The Best American Sports Writing 2019

by Charles P. Pierce

  In 2007, the San Antonio Silver Stars traded for her. Dan Hughes, the coach, would watch her take on multiple opponents and think, She’s in trouble—we’re in trouble. Then he came to appreciate how “she’d hang in the air longer, create spin, and hit the corner on the backboard,” and he began looking forward to seeing how she got out of such situations. “I became a fan,” he said.

  * * *

  Hammon became one of the most popular players in the WNBA, but the league struggled financially. Since its promising first years, many teams have lost money; several have been moved or shuttered. In the WNBA, players’ annual salaries max out at just over $100,000; in the NBA, the minimum is more than $500,000, and stars make tens of millions, never mind endorsement money. WNBA players routinely spend about half the year overseas, where private patrons or wealthy corporations back teams as vanity projects. In 2007, Hammon was making about $95,000 a year, then the WNBA’s maximum salary, when CSKA, a Russian team, offered her a four-year deal worth around $2 million. As part of the deal, Hammon would become a Russian citizen; the rules of the Russian Premier League prevent teams from fielding more than two American players.

  While Hammon was negotiating her contract with CSKA, she learned that the U.S. Olympic team had not invited her to its first round of tryouts. The exclusion reinforced the idea she had about herself. “I’ve always been on the outside looking in,” she said. “The kid not picked.” The Russian national team asked her to play for them, and she accepted the offer. She wanted to play in the Olympics, and Washington’s political relations with Moscow were not nearly as fraught as they are now. “This is basketball, it isn’t the Cold War,” she said at the time.

  She moved to Moscow for the CSKA season in 2007, and began training with the national team in 2008. She spent seven months a year abroad for the next six years, until she started working with the Spurs. “I was an outsider,” Hammon told me. “They looked at me with one eyebrow”—she cocked hers. Anna Petrakova, who played with Hammon on CSKA and the national team, told me, “When people come to Russia, they always seem a little standoffish. They don’t always integrate in the culture.” Hammon was different. “She just came with an open heart.” Hammon learned a little Russian, and at games she enthusiastically fumbled her way through the national anthem.

  Many people thought that Hammon was naive, or worse. Some American players called her disloyal. Far more painful for Hammon was the reaction at home, in South Dakota. “I come from a red state, where it’s God, country, family,” she told me. “I got my mom calling me on the phone saying, ‘You don’t understand people of my generation,’” and crying every time they spoke. Before that, she’d been the spirited point guard, the all-star everyone loved. Now everyone was questioning her. “I took a beating,” she said.

  At the Summer Games in Beijing, in August 2008, the U.S. beat Russia in the semifinals. After the game, Lisa Leslie, one of the most decorated Olympic basketball players, refused to shake Hammon’s hand. The U.S. went on to win the finals. At the medal ceremony, Hammon stood on the lowest step of the podium, in her Russian uniform, a bronze medal around her neck. When the American national anthem played, she placed her hand on her heart. Still, she was proud of the Russian national team, and of her ability to integrate with the players. Hammon told me, “I’m Russian to them, and it has nothing to do with the passport I’m holding.

  “I think that journey helped prepare me to do things that people hadn’t done,” she said. “It helped me take a lot of crap. It helped build something inside me.”

  * * *

  When Hammon began observing Spurs practices, she assumed that it would help her get a job with a college team or in the WNBA. “Coaching women, that’s where my mind-set was the whole time,” she said. Then, one night at dinner, Tony Parker, the Spurs’ point guard, who is a close friend of Hammon—“She’s sort of like my big sister,” he told me—said that he thought Popovich might hire her. “Really?” she replied.

  “It was almost like a perfect match, because Pop likes to try stuff,” Parker recalled. “I thought it would be perfect for those two to get together—great basketball minds.” He had no doubt that she would be accepted by the other players. “She had the support of the point guard, so she’s good,” he added with a smile.

  Popovich and Buford, the Spurs’ general manager, watched how she behaved in meetings and interacted with players on the floor. Tim Duncan, one of the game’s greatest power forwards, is known to be exceptionally reticent. Parker once said that, during his first season, Duncan didn’t even speak to him. Hammon realized that she would have to break through with Duncan over time, and off the court. “Let’s be real,” she said, and laughed. “I was not sitting there trying to give Timmy extra tips.”

  “With a new job, when you go, you shut up,” Popovich said. “You don’t try to prove to people how smart you are, or that you have better ideas. She was cognizant of that sort of managerial thing.” In August 2014, the Spurs offered Hammon the job as an assistant coach.

  The announcement was greeted with fanfare. President Obama tweeted his congratulations. The mainstream media ran complimentary coverage. “No one is going to come up and say, ‘I’m so pissed you got that job, I can’t believe it,’” Hammon said. “There’s certain noise that I know goes on, but no one ever says it, because it’s not the politically correct thing to say.” Players and opposing coaches were, for the most part, encouraging. Stars like LeBron James and Chris Paul told her that they were happy she was hired. Last week, James told reporters, “You guys know how fond I am of Coach Pop, so for him to bring Becky in there, to be able to be an assistant and give her input—I don’t quite know how much input she has, I’m not there on a day-to-day basis—but just having her face there, it means a lot.”

