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SALT LAKE CITY — Becky Hammon doesn’t want it to be a big deal, but she knows it is.
The San Antonio assistant coach will slide into the head coach’s chair for the Spurs’ summer league team Saturday in Las Vegas, becoming the first female head coach in NBA summer league history.
Instead, she’s focusing on the players — as well as getting the most out of her first-ever summer league trip as a player or coach during the three-day Utah Jazz Summer League, which wraps up Thursday night at EnergySolutions Arena.
“First and foremost, it’s about the players. For us (the coaches), it’s just a great experience and helps us get some feeling,” Hammon said after the Spurs’ shootaround Wednesday. “I’m a young coach, and for me this experience is invaluable.
“I just want to coach these guys, and get my feet wet a little bit on the sidelines,” she added. “I don’t want to downplay it, but I also just want to coach. It is a big deal, but it’s not a big deal.”
The Spurs (1-1) will conclude the Utah Jazz Summer League at 5 p.m. against Boston (0-2). The host Jazz (2-0) face Philadelphia (1-1) at 7 p.m.
Hammon has been a part of plenty of big deals in her playing career. The Rapid City, South Dakota, native played her way up through Colorado State, helping to put the Rams’ women’s basketball team on the map in her four years that included their first-ever win over Utah in Salt Lake City. She graduated as the Western Athletic Conference’s all-time leading scorer in 1999, and her No. 25 jersey was retired in 2005 to hang in the rafters of Moby Arena.
These days, Hammon doesn’t remember many college games during her All-American career. But she remembers that matchup with the Utes that saw her Rams victorious over Utah standouts Alli Bills and Julie Krommenhoek in Salt Lake City.
“I think they were smashing us in the first half, too,” she said. “I don’t recall very many college games, but I do recall that one.”
Hammon’s WNBA career started in 1999 as an undrafted free agent with the New York Liberty, for whom she played eight seasons. Like most WNBA players who play year-round searching for more lucrative contracts, she also had stops in Europe that included a three-year stint with CSKA Moscow to help her become a naturalized citizen and represent Russia at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The six-time WNBA all-star officially finished her stateside career in 2014 with the San Antonio Silver Stars, after an injury to her anterior cruciate ligament sat her on the recovery table in 2013.
But during that recovery time, Hammon spent a lot of time with the Spurs organization, including head coach Greg Popovich, going to team meetings, practices and games.
Last August, Popovich named Hammon the first full-time female assistant coach in NBA history, and the first to do so in any of the four major American sports. It was a progressive move, but San Antonio has never been afraid of thinking “outside the box,” Hammon said.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman,” Popovich told the New York Post in March. “It’s the same position, it’s the same pick-and-roll, it’s the same defenses and all that sort of thing. She’s very confident in the knowledge that she has and the way she approaches the game from a point-guard position. It’s been good to have her. It’s another perspective that we didn’t have before.”
Hammon hopes her coaching style is a lot like her playing style: quick, well-conditioned, and with an emphasis on pace.
“I want to be the kind of coach that likes tempo and pace,” Hammon said. “I think players like playing with tempo and pace, too. I would love to coach like that, and I think fans like watching basketball like that. We play defense, we compete, and then we get up and down the court.”
At 38 years old, Hammon briefly considered a post-playing career in television. But after one of her first broadcasts, she was walking out of the gym with a colleague who made a life-changing comment.
“Isn’t this great?” he asked her rhetorically. “You never have to leave the gym a loser.”
Hammon quickly realized then that the media game wasn’t for her.
I just want to coach these guys, and get my feet wet a little bit on the sidelines. I don't want to downplay it, but I also just want to coach. It is a big deal, but it's not a big deal.
–Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon
“I never got to leave the gym a winner, either,” she said. “I knew, competitive-wise, that wrapped it up for me. It was my a-ha moment; I was going to go coach.”
From there, her rise through the Spurs’ ranks has been quick. Popovich put her on his staff as an assistant coach last August, and San Antonio became the first team among the four major American sports to see a female full-time assistant coach on its bench.
The summer league gig is just another step in career.
“I like the impact you can have on people’s lives in an everyday experience,” Hammon said of coaching. “People who have impacted me the most were coaches, family members and teammates. It wasn’t somebody on TV. It was people on the daily who impacted me the most.”
Hammon’s roles with the Spurs have been most confined to working with the team’s guards and shooters, a role she’s embraced based on her playing background. On Saturday, when San Antonio tips off at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, she’ll slide one chair down and begin drawing up plays for the first time.
And hopefully it won’t be her last.
“It’s only one chair over, but it’s a big step over. All of a sudden, it all falls back on you,” she said. “All that stuff, it always comes back on the head coach. I think that’s part of being a head coach, and it’s a sign of a mature player, too. Sometimes you take responsibility, even when it’s not yours to take. Then you try to move forward and grow from it.”
