in that form.”
For Hammon’s players, gender never defined her as a coach
It takes much more to get professionals to buy in, too, no matter your gender. Hammon knows when to strike. Former teammates say outside of the staples of tactics, discipline, style of play, coaches need to find a way to hit a chord that players can relate to and remember. Hammon, they say, has an innate ability to do that.
With Hammon, they know she can impress players by simply broaching every-day, off-the-court things. Ferdinand-Harris said that Hammon talks to her players about popular TikTok dances, Drake releases and is the sort of amicable personality who could win over anyone by something as simple as a game of H.O.R.S.E.
“She understood from the very beginning that it’s all about connecting to people. And how do you connect with people? You try to understand people,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “It didn’t matter who you were, what color you were, what gender, anything, she was able to make that connection with her personality. She could make you smile. She could make you laugh. She’s very funny. Once you get in, then you want to go to war for her. I want to bust my butt a little bit more to go win this game. I want to make her proud. I want to go all out. And I can see that transferring to the NBA. I can see her connecting with those players.”
Boris Diaw remembers Hammon’s rookie season as an assistant coach and her figuring out the rapid transition from star WNBA player to assistant coach.
“Back then she was becoming a rookie coach and she was in that early transition from playing to becoming a coach; as all the young coaches, you could tell she was looking for what to do and how to do it because it’s different from playing,” Diaw said. “There was not even a reaction (to her being a woman). It was normal. Nobody was saying, ‘We have a woman assistant.’ The question never even came up.”
The outgoing Diaw often struck up conversations with Hammon off the court about her long-term aspirations. He was traded to Utah in July 2016.
“We clearly talked about how far does she want to go in coaching and stuff, and it seemed pretty natural,” he said. “She was just a young assistant coach and starting out and learning that job. We would see that the progression would take her as far as she can. It was something always in our mind.”
Andre Miller, a point guard in the NBA for 17 seasons, played his last year in the league in San Antonio in 2016. He’d known Hammon, the star point guard, the sharp-shooting 3-point threat, the perennial All-Star, but Miller never knew Hammon the coach. No one did until they were signed by the Spurs. From the outset, Miller knew that Hammon was going to be able to direct a game from the sideline just like she did through the prism of being a point guard: obsessed with the details, not wanting to concede an inch. Miller remembers his time working with her and said she sees the game from a coaching perspective through the lens of a point guard.
“Oh she’s going to definitely be the first female NBA head coach,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time. I wouldn’t be surprised that when Pop does decide to retire that she’d be next in line. It’s a perfect situation. She knows the community, she knows management, and she’s reliable and she expects it. It’s easy to make that transition. She’s primed and ready.” (For the record, several of Popovich’s former assistants and players have gone on to be NBA coaches and two are general managers.)“If you know the game, you know the game”
Vickie Johnson, like so many others, reverses the interview and bluntly poses the question herself.
“You tell me if I’m wrong. If she was a guy and she had all these accolades and had done all she has done in this league, she would already be a head coach,” said Johnson, who later played with Hammon in San Antonio after their years together in New York. “It’s just unfair, and I know it’s hard for us as a whole to see people equally. Male, female, whatever. White, black, brown, gold, whatever. I don’t see that. If you’re a coach, you’re a coach. If you’re a good person, you’re a good person. If you’re a bad person, you’re a bad person. I know by talking to Becky, watching her, being able to sit with her and watch film with her and the way she communicates with the players, I know she’s ready to take the next step.”
If not for San Antonio’s willingness to embrace needed change, Johnson wonders if Hammon — or any other qualified female coach for that matter — would’ve gotten her due shot on a bench elsewhere in the NBA. The burden of trailblazing used to be more of a strain than it is now. Hammon wanted to just coach. To watch basketball with the sort of genius she’s proven capable of doing. She’d soared with the eagles while teammates went out for dinner.
But with necessary firsts comes a spotlight. It’s not something she shirks, per se. She wants to do what she always has: live basketball every day.
“I think when she first got into the league and coaching, I think it did. I think it weighed on her,” Johnson said. “She had to carry this weight. Through the years, through the summer leagues, winning summer leagues, just going through the process and understanding the rules and regulations of the NBA. How you relate to (players). Do they trust you? Do you know what you’re talking about? I think the biggest thing for her, I think she had the pressure a few years ago. Now it’s about her learning all she can and being prepared when the opportunities come.”
Former WNBA star guard Jennifer Azzi faced Hammon for a few years in the WNBA before retiring in 2003. “Toughness” is what comes to mind all these years later. After Hammon took over for Popovich in that game against the Lakers, Azzi remembers seeing a congratulatory tweet from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to Hammon among the wave of well-wishes and celebratory emojis.
