Becky Hammon saw unprecedented success in her first season with the Las Vegas Aces.
Hammon led the Aces to the franchise’s WNBA championship in 2022. She’s returned to the Finals in two of the past three seasons and added two additional rings to her collection.
That first season, though, was anything but easy.
Hammon served as a longtime assistant under legendary Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich before making the move to the WNBA. She came to the Aces with a plan on how she wanted the team to play: Space the floor, shoot more 3s and move A’ja Wilson around.
But there are far more complexities to being a head coach than outlining schematics.
“The X’s and O’s is actually the easiest part of it,” Hammon said Tuesday ahead of the Aces facing the Liberty in the Commissioner’s Cup championship game. “Coaching the athlete, they’re individuals, too. … Everybody learns differently, everybody communicates differently, and I think it’s important to walk in with your team and establish how to communicate with them and build relationships with them.”
Under first-year head coach Chris DeMarco, nearly everything with the Liberty remains a work in progress: the system, chemistry building, player reintegration, communication and even scheduling are all still in the works.
He guided the Liberty to some early success, with New York going undefeated in Cup play to earn its third appearance in the in-season tournament’s championship game.
The Liberty entered Tuesday 12-8 and in fifth place, having hit a rough patch of late, dropping four of their past five games, with losses to the Washington Mystics, Los Angeles Sparks, Seattle Storm and Golden State Valkyries.
DeMarco stepped into a high-pressure situation in Brooklyn. The Liberty are a superteam, with Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones as the team’s core. General manager Jonathan Kolb then went out and signed Satou Sabally and Pauline Astier in free agency to fortify the team’s depth.
The Liberty are built to be a contender. DeMarco — who was with the Warriors during their dynastic era, during which they won four NBA titles — knew what he was signing up for when he took the job.
Stewart said DeMarco has been “receptive” to player feedback throughout this process.
“Listen, he’s trying to learn on the fly quick,” Stewart said. “And he got this job in December … and knowing that, this team, we want to contend. We want to compete for a championship and that impact isn’t always going to happen or translate overnight. So he’s trying to do his best he can to make it happen on the court with the system he wants to put in, but also with the integration of players and putting people in their best spot, so I think it’s a work in progress. But he’s definitely doing the best he can to speed it up.”
Ionescu pointed out that it’s still only June. The playoffs are still far off in the distance.
“We understand that’s part of what we signed up for when we got a new head coach is we understand there’s going to be growing pains,” Ionescu said, “there’s going to be situations where we’re just not comfortable in and we’re trying to learn one another and build the chemistry on the fly and you can only do that by going through the adversity together.”
Ionescu believes DeMarco is doing an “amazing” job. She lauded his communication skills and how he’s able to connect with each player. She said his messaging has been clear from the jump.
“We just have to give him grace just like he gives us grace when we’re out there trying to learn his style,” Ionescu said. “But the buy-in has always been there from us to the coaching staff and vice versa. … Everyone believes in him, trusts in him, and he’s going to continue to learn and get better and I think it’s scary to see how much better we’re going to get with the fact that this is all very new to him.”