Becky Hammon , who will retire from a 16-year playing career in the WNBA at the end of this season, has always been a trail blazer.
The attractive 37-year old point guard from Rapid Falls, S.D., who once made the controversial decision to become a naturalized citizen of Russia in 2008 so she could participate in the Beijing Olympics, will join the NBA San Antonio Spurs as an full time assistant coach next season. Hammon is the second women to serve on an NBA coaching staff. The first was Lisa Boyer, a one-time WNBA head coach who was a volunteer member of John Lucas’ staff with Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2001-2002 season but was not paid by the team. Boyer has gone on to join Dawn Staley’s staff at Temple and later at South Carolina, where she is now an associate head coach
Hammon, an All American at Colorado State who made the All Star team at Blue Star camp, was a six-time All-Star selection in the WNBA, and in 2011 she was named one of the 15 best players in league history. During her prime in 2008 and 2009, she was considered the best three point shooter in the world. Hammon, who went undrafted out of college, played eight seasons in New York after signing with the Liberty in 1999. She has spent the past eight seasons with the San Antonio Stars. She averaged 8.6 points and 4.2 assists in 27 games for the Stars this season. Coming off a knee injury in 2012, she began to think more seriously about finding a coaching position once her playing career was over.
Her rehabilitation process allowed her to stay in San Antonio last year and the Spurs welcomed her into their practices, coaching meetings and film-review sessions. She watched games from behind the bench as the team went on to win its fifth championship. She referred to the whole experience on Tuesday as “an internship.”
When Spurs’ coach Greg Popovich, who has won five NBA championships and has a history of filling his roster with international talent like tony Parker of France and Manu Ginobli of Argentina, had an opening, he offered Hammon the position. “Coach Pop made it perfectly clear to me that I was being hired because of my basketball IQ and because I was qualified,” Hammon said. “He said, “It just so happened you are a woman.’ He told me, “I’m hiring you because of your IQ and your relationship skills.”
Nancy Lieberman, the assistant general manager of the Texas Legends, the N.B.A. Development League affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks, said Hammon’s hire was a huge step forward for the NBA. and for women.“First and foremost, this means respect,” said Lieberman, who served one season as head coach of the Legends and maintains aspirations to coach in the NBA. “She did not get hired just because she is a woman. She was hired because she was qualified.”
Popovich, whose Spurs’ teams have made 16 consecutive appearances in the NBA playoffs and is arguably the best coach in professional sports, has a history of thinking outside the box. Earlier this summer Popovich hired European coaching legend Ettore Messina of Italy as an assistant. Messina won four Euroleague championships.
Hammon has always been serious about competitive basketball and dreamed about representing this country in Olympic competition, but never got the chance. In 2008, after learning that, once again, she would not be invited to try out for the U.S. national team, Hammon announced she would try to earn a spot on the Russian national team, which was coached by Igor Grudin, who was also the sports director of the CSKA team Hammon played for in Moscow during the WNBA off-season.
Hammon’s decision to play for Russia was controversial in American basketball. She was branded an American traitor by some, with then-U.S. national coach Anne Donovan, questioning her patriotism. “If you play in this country, live in this country, and you grow up in the heartland and you put on a Russian uniform, you are not a patriotic person in my mind,” Donovan said.
“You don’t know me,” Hammon fired back. “You don’t know what that flag means to me. You don’t know how I grew up. The biggest honor in our classroom was who could put up the (American) flag, roll it up right, not let the corners touch the ground. Obviously we definitely define patriotism differently. I love my country. I love our national anthem. It absolutely gives me chills sometimes. I feel honored to be an American, to be from America because of what we stand for.”
Donovan later toned down the rhetoric once the Olympic competition began in Beijing.
Hammon said she played for Russia primarily to play on the Olympic stage, and it was not a purely financial decision. But, her contract was laced with financial incentives. As soon as she obtained Russian citizenship, her salary with CSKA tripled, and she was eligible to make $250,000 for winning a gold medal for Russia. She would have received a $150,000 bonus for winning a silver medal. Hammon shot 1-for-6 from the field in a 67–52 loss to the United States in the 2008 Olympic Semifinals, but helped the Russian team tto win the bronze medal, by scoring 22 points against China.
She also played for Russia at Eurobasket in 2009, the World Championship in 2010 and the Olympics in 2012.
Hammon appears to be a right fit for the Spurs in her new role, where he can learn the nuances of the NBA game from one of its greatest technical coaches ever. San Antonio has always been willing to experiment under Popovich and should enter next season as the favorite to repeat after veteran center Tim Duncan announced he would return for one more year.
