A’ja Wilson and Becky Hammon were a match made in basketball heaven. Rosenberg_Mike on how the pair found each other at precisely the right moment
Kelsey Plum dribbled the shot clock dry, then drove to the hoop, the simplest basketball act fueled by the purest of basketball motives. Last summer, the Aces retired Becky Hammon’s No. 25, and Hammon said last week, “I worked with Plum on her finishing.” Hammon was a Spurs assistant then. She says coaching the Aces “didn’t even cross my mind.” She helped Plum because it’s what coaches do.
Looking back, what was remarkable about their meeting was how little needed to be said. Hammon told Wilson she would scrap former coach Bill Laimbeer’s methodical, post-heavy system for a modern pace-and-space operation. She told Wilson that she would expect her to play center on defense for the first time in her pro career, so the Aces could spread the floor offensively. She could have told Wilson she would have to wear shoes on her hands, and Wilson would have tried it.
In the gym in San Antonio, Hammon watched Wilson shoot and decided she would shoot threes for the first time in her career. Wilson didn’t need to hear it—she had already decided she would fire up threes. She knew who she wanted to be and where she wanted to go. She was starting to discover that she had the right coach to get her there.
Nobody was dumb enough to say they were wary of hiring a woman. Hammon, ever the straight talker, says it for them. It was clear from the beginning that Hammon would not treat the Aces as Plan B. She had a system she wanted to run and a list of assistant coaches she wanted to help her run it. Assistant Natalie Nakase, who has worked for NBA championship-winning coaches Doc Rivers and Tyronn Lue but barely knew Hammon before working for her, says she has never seen a coach as passionate about breaking down video clips at halftime as Hammon.
Coaches in every sport preach processes over outcomes, but so many succumb to emotions when they’re losing. Hammon is consistent—and she knows when her message is resonating. At halftime of Game 1 of the Finals, she blistered her players. But maybe the most telling moment of the series came after the Aces’ no-show in Game 3, and Hammon was asked whether she would rip them again. She said, “I got a ticked-off crew in there. I’m not going to have to say much.
Wilson won her first MVP award in 2020, capturing 43 of 47 first-place votes. But she says that she is “100%” a better player now: “I was just playing well, and it just happened to fall into place. But this year, I was on a mission just to be something for my teammates, to be a better player all around. I didn’t come in thinking that I was going to get MVP, but my mindset and my mentality is 10 times better than what it was in 2020.
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