“What she’s doing is she’s shining the light on the fact that women are just as good as men in everything,” Azzi said. “It’s one thing when there’s something that’s market-based. Like NBA vs. WNBA. There’s still so much room to grow. But in this instance, if you know the game, you know the game. I think it’s shining the light on everything women do everywhere. I think it’s tremendous for the growth of the sport overall. I also really believe — I think the biggest shift I have seen is women supporting women, women celebrating women. I don’t remember ever a time like this.”
As he’s had to unfortunately explain too many times over the years, Popovich once more said he didn’t hire Hammon “to make history.” She was brought on board because she’s Becky Hammon, the one player who would never stop, the coach who would never stop.
“Breaking down barriers is something that is always beautiful to see,” Williams said. “It’s just that, for me, it’s not very shocking. Having firsthand experience with her, she’s professional, and at this level, that’s all you can ask for in coach, in a player, in anything.”
Two seasons ago, Ferdinand-Harris arrived at Spurs camp earlier than usual. She wanted to try to yell at Becky during warmups. But once she walked down courtside, she saw Hammon putting Spurs guard Patty Mills through a quick shooting routine, and read the expression on her friend’s face. She knew that the goofy, life-of-the-party Becky was there. She knew that if she wanted to, she could call out a random dance move, and if she wanted to, Hammon could bust it out right there.
But she resisted because Hammon was rebounding and making Mills shuffle his feet beyond the 3-point line and Mills was breaking a sweat.
“The Spurs will continue to grow you as a person. Character is always No. 1. From Day 1, she was learning how. She didn’t have to learn all these things under pressure, under stress,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “Because you can mess up and learn. They tell you, ‘We are all in with you.’ All the mess-ups are all in. And then she was getting better and better as a coach. It’s the same format for the players. They’re grooming everyone, grooming everyone, and then, all of a sudden, it clicks. Grooming their own to become ready. They did it with Kawhi, with Tim, with Tony, with Manu. And now, look who it is. It’s Becky.”
And that was that. She was the active head coach of an NBA team. In-bounds plays were hers to draw up, offensive sets were hers to call, defensive adjustments against LeBron James and Anthony Davis, already her forte with the Spurs, were going to be a mammoth task, as it is for any opposing staff. Afterward, James said as a player out on the court it was beautiful to hear Hammon patrolling the sidelines. Hammon, of course, wanted the win, saying on the postgame press conference that while it was a night to remember, it would’ve been better had the Spurs eked one out against the reigning champs.
Hammon, 43, acknowledges that she actively tries to avoid thinking of the firsts she’s been a part of and the more to come. “It can be overwhelming,” she said.
Vickie Johnson, now the head coach of the Dallas Wings, spoke with her former teammate and friend just last week. The entirety of the moment came up. Hammon told Johnson she no longer bears the monotony of that daily pressure, but that she’s just more anxious about the next step. That next step everyone in the NBA knows is inevitable — Hammon becoming an NBA head coach.
“Everything happens in God’s timing; we just have to trust and believe that,” Johnson said. “But it’s all about being prepared for that moment. I know she will be. I know she will be.”
On the NBA’s historic “You got ‘em” night, Hammon’s friends, former teammates and former players found themselves glued to the TV or tethered to their phones. Those who were going through the motions of 2020 received calls and texts from one another, telling them to find a way to turn on NBATV or get to ESPN for that night’s SportsCenter. If they couldn’t do that, they wanted to read the gamers; if possible, they wanted to watch her postgame availability. That night was just another step toward what they all believe is coming sooner rather than later: Hammon getting a head coaching job.
“I really do believe what she’s doing now? She’s been practicing for this,” said former teammate Marie Ferdinand-Harris. “She has always been the person that had to prove it to someone or had to prove it because of her height. She’s been in a training camp, pretty much the very first time she picked up a basketball. She’s been training to defeat all odds.”
Near a San Antonio strip mall, where the main attractions are the neighborhood grocery store, a Torchy’s Tacos and a frozen yogurt pitstop, is an unassuming white-brick building barely 15 minutes north of downtown. It’s there that a colorful mural shows Hammon looking out over the Alamo City, above its skyline, above the Tower of the Americas. On the side of this random building in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, Hammon isn’t alone. The mural is flush with green grass beneath the carefully cultivated horizon, and while eyes gravitate to the depiction of the San Antonio Spurs assistant coach, there’s one more component to the piece.
