Is the NBA Woke Enough to Make Becky Hammon Its First Female Coach?
There are approximately 123 head coaches at the helm of teams in the four major men’s professional sports leagues: NFL (football), NBA (basketball), MLB (baseball) and NHL (hockey). How many of those head coaches do you think are women? Did you guess zero? It’s zero.
Bu that could change, at least in the NBA, because Becky Hammon, a former WNBA player and current assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs, is reportedly interviewing this week for the head coaching position with the Milwaukee Bucks. Hammon has already made NBA history: When the Spurs’s beloved head coach, Gregg Popovich, hired her in 2014, Hammon became the first woman ever to serve as a full-time assistant coach in the league (and, for that matter, in the NFL, MLB, or NHL). Popovich, considered one of the NBA’s greatest coaches of all time, had been a fan of Hammon’s since she was a pro player herself, first as a scrappy 5-foot-6 center for the New York Liberty (a team she walked on to after being passed over due to her height) and, later, the San Antonio Stars.
“I’d watch the game, and the only thing I could see . . . was Becky’s aura, her leadership, her effect on teammates, her effect on the crowd, the way she handled herself,” Popovich told The New Yorker. “She was, like, the ultimate leader.” Hammon coached the Spurs in the NBA’s 2015 summer league—and took home the championship.
Sounds like the perfect person to land the top job with the Bucks. And if she were a man, she’d probably be a front-runner. But seeing as she’s not, she’s not. Hammon’s relatively young age (41) and experience (four years as an assistant coach in the NBA; no previous head coaching jobs) are the official arguments against her. According to reports, the Bucks are eyeing former Atlanta Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer and candidates like former Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt. But also, not surprisingly, the team is keener on men. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to imagine that if Hammon were a man, she wouldn’t be knocked for her lack of experience but praised as a gutsy, young upstart instead. (“Experience” is similarly hurled as a criticism of female political candidates, while seldom raised in reference to their male counterparts.) Moreover, it’s somewhat of a catch-22 for the NBA to penalize Hammon for a lack of experience when the league itself has never, not once in 71 years, hired a woman to a top coaching job—if women are never given a shot, how are they supposed to gain that oh-so-valuable experience?
Despite women’s fandom and support of the NBA (and the NFL and others), despite women rising up against the plague of sexual harassment and abuse at work, despite the fact that men consistently serve as coaches for women’s teams in sports across the spectrum, professional men’s sports remains an ass-backward island unto itself, where it has been practically unthinkable for women to be the bosses. Completely boxing women out of leadership positions hardly registers in the NBA and its peer leagues—at least before Hammon’s moment—because it’s simply the norm in this most physical and macho of environs. As sports radio host Mike Francesa has said of Hammon: “What would qualify her to be a coach, on a professional level, of a men’s team? It’s not even something that would make sense to aspire to.” Yes, why would women dream of doing more than posing topless and getting paid minimum wage in the sports arena? How dare they!
As for the (patently ridiculous) argument that there’s something inappropriate about a woman coaching a men’s team because she couldn’t hang with them in the locker room, Spurs player Pau Gasol called bullshit in an op-ed for The Players’ Tribune, in which he voiced his support of Hammon. “This idea that, if there were a female head coach in the NBA, there would be some sort of . . . ‘awkwardness in the locker room’ . . . it’s a myth. Give me a break,” Gasol said. “The players dress in a certain area, and the coaches dress in a certain area. Okay? It’s not like you’re seeing male head coaches sharing a space with players while they’re changing. It doesn’t happen . . . in terms of behind the scenes, there really is no practical difference in this league between having a male or a female head coach.”
The NBA may be as aware of sexist, nonsensical criticism of Hammon than anyone, as it positions itself as the most woke of the men’s pro leagues. Stars like Steph Curry and LeBron James have vocally criticized President Trump and supported Black Lives Matter (James, for one, has said he’d support a female head coach: “If she knows what she’s doing, we’ll love it . . . at the end of the day, [it’s] basketball, it’s not about male or female”). Popovich and the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, attended last year’s Pride parade in New York. Now the Bucks are interviewing Hammon. And, frankly, they shouldn’t get props for merely considering her—they should hire her. Because she’s the best woman for the job.
