It’s OK if you’ve already forgotten about San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon. The second female assistant coach in NBA history, but the first to actually receive a paycheck from an NBA team, earned rave reviews when she led San Antonio’s summer league team to a title last summer, but for the most part she’s done what most good assistants do: teach, usually away from the glare of the spotlight — not that there’s much of a spotlight in San Antonio, where the smartly sardonic head coach generally gets the headlines, if there are headlines to be had.
“She talks the game,” Gregg Popovich says of Hammon in a new PSA about the NBA’s continued support of Facebook’s #LeanIn community. “She understands the game, so in that respect, I have no doubt she’s going to be one heck of a coach.”
If you don’t already know, Lean In is a non-profit organization Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg created to “empower women to achieve their dreams.”
In 2011, Hammon was named as one of the WNBA’s top-15 players of all time, but now she’s a assistant coach and as she says in the video above, it was Gregg Popovich who was the real barrier-breaker. Except, as Popovich as alluded to in the past, Hammon is good enough to one day become a head coach in the NBA.
But Hammon and Popovich aren’t the only two NBA names to be featured in the NBA’s newest set of #LeanInTogether public service announcements. Chris Bosh and his working wife, Draymond Green and his outspoken mom, and Gordon Hayward’s role as a hands-on dad, are all part of the NBA’s latest round of videos to highlight the importance of equality at the workplace and at home.
It’s a good thing, too. Some could use a refresher.
(LeanIn)