It’s a young girl, a younger version of Hammon, her hair pulled up into a high blonde ponytail as Hammon did during her playing days. She’s wearing a home San Antonio Stars jersey and staring at her older self. She’s in Hammon’s number: 25. She’s wearing her jersey, which was retired by the organization in 2016. A basketball is held up against her left hip by the pressure from her left palm as she looks out on what everything could be, and what’s still to come. It’s a striking piece of symbolism considering its focal point is the person who changed professional sports forever simply by being herself every single day. Atop Hammon’s gaze out above her home base for the last 13 years, written in big blue letters, the kind of blue that matches the hue of the sky on a clear day in south-central Texas, is a directive:
“NEVER STOP”Speaking things into existence
Delisha Milton-Jones’ favorite story to tell isn’t the one that, looking back on it now, is so strikingly prescient that she still labels it one of divinity. No, her favorite Hammon story goes back four years prior. Hammon and Milton-Jones were teammates at Ros Casares Valencia in Spain during the WNBA offseason. Valencia is located in Godella, a shade under four hours south of Barcelona, but like Barcelona, it’s on the Balearic Sea. Off days, Milton-Jones still recalls, were heaven: trips to the beach to relax in the sun, picturesque outdoor cafes, all of it. There were those days, too, where the players would just congregate at apartments and share stories.
Hammon, a renowned dancer in her inner circles, went back in time. Like, way, way back. In an apartment in Spain with her teammates crowded around her, she proved it.
“There’s never a dull moment when Becky’s around,” Milton-Jones said. “She used to break out her old videos when she was younger and she was in a talent contest where she was doing the MC Hammer dances. Oh my gosh, she loves a good time.”
Four years later, Milton-Jones signed with the Stars. Once she got settled in San Antonio, she went to Hammon’s house. This is the second-favorite story, the conversation that Old Dominion’s women’s basketball coach recollected with ease.
“We were both at this moment in our lives where we were wanting more and we were trying to figure out what was next,” Milton-Jones recalled. “It was a spiritually-based conversation, because both of us sort of spoke something into existence, now that I look back on it, because we’re talking about dreams and aspirations, and making conditions for those things in our lives to be seeded. Like, manifestations. I told her, ‘My dream is, I want to be a coach in the NBA. I would love to coach men.’”
They both left that talk feeling motivated to press on. The playing days, Milton-Jones said, were approaching their end for both of them. And Hammon, she said succinctly, was always one step ahead.
A year later, Hammon retired from basketball and was hired by Popovich.
“My jaw dropped and I said, ‘No freaking way! No freaking way’!” Milton-Jones said. “And the reason being, I was in pure awe that we had spoken about that, and it happened. I wish I could tell the world what I know. I don’t even know where to begin. I always kept that in the corner of my heart and I revisit it from time to time — or every time I see Becky on TV.”
“She always went with the Eagles”
When Hammon was traded to the San Antonio Stars in 2007 after eight years with the New York Liberty, Ferdinand-Harris remembers how swiftly Hammon became so attached to the San Antonio way. There were nights after games when Stars players wanted to go celebrate a win at a favorite restaurant. Hammon, her teammates remember, opted to keep pushing herself. She’d tell them she was going to get dinner with Tony Parker or Tim Duncan or maybe meet up with Popovich and staffers to talk about what they were doing for their next opponent.
“She always went with the eagles. Not to say the others were chickens,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “But she would always find herself with the eagles. And she soared with them. That was her company. When we’d have days off, most of us would be taking it easy, icing our knees, watching TV. She’s like, ‘I’m going to go meet up with them and watch the Spurs practice.’ Becky was just a step ahead of everyone. She always affiliated herself with the eagles, and when I see her where she is now, it all makes sense.”South Dakota tough
There is tough, and then there is South Dakota tough. That’s how friends describe it. During Hammon’s rookie year with the Liberty in 1999, the Rapid City, S.D., native had to contend with battle-tested teammates Theresa Witherspoon, Sophia Witherspoon and Johnson. She had to figure out how to get around screens by Rebecca Lobo. Johnson, a versatile defensive-first guard, remembers lowering her shoulder into Hammon a couple of times in training camp. Just to see. Afterward, she went into the general manager’s office to ask where they found this new guard.
“I was like, ‘This kid — I don’t know her name — from South Dakota? This little kid is tough! If I go to war, I want to go to war with this kid. I don’t know who she is. She’s short, she’s a shooter, she’s tough. I know I hit her hard a couple of times and she got back up,'” said Johnson. “Ever since that day, we’ve become friends. We’re very close now. It’s like a match made in heaven, in a sense.”
