Nancy Lieberman to join Kings coaching staff, as time and progress march on
Here’s what the legendary Nancy Lieberman — a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who has made her mark as a player, coach, executive and analyst over the course of a hoops career that has spanned five decades — told Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck last summer, after the San Antonio Spurs made Becky Hammon the first woman hired as a full-time assistant coach in the history of major American men’s sports:
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Thirty-four years after rushing the gender barricades, Lieberman finds herself still trying to break though and looking to Hammon as her spirit guide.
“I’m happy to be a trail blazer,” Lieberman said. “But I’m ready to get an opportunity to coach in the NBA. Instead of people thanking me, I need to thank Becky.”
Now, after Hammon led the Spurs to the 2015 Las Vegas Summer League championship — just one year after the Los Angeles Clippers’ Natalie Nakase became the first woman to serve as an assistant on a Summer League squad — Lieberman has gotten her opportunity.
From Ailene Voisin of the Sacramento Bee:
The [Sacramento] Kings are expected to hire Nancy Lieberman, the 1996 Hall of Fame inductee and assistant general manager of the Dallas Mavericks’ D-League team, as an assistant coach.
“Definitely I’m going to offer her a job,” Kings vice president Vlade Divac said Thursday. “[Head coach] George [Karl] and I talked about bringing her back after she helped us at Summer League [in Las Vegas]. She was terrific. She brings a different dimension. I think is a nice opportunity for her.”
Lieberman said Thursday she will accept the offer. Divac said he expects to make an announcement next week.
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Lieberman, 57, last season served as a pre- and postgame analyst for FOX Sports Oklahoma’s broadcast of Oklahoma City Thunder games. She told USA TODAY’s Sam Amick that Thursday was “a crazy, wonderful day,” and said on Twitter that she’s “honored to be a Sacramento King.”
Her expected addition to the Kings organization — admittedly not the most stable situation in the league, but one, for all its warts, purportedly committed to forward-thinking ideas — caps an exceptionally eventful fortnight for women in men’s sports leagues. Hammon’s Summer League gave way to the Arizona Cardinals making Jen Welter the NFL’s first-ever female coaching intern. That, in turn, gave way to the Iowa Energy, the D-League affiliate of the Memphis Grizzlies, hiring Nicki Gross as a full-time assistant coach.
Lieberman’s no stranger to coaching men, or to the men’s game in general. In 1981, after a sterling college career at Old Dominion that included two AIAW national championships and a Women’s NIT title, the Los Angeles Lakers invited Lieberman to play on their Summer League squad, the first one ever led by Pat Riley — a fitting marriage of team and player, considering the 5-foot-10 point guard’s stellar play on the ball earned her the nickname “Lady Magic.”
Later, she played against men for two seasons with the Springfield, Mass., Fame of the United States Basketball League. After her playing career ended, she became the first head coach of the expansion Texas Legends, the Dallas Mavericks’ D-League affiliate, making her the first woman ever to be the head coach of a men’s professional basketball team, continuing the journey started by Stephanie Ready when she was hired as an assistant with the D-League’s Greenville Groove in 2001.
Those gender-based framing devices, of course, were ours. It wasn’t how Lieberman looked at any of it.
“In 1986, my goal was not to be a girl playing in a men’s league, it was to be a player in a men’s league,” she said at a press conference announcing her hire. “In 2010, I don’t want to be a woman who is coaching men, I want to be a coach who is coaching.”
She coached the Legends to a 24-26 record and a D-League playoff berth in that first season before deciding to move into management as Texas’ assistant general manager. She made a major impression on the Legends’ collection of former NBA players during her lone year on the bench, according to Jaime Aron of The Associated Press:
“She’s treated us like family,” said [former Milwaukee Bucks lottery pick Joe] Alexander, the team’s leading scorer. Asked if she’s been sort of a team mom, he said, “It’s just being a good, caring person, that’s what it is.”
[Longtime NBA guard Antonio] Daniels said opponents constantly ask, “What’s it like to have a girl coach.” Then he laughed and noted that he heard similar questions when he was in the NBA, guys wanting to know what it was like to play for Gregg Popovich or Nate McMillan.
“The only difference is the fact we can’t get dressed in the locker room if she’s there,” Daniels said. “She knows what she’s doing. From player to coach, you have to trust her. Just as it would be with a male coach.”
And just as it should be, and, increasingly, just as it is.
Trendsetting and trail-blazing women from Ann Meyers-Drysdale and Bernadette Mattox, to Violet Palmer, Dee Kantner and Lauren Holtkamp, to Lisa Boyer to Hammon and Lieberman — to say nothing of the countless women plying their trades in female professional basketball leagues and competitions — have spent decades fighting for the right to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with male peers at the highest level of the sport. Full-stop equality in the eyes of the sporting establishment isn’t quite here yet, but with Hammon drawing head-coaching buzz while working for one of the NBA’s most revered organizations and a bona fide Hall of Famer in Lieberman taking a well-deserved spot on an NBA bench, there certainly seems to be more room for deserving women to stand as respected colleagues than there used to be.
“I think a female coaching a team these days has got a lot to do with the people on the teams maturing as individuals, as civil members of a society, understanding that it’s not about any of those things,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said in a recent radio interview discussing Hammon’s position on the San Antonio bench. “It’s about talent. It’s about respect. And I think, you know, people like Becky, over time, who gain respect and people understand that this is possible … it can happen.”
Lieberman seems like a prime candidate to be one of those people who gain respect and show others what’s possible; with her long, distinguished and multifaceted resume, she’s actually been one of them for years. That some team has finally caught up and offered her the opportunity to bring her talents to an NBA coaching staff makes this a very, very cool day, and one that’s been a long time in coming.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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