The NBA currently has seven female assistant coaches, and the leader of the league hopes to see one elevated to a head coaching position in the near future.
On Wednesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver joined longtime sports journalist Bonnie Bernstein and WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on the NCAA’s podcast channel.
Silver discussed his desire to have a female head coach in the NBA within the next five years on the podcast.
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“I would be hugely disappointed if certainly in five years we haven’t seen our first female head coach in the NBA,” Silver said.
Silver said the younger generation is more open to having a female coach due to their mothers playing the game of basketball.
“What we’re seeing now, and you can pull the data, it’s amazing how many of our young players now came from families where their mothers played either D1 or in many cases now were actually in the WNBA,” Silver said on the podcast.
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“So, I think there’s a whole different kind of respect for women’s professional basketball or women’s D1 basketball from the younger crop of players who are in the league now. And I think in the same way, once they respect the women’s game, I think they then respect women as coaches as well.”
Silver has long been an advocate for women being more involved in the sport, pushing for more female coaches and referees in 2019.
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“It’s an area, frankly, where I’ve acknowledged that I’m not sure how it was that it remained so male dominated for so long. Because it’s an area of the game where physically, certainly, there’s no benefit to being a man, as opposed to a woman, when it comes to refereeing,” Silver said at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., in 2019, according to NBA.com.
“The goal is: Going forward, it should be roughly 50-50 of new officials entering in the league,” he said. “Same for coaches, by the way. We have a program, too. There’s no reason why women shouldn’t be coaching men’s basketball.”
In 2021, San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon interviewed for the head coach opening in Portland before becoming the next head coach of the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA.
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