Let’s stipulate this at the top: Whatever choice Becky Hammon makes, it would be unwise to bet against her, and unfair to question her.
Hammon, according to a report by Adrian Wojnarowski in The Vertical, has been offered the job as head coach of the University of Florida women’s basketball team. The job includes a considerable raise from her current post as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs.
Still, Hammon is reportedly hesitant, and with good reason: She believes she is on track to become the first woman head coach in NBA history.
There’s plenty of reason for her to believe this is the case. Hammon works for Gregg Popovich, a visionary who had the good sense to hire her in the first place, and has groomed her in a variety of ways, including putting her in charge of the Spurs’ Summer League team, a common proving ground for future head coaches.
Hammon has proven not only that she is extremely capable, but that specifically men are responsive to her. Any tired theories about how women will be perceived in positions of authority by groups of men have largely been laid to rest already, but will exist in the most retrograde minds until it is actually demonstrated, no different than the lunacy which animated many believing people of color couldn’t play major-league baseball until Jackie Robinson shattered that barrier forever.
The thing about Robinson wasn’t simply that he exhibited uncommon levels of grace, competitiveness and valor, though all these things are true. Many players could have broken the color barrier before Robinson; he just needed the chance. He needed a Branch Rickey. And it helped, too, that he could do it in Brooklyn, a melting pot of a home field, which embraced him fully from the start.
Perhaps no NBA team is better positioned to give Hammon that chance than the Spurs, with their culture of winning, a franchise filled with best practices and devotion to finding the next frontier of ideas, whether it’s their embracing of minutes restrictions and decision sciences to an array of player evaluation insights. And let’s be clear: The Spurs didn’t set out to make gender history. Hammon, rehabbing an injury with the WNBA’s San Antonio Stars, asked to drop in on coaching meetings and gradually earned the trust of the staff. If Hammon doesn’t get hurt, none of this might have happened, not here, not now.
And Hammon, after all, could go coach anywhere, and face the same life cycle virtually as every NBA coach -- a few years followed by a firing. For anyone else, it would mean nothing more than a professional setback. For Hammon, or whoever is the first woman to get that NBA chance, it would be discussed as something more, and so it is vital that she succeed, just as Robinson succeeded.
There is no doubt Hammon understands all of this. She also must realize that few women are even close to her professional position and thus potentially able to break through this sideline glass ceiling. There are plenty who could do it -- spend five minutes with Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, for instance, and it will become clear she could lead a team of any gender to a championship -- but it is the chance that must come before the success.
Nancy Lieberman is also an assistant, but with the Kings. And not only do the Kings not seem like the kind of forward-thinking franchise ready to make such a head coaching hire, imagine if they did -- how much of the world will view the referendum of a woman coaching an NBA team would depend on the success or failure of the Sacramento Kings! Not exactly the best thing for societal progress.
The Florida job is a great job. The Gators spend generously on their women’s basketball program and Hammon could find herself building the next great SEC power, with Tennessee stabilizing in the Holly Warlick era shy of Pat Summitt’s success (though Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks will have something to say about the matter). Hammon is just 40 years old. She would have every chance of building a legend in Gainesville.
The challenge of this choice would weigh on anyone intent upon breaking new ground in the sport, let alone someone who has spent so much of her life attempting to elevate the women’s game.
“Well, you know, I think my take would be you’ve got to really know your own heart and what your own sort of calling is to make a difference, and I think that’s different for different people,” UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close said of the Hammon dilemma.
“For me, my heart is really with college-aged young women, and I think it’s a unique age. So for me it wouldn’t really be a question. But I also really -- I’ve been inspired by watching her journey in the NBA, and I know how many other people are.. I just really respect what she’s been willing to do not only for women and opportunities, but think about all the little girls that have watched that and gone, maybe that could be me.”
But if not Hammon, either as Popovich’s sucessor or hired away by another team due to the San Antonio imprimatur -- think Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer and Spurs East -- then exactly when will we see it?
Popovich, in 2015, talked about how obvious it seemed to him that hiring Hammon was a good idea, as well as the inevitability of seeing a woman someday get a chance to coach. Popovich also expressed frustration with the pace of that change.
“But I think since 2000 changes have been pretty damn lacking in a lot of ways,” Popovich said then. “I think people are fed up with it, injustice, and people not respecting other people’s space and who they are. I think it’s a step in the right direction.”
Hammon, too, has stressed the basketball side of the equation, but it is clear she understands the broader implications of her rise. That’s the only reason you think about it when someone offers you a promotion and a massive raise.
I remember speaking to Katie Smith, an assistant with the New York Liberty, just after Hammon got the job with the Spurs. Smith is a woman working for a man, Liberty head coach Bill Laimbeer, in a woman’s league. Smith knows basketball, relates well to players and would just as easily do excellent work coaching men. She acknowledged that when she heard about Hammon’s new job, “It opens up your mind a little bit. Like, I didn’t think that was a possibility.”
But Smith also pointed out that for Hammon to get that chance, it had to be in an organization that already knew her. That’s where we are right now, on the cusp of socially significant change. It’ll take someone with insight and familiarity to make that leap.
“It takes away the gender issue, because it’s who they are,” Smith said them. “She’s not a woman who knows basketball. It’s like, ‘Hey, it’s Becky.’”
And that is precisely what Becky Hammon needs to weigh as she chooses her professional future: If she gives up that familiarity, just how long will it be until another woman gets known enough to get a chance?
In Florida, she can be a success, even a legend. In San Antonio, on this track? She can be Jackie Robinson.