  Jeff Van Gundy, the former coach of the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets and a commentator on ESPN, told me, “I’m not the social conscience of the NBA. I’m also not the most enlightened. Twenty years ago, I would have laughed at the notion of a female assistant or head coach. But I think we are becoming a more enlightened league. I think coaches are. But you know who doesn’t get enough credit? Players. I think they have really made incredible progress.”

  Most of the criticism came from the noisiest and nastiest corners of talk radio and social media. At Hammon’s first press conference after her hiring, a reporter read her an anonymous email that called it a publicity stunt, and suggested that the only thing the players had to learn from her was advice on baking cookies. “People are, like, ‘What do you say to that?’” Hammon said. “At the end of the day, you have to say, ‘So what’s the truth in that? Is that true? No, it’s not.’ So I have no comment to that—other than, I make good chocolate-chip cookies. That’s a fact.”

  * * *

  This has not been an easy year for the Spurs. The team’s longtime stars are aging or retired, and its MVP candidate, Kawhi Leonard, has been out with a quadriceps injury for all but nine games. Still, throughout the regular season, the Spurs remained on track to make the playoffs for the 21st straight time. Since Popovich became coach, in 1996, they have won five championships, and from 2000 to 2017 they had 18 consecutive 50-win seasons—a stretch of excellence that is nearly unparalleled in sports. There are plenty of factors that explain their success: a keen eye for talent abroad, a famed analytics department, and the good fortune of drafting Duncan. But there is something more: the team ethos—selfless play above all—instilled by Popovich and known around San Antonio as “the Spurs way.”

  Because of their success, the Spurs have not been eligible for the highest picks in the draft. Instead of relying on college superstars, they have built their team through some crafty trades and by pushing their young players to the limit. They scout top international players—like Parker, from France, and Manu Ginóbili, from Argentina—and sign NBA veterans like Pau Gasol, from Spain, who is 37 but can anchor a defense and move in a way that creates space on the floor; they also, as in the cas
e of Leonard, hone the raw athletic talent of less experienced players. When the Spurs are at their best, the ball moves fluidly and freely. Duncan, who retired in 2016 and was perhaps the least flashy major star in the NBA, was emblematic of the team’s unselfish style. On a given night, almost anyone on the roster can be the leading scorer.

  Popovich rejects the idea of winning at all costs. “We want to win the right way, we want to lose the right way,” he told me. At the team’s first film session after losing to the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals in 2013, Popovich reviewed the team’s mistakes and then said, “Gentlemen, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to you in your life, your life is going to be a breeze.” During games, he’ll call a quick time-out to shout at a player, or bench someone for playing badly. But off the court he does not talk about staying focused or decry “distractions.” To the contrary, he tends to talk politics with his players, his coaches, and reporters. He once brought in John Carlos, the sprinter who gave a Black Power salute from the Olympic podium, to speak to the team. Two days before the 2014 NBA Finals, when the team gathered in the video room, he displayed a photograph of Eddie Mabo, an Australian indigenous-land-rights activist. A few weeks ago, the Spurs traveled to DC to play the Washington Wizards, in a game that had implications for the playoffs. While they were in town, Popovich took them to visit the Supreme Court.

  “Everybody talks about everything ad nauseam,” Popovich told me. “I’m sure the coaches are, like, ‘Oh, my God, can’t we just play basketball?’ I think it’s a huge part of what we do, because it helps them love each other, it helps them feel responsible to each other, it helps them want to work for and with each other—and it helps them understand that when they’re 32 or 35 or 37 their life starts all over again, and it’s probably not going to have anything to do with basketball. They need to know what they’re walking into, and what kind of social system we have, and what kind of world we live in, because they’re going to be raising kids by then too. And it’s important to have your self-image be much more, and hopefully have basketball be a small part of who they are when they’re done with this.”

  Popovich’s rules include: don’t skip steps, have a sense of humor, and get over yourself. These rules are another way of reaching the equilibrium between humility and self-confidence which Hammon first found through faith. Popovich said, “She knows what she knows and she knows what she doesn’t, and, what she doesn’t know, she gets her ass in the film room, or nails down one of the other coaches.” He added, “I think she’s a star.”

  * * *

  When Becky Hammon played basketball, she was known as a shooter, but she loved passing. It was her way of dictating the game while getting others involved. Now she charts the Spurs’ passes in order to see which ones lead to scoring. It isn’t her primary responsibility—like other assistants, she is responsible for scouting and for helping to game-plan for a list of opposing teams—but it calls on her experience as a point guard.

  At first, the aim was to get a picture of the pace of the game: Hammon would note each time the team pushed the ball down the court. Then the project evolved. How many times did they kick it out of the post? How often did wheeling it around the perimeter lead to an open shot? These days, all the top teams emphasize passing. But, with Leonard out, it has been especially important for the Spurs. So the coaches focus on reading defenses and baiting opposing players, trying to set up an open shot. They have heated debates about spacing on the court.