Back then, coaching basketball didn’t come up all that much. Hammon was cutting her teeth amongst the WNBA elite and climbing the ladder doing so. She became a more established, well-rounded guard, going from primarily a 3-point threat to an all-around scorer. It came with effort, but also with the sort of attention to detail Johnson had never really seen in another teammate.
“When we were on the road, we would order our room service to the trainer’s room and we would set up a projector so we could watch film and we would stay there pretty much all night,” Johnson said. “That’s what it was. It wasn’t about coaching but it was about trying to find that edge. We never really spoke about coaching, it just naturally happened.”
“When you get to this point, you are a professional”
C.J. Williams felt a little awkward, a little out of position. The 6-foot-5 guard from North Carolina State was being deployed as a stretch-four under Hammon at the 2016 NBA Summer League. It was Hammon’s second year as San Antonio’s head coach of the summer league team. In her first year, the Spurs won the tournament in Las Vegas.
“They had me playing a little bit out of position, so it was a new feeling for me to be playing the power forward position,” Williams recalls. “I had asked her one time, I told her, ‘I’m setting this screen and I’m not getting open, and it’s extremely hard for me to get open and get a shot.’
“She tells me: ‘Your stance is a little too wide and you need to take a step in the opposite direction first before you go to the ball.’ I was like, ‘OK, I’m thinking that is basic fundamentals, but that’s probably not going to work.’ But she’s a coach. I’m going to do it, and I went and did it and got a wide-open shot. Unfortunately, I missed it. I always tell that story. Because it’s not a matter of whether she’s a female or male. Her overall knowledge of the game is better than a lot of people I know.”
Talk to those who know her, and the subject of her gender is raised by those who played for her or with her before it’s raised by the interviewer. And every time, there is a quashing of all those preconceived notions that run parallel to the way things have always been done. It does not matter.
“The way I look at it is: We are all professionals. Whether it’s summer league or regular season, playoffs, whatever. It doesn’t matter. When you get to this point, you’re a professional,” says Williams, now with the Brooklyn Nets G-League team. “And you know you’re going to work with other people. And all you want out of those other people is to work together for that common goal. Whether we just want to make the playoffs or play for a championship or whether we just want to improve from season to season, if you can prove to me that we both are going to be of equal or greater value to this organization, that’s all I care about. Becky was just so awesome in development. In Xs and Os. It’s not so shocking because she works with the Spurs. She learned, obviously, and was a sponge and in that form.”
For Hammon’s players, gender never defined her as a coach
It takes much more to get professionals to buy in, too, no matter your gender. Hammon knows when to strike. Former teammates say outside of the staples of tactics, discipline, style of play, coaches need to find a way to hit a chord that players can relate to and remember. Hammon, they say, has an innate ability to do that.
With Hammon, they know she can impress players by simply broaching every-day, off-the-court things. Ferdinand-Harris said that Hammon talks to her players about popular TikTok dances, Drake releases and is the sort of amicable personality who could win over anyone by something as simple as a game of H.O.R.S.E.
“She understood from the very beginning that it’s all about connecting to people. And how do you connect with people? You try to understand people,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “It didn’t matter who you were, what color you were, what gender, anything, she was able to make that connection with her personality. She could make you smile. She could make you laugh. She’s very funny. Once you get in, then you want to go to war for her. I want to bust my butt a little bit more to go win this game. I want to make her proud. I want to go all out. And I can see that transferring to the NBA. I can see her connecting with those players.”
Boris Diaw remembers Hammon’s rookie season as an assistant coach and her figuring out the rapid transition from star WNBA player to assistant coach.
“Back then she was becoming a rookie coach and she was in that early transition from playing to becoming a coach; as all the young coaches, you could tell she was looking for what to do and how to do it because it’s different from playing,” Diaw said. “There was not even a reaction (to her being a woman). It was normal. Nobody was saying, ‘We have a woman assistant.’ The question never even came up.”
The outgoing Diaw often struck up conversations with Hammon off the court about her long-term aspirations. He was traded to Utah in July 2016.
“We clearly talked about how far does she want to go in coaching and stuff, and it seemed pretty natural,” he said. “She was just a young assistant coach and starting out and learning that job. We would see that the progression would take her as far as she can. It was something always in our mind.”
Andre Miller, a point guard in the NBA for 17 seasons, played his last year in the league in San Antonio in 2016. He’d known Hammon, the star point guard, the sharp-shooting 3-point threat, the perennial All-Star, but Miller never knew Hammon the coach. No one did until they were signed by the Spurs. From the outset, Miller knew that Hammon was going to be able to direct a game from the sideline just like she did through the prism of being a point guard: obsessed with the details, not wanting to concede an inch. Miller remembers his time working with her and said she sees the game from a coaching perspective through the lens of a point guard.
