Head coach Becky Hammon and the Las Vegas Aces won the WNBA Finals on Wednesday, but her friends, mentor, and former boss, San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, didn’t get to watch as his team had an NBA preseason game at the same time. Afterward, Popovich was fired up for his former assistant and admitted he thought about purposely getting tossed so he could watch the action unfold.
“Ask [your questions] quick. I don’t have a whole lot of time. I gotta go celebrate Becky Hammon and the Aces,” Popovich told reporters in his postgame press conference. “Fantastic! I thought about getting booted tonight because it was exactly the same time. But I just thought this has to be my priority. But it was close. It was close. Congrats, Becky. Yeah, baby!”
It was touching to see Popovich, who is stoic in front of the media 99 percent of the time, get so fired up talking about his former assistant winning a title. The Aces closed out the WNBA Finals with a 70-69 win over the New York Liberty to take home their second-consecutive championship.
Becky Hammon was an All-American point guard at Colorado State and a six-time WNBA All-Star from 1999-2014. After she retired from the San Antonio Stars, Hammon started helping out Gregg Popovich with the Spurs and ultimately became the first full-time female coach in the NBA and all of major North American pro sports.
Hammon coached under Pop for seven seasons. In 2020, after the Spurs coach got ejected for real, Hammon became the first-ever female to take on the role of acting head coach in the NBA.
In 2022, Hammon returned to her roots, taking a job as head coach of the Aces. She is now two-for-2 in the WNBA Finals, and her team will no doubt be the favorite to three-peat next season.
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