  Popovich and Buford told me that Hammon is an effective coach because of her “basketball IQ.” But she is also adept at the human elements of the game. When she started working with the Spurs, she noticed how Duncan communicated with his teammates nonverbally. “His leadership—if you go back, you see Tim is touching people all the time,” she said. She talked about the impact of Ginóbili, who is 40: “Even if Manu never steps onto the court this year, the way he understands culture and brings people together—it’s always about the team.” This year, the Spurs have been tested by Leonard’s absence and by tensions over when and whether he might return. But part of a coach’s job is to deal with the unexpected, and to fix relationships when they break down. Lately, the team has been carried by 32-year-old LaMarcus Aldridge. By the end of last season, Aldridge was so frustrated that he asked for a trade. Instead, he and Popovich talked through their differences. “Maybe what worked for Tim Duncan wasn’t working for LaMarcus,” Hammon said.

  Hammon fits in with the Spurs’ cooperative mentality. “She’s committed, she’s passionate, she’s smart, she’s worldly,” Ginóbili said. Some of her reputation comes from her accomplishments as a player. The WNBA has had trouble getting traction with NBA fans, but many NBA players follow the league with respect. Jonathon Simmons, who left the Spurs last year, for the Orlando Magic, said in 2015 that Hammon is a “players’ coach.” He told me that he meant it literally: “She once was a player, so she understands, she relates.”

  Of course, players talking to a female reporter about the first female coach are unlikely to offer skepticism, and it is easy to find examples of sexism and even alleged sexual violence within the NBA. In October 2016, the former Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose, now with the Minnesota Timberwolves, was tried and cleared in a rape case. Rose testified that, at a 2008 NBA rookie-orientation program, he was told not to leave behind used condoms, reportedly saying, “You never know what women are up to nowadays.” (A spokesperson for the NBA said that players were instructed on how to dispose of condoms, but not because of concerns about exploitation by women.) In February, more than a dozen current and former Dallas Mavericks employees told Sports Illustrated that it was an “open secret” that the team’s former president sexually harassed employees and that the management tolerated sexual harassment and domestic violence. (The former president has denied the allegations.) In response to the article, the Mavericks announced that they had suspended one employee, terminated another, and hired outside counsel to investigate the allegations.

  When I asked Hammon about the Mavericks allegations, she said, “The culture of sports has been ‘He’s acting like a boy.’ What does that mean? You’re acting like an animal? There needs to be boundaries. There needs to be an environment where everyone can succeed.”

  * * *

  Some people talk about Hammon’s career as though it were a quick fix for sexism in the NBA. Instead of calling for more women to be hired, they focus on the advancement of this particular woman. It’s a little like assuming that Barack Obama’s presidency would end American racism. In fact, Hammon’s success has not yet led to many more coaching opportunities for women. In 2015, the Sacramento Kings hired Nancy Lieberman, a former head coach in the WNBA and in the NBA’s development league, as a full-time assistant. (She was recently named a head coach in Ice Cube’s Big3 league, featuring retired NBA players.) Last October, the Kings also hired Jenny Boucek, another former WNBA head coach, as an assistant. But no other franchises have followed suit. “When 10 other teams have a Becky Hammon, that will tell me the culture is changing,” Popovich said.

  The big question for Hammon, Popovich told me, is “Is this going to end up being something? Is she going to be able to matriculate and get into a head-coaching position?” Hammon is still early in her career, and it could take some time. “Some people are in the league 15, 20 years before they get into a head-coaching position, if they do at all,” Popovich said. “I tell her, very straightforwardly, I don’t know. Because I look at our country, and I have all kinds of doubts about all kinds of things, let alone whether she’s going to be a head coach.” Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, said last week, about the possibility of a female head coach, “I don’t know if it’s going to happen soon. Becky Hammon would be the one you’d say right away who could possibly get an interview.”

  In 2015, Hammon served as the Spurs’ head coach in the NBA’s summer league, in Las Vegas, and won the championship. It was not a rare accomplishment for an assist
ant coach, but it was a significant one. Afterward, a former NBA executive indicated in a tweet that if he were a general manager he would want to hire Hammon as head coach. Jeff Van Gundy told me, “I called him up and said, ‘Bullshit you would. Because you don’t know her, and that would be your one shot. I would like to think you would, but no way.’ I think it’s going to take someone like Pop—who’s entrenched, who has great job security—to pull that trigger. You’re not going to see someone who has his job on the line. Is that fair? No. Is that reality for Becky? Yeah.”

  For Hammon to be hired as a head coach, Popovich said, “it’s going to take somebody who has some guts, some imagination, and is not driven by old standards and old forms.” He went on, “If somebody is smart, it’s actually a pretty good marketing deal—but it’s not about that. It’s got to be that she’s competent, that she’s ready.”

  Last spring, Hammon turned down an offer to become the head coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Florida, after considering it seriously. She was also invited to interview for the Milwaukee Bucks’ general-manager position—an unusual occurrence for an assistant coach who has been on the job only three years. Hammon said that, when she asked why she was being considered, she was told that “ownership had asked them to reach out.” (The Bucks declined to comment.) More recently, she interviewed to be the head coach of the men’s team at Colorado State, before withdrawing her name from contention.