“Oh she’s going to definitely be the first female NBA head coach,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time. I wouldn’t be surprised that when Pop does decide to retire that she’d be next in line. It’s a perfect situation. She knows the community, she knows management, and she’s reliable and she expects it. It’s easy to make that transition. She’s primed and ready.” (For the record, several of Popovich’s former assistants and players have gone on to be NBA coaches and two are general managers.)“If you know the game, you know the game”
Vickie Johnson, like so many others, reverses the interview and bluntly poses the question herself.
“You tell me if I’m wrong. If she was a guy and she had all these accolades and had done all she has done in this league, she would already be a head coach,” said Johnson, who later played with Hammon in San Antonio after their years together in New York. “It’s just unfair, and I know it’s hard for us as a whole to see people equally. Male, female, whatever. White, black, brown, gold, whatever. I don’t see that. If you’re a coach, you’re a coach. If you’re a good person, you’re a good person. If you’re a bad person, you’re a bad person. I know by talking to Becky, watching her, being able to sit with her and watch film with her and the way she communicates with the players, I know she’s ready to take the next step.”
If not for San Antonio’s willingness to embrace needed change, Johnson wonders if Hammon — or any other qualified female coach for that matter — would’ve gotten her due shot on a bench elsewhere in the NBA. The burden of trailblazing used to be more of a strain than it is now. Hammon wanted to just coach. To watch basketball with the sort of genius she’s proven capable of doing. She’d soared with the eagles while teammates went out for dinner.
But with necessary firsts comes a spotlight. It’s not something she shirks, per se. She wants to do what she always has: live basketball every day.
“I think when she first got into the league and coaching, I think it did. I think it weighed on her,” Johnson said. “She had to carry this weight. Through the years, through the summer leagues, winning summer leagues, just going through the process and understanding the rules and regulations of the NBA. How you relate to (players). Do they trust you? Do you know what you’re talking about? I think the biggest thing for her, I think she had the pressure a few years ago. Now it’s about her learning all she can and being prepared when the opportunities come.”
Former WNBA star guard Jennifer Azzi faced Hammon for a few years in the WNBA before retiring in 2003. “Toughness” is what comes to mind all these years later. After Hammon took over for Popovich in that game against the Lakers, Azzi remembers seeing a congratulatory tweet from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to Hammon among the wave of well-wishes and celebratory emojis.
“What she’s doing is she’s shining the light on the fact that women are just as good as men in everything,” Azzi said. “It’s one thing when there’s something that’s market-based. Like NBA vs. WNBA. There’s still so much room to grow. But in this instance, if you know the game, you know the game. I think it’s shining the light on everything women do everywhere. I think it’s tremendous for the growth of the sport overall. I also really believe — I think the biggest shift I have seen is women supporting women, women celebrating women. I don’t remember ever a time like this.”
As he’s had to unfortunately explain too many times over the years, Popovich once more said he didn’t hire Hammon “to make history.” She was brought on board because she’s Becky Hammon, the one player who would never stop, the coach who would never stop.
“Breaking down barriers is something that is always beautiful to see,” Williams said. “It’s just that, for me, it’s not very shocking. Having firsthand experience with her, she’s professional, and at this level, that’s all you can ask for in coach, in a player, in anything.”
Two seasons ago, Ferdinand-Harris arrived at Spurs camp earlier than usual. She wanted to try to yell at Becky during warmups. But once she walked down courtside, she saw Hammon putting Spurs guard Patty Mills through a quick shooting routine, and read the expression on her friend’s face. She knew that the goofy, life-of-the-party Becky was there. She knew that if she wanted to, she could call out a random dance move, and if she wanted to, Hammon could bust it out right there.
But she resisted because Hammon was rebounding and making Mills shuffle his feet beyond the 3-point line and Mills was breaking a sweat.
“The Spurs will continue to grow you as a person. Character is always No. 1. From Day 1, she was learning how. She didn’t have to learn all these things under pressure, under stress,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “Because you can mess up and learn. They tell you, ‘We are all in with you.’ All the mess-ups are all in. And then she was getting better and better as a coach. It’s the same format for the players. They’re grooming everyone, grooming everyone, and then, all of a sudden, it clicks. Grooming their own to become ready. They did it with Kawhi, with Tim, with Tony, with Manu. And now, look who it is. It’s Becky.”
