Thursday, May 25, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Becky Hammon’s name seems to be everywhere in the basketball world lately.
The 46-year-old was long considered a rising star in the coaching ranks, but after leading Las Vegas to the WNBA championship in her first season with the team, that description is no longer accurate. She’s just a star now—and a Hall of Famer.
Aces 2023
Hammon, a six-time All Star during her WNBA playing days with the New York Liberty and San Antonio Stars, will be enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame this August in Springfield, Massachusetts. Appropriately, the six-person 2023 Hall of Fame class also includes San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich—under whom Hammon coached as a Spurs assistant from 2014-2022—along with two of that coaching duo’s former players, Tony Parker and Pau Gasol.
Hammon remains highly regarded in the NBA, and the league appears to want her back. She was a finalist for the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coaching job in 2021, and this year, the Toronto Raptors secured permission to interview her for their vacant head coaching position.
Hammon declined to comment on open positions at the outset of Aces’ training camp this year but made it clear she’s not sitting around hoping to get back in the NBA. Her focus for now, she said, is on trying to lead the defending WNBA champions to another title.
“There’s no doubt I love this team,” Hammon said. “My girls know I love them, and I’m proud and happy to be their coach.”
The Weekly spoke with Hammon inside the Aces’ locker room at their new Henderson practice facility.
How happy are you with the way this facility turned out? This is how it should look and feel for every team, because these are professional athletes. We’re happy to be leading the way.
The Seattle Storm has since started breaking ground on a practice facility. Does it feel like this is becoming the norm in the WNBA? I hope it continues. These little steps and facilities mean a lot to players. Who wouldn’t want to come here every day? It’s a huge draw for the players. Candace Parker told me she’s never had her own locker before. I was like, “What?”
When I played in New York, they had just built their facility in White Plains. It was a shared facility, but it was equal—whatever the Knicks had on their side, the Liberty had on their side. As you can see, this facility is ours and ours alone, and that makes it a little unique. We’re super proud of it.
How have you been getting ready for the 2023 season? We’ve been getting ready for months. We’re excited. We have some pieces to build off of. I think we’ve improved. I think we’ve got more depth. Now it’s just putting the pieces together, getting chemistry with each other. Things can look good on paper, but you still have to go out there and execute on the floor.
How much thought have you given to how you want to deploy A’ja and Candace together? I’m super excited to see the chemistry between them and see how they play and work off each other. Chelsea [Gray] and Candace already have a little chemistry and relationship with each other [from playing together in LA from 2016-2020]. The other combination I’m really interested to see is KP [Kelsey Plum]and Candace, because of the amount of attention they’ll draw—Candace’s playmaking ability, her passing ability, her size to see over the defense, and Kelsey’s a different animal with how she gets her shot off.
Sounds like Spurs basketball. Exactly, and it’s going to demand a lot of attention. All of a sudden now, I feel like our cutting’s going to be better. When I was with the Spurs, we had a lot of great cutting teams … just really great passers, but how you get great cutting is by having great passers. People get rewarded. When people quit running in transition, people quit cutting to the basket when they never get the ball. Well, you’re going to get the ball.
I really want to dominate the game in different ways this year that we didn’t last year. I think we have that capability.
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
