Becky Hammon experienced unprecedented success in her first season with the Las Vegas Aces.
Hammon led the Aces to the franchise’s WNBA championship in 2022. She has returned to the Finals in two of the past three seasons and added two more rings to her collection.
But the first season was not easy at all.
Hammon served as a longtime assistant under legendary Spurs coach Gregg Popovich before moving on to the WNBA. She came to the Aces with a plan for how she wanted the team to play: space the floor, shoot more threes, move A’ja Wilson.
But there are far greater complexities to being a head coach than defining schemes.
“The X’s and O’s are actually the easiest part of it,” Hammon said Tuesday before the Aces take on Liberty in the Commissioner’s Cup championship game. “Coaching athletes are individuals too…. Everyone learns differently, everyone communicates differently, and I think it’s important to engage with your team and decide how to communicate with them and build relationships with them.”
Under first-year coach Chris DeMarco, almost everything with the Liberty remains a work in progress: system, building chemistry, recombining players, communication, and even scheduling are all still a work in progress.
He led the Liberty to some early success, as New York went undefeated in Cup play to earn its third appearance in the championship game of the season.
The Liberty entered Tuesday at 12-8 and in fifth place, having hit a rough patch of late, losing four of their past five games, with losses to the Washington Mystics, Los Angeles Sparks, Seattle Storm, and Golden State Valkyries.
DeMarco entered a high-pressure situation in Brooklyn. The Liberty are a super quality team, with Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones at the core. General manager Jonathan Kolb then went out and signed Sato Sabally and Pauline Astaire in free agency to bolster the team’s depth.
Liberty was designed to be a contender. DeMarco — who was with the Warriors during their dynasty era, during which they won four NBA titles — knew what he was signing into when he took the job.
Stewart said DeMarco has been “receptive” to player feedback throughout the process.
“Listen, he’s trying to learn fast,” Stewart said. “He got this job in December…and knowing that, we want to compete on this team. We want to compete for a championship and that impact is not always going to happen or translate overnight. So he’s trying his best to make that happen on the field through the system that he wants to put in place, but also by integrating the players and putting people in the best spot for them, so I think it’s a work in progress. But he’s definitely trying his best to speed it up.”
Ionescu noted that it is still only June. The qualifiers are still a long way off.
“We realize that’s part of what we signed up for when we got a new head coach, is that we realize there’s going to be growing pains, there’s going to be situations where we don’t feel comfortable and we’re trying to learn each other and build chemistry quickly, and you can only do that by going through adversity together,” Ionescu said.
Ionescu thinks DeMarco is doing an “amazing” job. She praised his communication skills and his ability to communicate with every player. She said his messages were clear from the jump.
“We just have to give him grace like he gives us grace when we’re out there trying to learn his game,” Ionescu said. “But the buy-in has always been there from us to the coaching staff and vice versa… everyone believes in him, trusts him, and he’s going to keep learning and getting better, and I think it’s scary to see how much better we’ll get with the fact that this is all so new for him.”