Lucas Peltier-USA TODAY Sports
Becky Hammon's Basketball Know-How and Adaptability Should Excite Raptors Despite Risks
Becky Hammon joined the Las Vegas Aces in December 2021 with a plan on how she wanted to do things.
She’d spent nearly a decade with the San Antonio Spurs, studying the art of basketball as an assistant coach under Gregg Popovich. She'd seen the way Popovich’s teams had been so successful with their freeform pace-and-space style offense and wanted to bring that same philosophy to the WNBA, said Andy Yamashita, the Aces reporter for the Review-Journal.
For a while, it worked.
The Aces jumped from last in the WNBA in three-point shot attempts in 2021 to third in the league this past season in Hammon's first season and strung together a 13-2 start to the year.
But what makes Hammon such a special coach and a candidate to replace Nick Nurse as the next head coach of the Toronto Raptors isn’t merely her offensive schemes and basketball know-how. Rather, it’s her willingness to adapt.
Just before the playoffs began Hammon shook up her rotation. She moved Dearica Hamby to the bench in favor of Kiah Stokes. It was a move antithetical to Hammon’s basketball philosophy. Hamby had been the ideal stretch-four willing to shoot threes in Hammon's modern offense, but after a rough patch around the All-Star Break, something had to change.
“I think that was the thing that impressed me the most about Becky,” Yamashita said. “She easily could have locked herself into a philosophy and said we're gonna play this way and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but she was flexible. She adjusted.”
In Hammon’s first year with the Aces, she earned the WNBA’s Coach of the Year honors and led an uber-talented squad to a long-awaited championship. With Stokes in the starting lineup, the Aces went 12-2 including down the stretch and through the playoffs.
It’s not hard to see why Toronto would be interested in the 46-year-old Hammon. Almost everywhere you look you’ll find praise of her.
“She’s a basketball junkie,” said Yamashita. “She’s incredibly devoted and interested in basketball.”
“Hammon knows player tendencies well and is able to resonate with players during practices and games,” said Spurs reporter Matt Guzman of Inside the Spurs. “Guys look to Hammon in the same way they would any other coach.”
To Basketball Hall of Famer and former Spurs player Pau Gasol, the notion that Hammon isn’t qualified or couldn’t coach in the NBA is ridiculous.
All that said, hiring Hammon would be a risk. Not because she’d be the first woman to coach an NBA team but simply because she, like Nurse when he took over in Toronto, has no NBA head coaching experience. She’s never led a team over an 82-game season and her limited head coaching experience has come solely with a championship-caliber roster, the kind Toronto certainly doesn’t have right now.
How is she at developing players?
"It's definitely a small sample size," said Yamashita who pointed to Jackie Young, the former No. 1 overall pick who'd been a tad disappointing in her first three seasons in the WNBA before earning the league's Most Improved Player Award this past year, as Hammon's big developmental success.
There are, however, a few notable concerns with Hammon.
For one, there’s an ongoing WNBA investigation into the Aces after Hamby, who was traded away from the Aces during the offseason, alleged the organization bullied her after finding out she was pregnant. Hammon has not directly been named in the investigation nor in Hamby’s Instagram post that alleged the misconduct, but Hammon did preside over the team during the period.
The league is also investigating the Aces for salary cap manipulation, though that is not directly under Hammon’s purview.
Hammon also supposedly received less-than-stellar reviews from the Spurs organization while she was interviewing for the Portland Trail Blazers job, according to Jake Fischer. She had been a finalist for the job but “background on Hammon was not nearly as complimentary pertaining to various aspects of day-to-day coaching responsibilities. That sentiment has been echoed by sources around the league,” Fischer reported.
To Guzman, the report was surprising.
“Loving to coach, being able to coach, and being able to balance both in such a demanding league are all different things,” said Guzman. “Her love and passion for coaching is not in question, but the Spurs saw firsthand her coaching style and I think they gave Portland an honest evaluation of her.”
It’s possible, Guzman suggested, the Spurs wanted to keep Hammon with the organization as a candidate to replace Popovich.
Toronto isn’t afraid to take risks, though. Due diligence on Hammon will have to be done as thoroughly as all the other candidates the Raptors are vetting, but a lack of NBA head coaching experience hasn’t scared Toronto in the past.
President and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri took the plunge on a brand new NBA head coach the last time he found himself in this position, prowling the league for a replacement for Dwane Casey. This time around, Hammon has the characteristics to follow that same kind of path.
Further Reading
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