Las Vegas Aces President Nikki Fargas announced on December 31, 2021, that the team hired San Antonio Spurs assistant and 6-time WNBA All-Star Becky Hammon as the team’s head coach.
Hammon rewarded the Aces less than nine months later with the franchise’s first WNBA Championship.
A year later she repeated that feat, helping the Aces become the first team to claim back-to-back WNBA titles in more than 20 years.
In her first two years with the Aces, Las Vegas tallied a 60-16 (.789) mark in the regular season, 16-3 (.842) in playoff games and also captured the 2022 Commissioner’s Cup crown.
The seeds for Hammon’s hiring were originally sewn when the Aces retired her jersey on September 13, 2021. That ceremony served as the culmination of the franchise’s 25th anniversary alumni initiative, which saw the Aces embrace their Utah and San Antonio roots, and celebrate the players who helped build the franchise and the league from the ground up. Las Vegas owner Mark Davis spent time with Hammon and her family that week, and walked away understandably impressed.
Hammon played 16 seasons in the WNBA, including her final eight in San Antonio, where she led the franchise to its first finals appearance in 2008.
On August 5, 2014, Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich hired Hammon as a full-time assistant making her the first woman in NBA history to hold that position.
Since that time, Hammon continued to accumulate coaching ‘firsts’ in the NBA. On July 3, 2015, she became the first woman to serve as head coach in the NBA’s Summer League where she led the Spurs to the league title.
Less than a year later, Hammon became the first woman to be part of an All-Star coaching staff, and on December 30, 2020, following Popovich’s ejection in San Antonio’s game against Los Angeles, Hammon took over on the bench, becoming the first woman acting head coach in the history of the NBA.
A member of the league’s 15th, 20th and 25th anniversary teams, Hammon went undrafted in 1999 following her All-American career at Colorado State. She signed with New York as a free agent that same year, helping the team to WNBA Finals appearances in three of her first four years in the Big Apple.
The Rapid City, South Dakota native earned her first All-Star nod in 2003, and represented New York on the Eastern Conference squad in 2005 and 2006 as well.
Following the 2006 season, New York traded Hammon to San Antonio. In her first year in silver and black, she posted what were then career highs in scoring (18.8 ppg), and assists (5.0) while earning another trip to the WNBA All-Star Game. As a team, the Silver Stars made their first appearance in the postseason since 2002, falling to Phoenix in the Western Conference Finals.
In 2008, Hammon led San Antonio to its first trip to the WNBA Finals where they fell to Detroit. The Silver Stars made the playoffs in each of her seven full seasons with the team, and Hammon once again was named to the All-Star team in 2009 and 2011.
She retired as the franchise leader in assists per game (5.1) and scoring average (15.6), and the WNBA leader in career free throw percentage (89.7).
Hammon, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame on Aug. 12, 2023, was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022, the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 2015 and the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.
