The NBA is still without a female head coach, and the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, is making a push to see a woman calling the shots from the sidelines.
Although the NBA has its first female assistant coaches, Becky Hammon with the San Antonio Spurs and Nancy Lieberman with the Sacramento Kings, the league is still lacking a woman head coach, but Silver believes that will change soon, according to NBC Sports.
“There definitely will,” Silver said to ESPN about the NBA seeing its first woman head coach. “And I think it is on me to sort of ensure that it happens sooner rather than later.”
This comes amid a new campaign the NBA is working on to encourage gender-equality in the league and in the workplace in general, The Washington Post noted.
Despite Silver and the NBA’s efforts, those advancements will still cause some to challenge the notion of the first female NBA head coach.
Radio talk show host Mike Francesa is among those early challengers.
During one of his recent shows on WFAN, Francesa said that a woman had absolutely “no shot” of being a head coach in the NBA, and that if one did become a head coach in the league, then it would be nothing more than a “sad publicity stunt.”
Silver strongly disagrees.
“First of all, let me say that I disagree that there will not be a woman head coach in the NBA,” Silver said, according to ESPN. “It is hard to say exactly when [it will happen]. There are three women currently in the pipeline, and I think like we have seen in all other aspects of life, while there are certain cases for example, the athletes that participate in the NBA, there are obvious physical differences between men and women and those differences are why we have a men’s league and a women’s league.”
“But on the other hand when it comes to coaching, when there is absolutely no physical requirement, when it is not a function of how high you can jump or how strong you are, there is no physical litmus test to being a head coach in the league, there is absolutely no reason why a woman will not ascend to be a head coach in this league. We are very focused in on it.”
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