After Becky Hammon led the Las Vegas Aces to yet another WNBA championship, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith renewed calls for her to be a head coach in the NBA.
According to Smith, not only has Hammon proven her worth as a bench tactician, but the fact that the WNBA allows men to coach in the women’s league should give Becky the same opportunity in the men’s association.
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“I’ve said this on many occasions, and I’ll say this again. She deserves to coach in the NBA. If a man can coach in the WNBA, she needs…If I owned an NBA team, I would not mind giving her a chance as the head coach of my franchise. Cuz that woman knows what she is doing. I’m talking about Becky Hammon doing what she did in the NBA level as an assistant coach and coaching the Summer League team for the men to a title before she took the Las Vegas Aces job. She has been a staple in basketball, period,” SAS explained.
Becky led the San Antonio Spurs to the 2015 Summer League title
Hammon played 16 seasons in the WNBA before working as one of Gregg Popovich’s assistants with the San Antonio Spurs from 2014 up to 2021 when she accepted Mark Davis’ offer to become the head coach of the Aces, to the tune of a reported over $1 million per year, making her the first female head coach to earn over a million dollars per annum.
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However, before she returned to the WNBA, Hammon was touted as a potential candidate to become the first woman to coach in the NBA, thanks to the coaching experience she gained from Pop and her accomplishment of being the first female coach to lead a team to the Summer League title in 2015. She interviewed for several head coaching jobs in the WNBA but was always bypassed, with her supporters primarily citing gender as the reason.
“And I’m just really big on this: I believe men should not be allowed as head coaches in the WNBA because you don’t see women coaching in the NBA, by the head coaching level. But if you’re going to do that to the women, having a man coach a WNBA team, then a woman should be allowed to coach an NBA team,” added Smith.
Historically, more men than women have been head coaches in the “W”
While gender seems to be an issue for becoming a head coach in the NBA, the same is not the case in the WNBA, where, for most of its history, men have made up the majority of its head coaches per season, accounting for 75 percent of the WNBA’s history. The number has fluctuated in recent years, and in 2025, there was one more female head coach than male head coaches. However, there were still six total male head coaches in the “W” and zero in the history of the NBA.
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After her rejections in the WNBA, Hammon has gone on to post a career 117-43 regular season record in four seasons as head coach of the Aces. She is 28-9 in the playoffs, and with last week’s win, Becky has won the WNBA title in three out of her four years as Las Vegas head coach, winning the WNBA Coach of the Year award in 2022.
There is no question that if there’s one female head coach who’s ready to coach at the NBA level, it’s Hammon. However, the question really is if the NBA is prepared to have the first female head coach in league history. Stephen A. thinks it’s high time for that to happen.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Oct 12, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
