Becky Hammon will get an opportunity to be an NBA head coach at some point, and she is reportedly interested in the New York Knicks’ job.
To the surprise of precisely no one, the New York Knicks fired head coach David Fizdale on Friday. Where a search will go for a permanent replacement looking to season’s end is anyone’s guess, but according to Jabari Young of CNBC, San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon is a name to watch for the Knicks job.
Hammon has become a highly respected assistant coach, working under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio since 2014, and it’s only a matter of time before she’s an NBA head coach. She would reportedly have interest in coaching the Knicks if she could land a long-term deal, and Young added that a four or five-year deal would be sufficient. A multi-year deal would be the jumping off point for any coach to consider entering the ongoing dysfunction/rebuild cycle with the Knicks.
Hammon has long been seen as a potential successor to Popovich, whenever he decides to call it quits as Spurs coach. But former Spurs star Tim Duncan has come on the coaching staff this year, and when Popovich was ejected from a recent game, Duncan filled in as the lead assistant. So that eventual head coach candidacy for Hammon in San Antonio can be called into a bit of question at this point.
Whenever Hammon moves over a chair and becomes an NBA head coach, it will be a huge deal. She started her WNBA career with the New York Liberty, so perhaps Madison Square Garden and any remnants of Knicks’-related prestige remain special things to her. Maybe, just maybe, she wants the Knicks job over any other?
Regardless of future opportunities she may want to wait for or consider, Hammon surfacing as a rumored candidate for the Knicks is significant for the franchise (if nothing else). It’ll just be up to whoever might be soon taking over the basketball operation from Steve Mills to give her a serious look, which given recent Knicks history, can’t be blindly assumed.