HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) — The Aces are preparing for a championship parade Friday that few outside the organization saw coming just a couple of months ago.
At the forefront will be the coach who made it happen — again.
In leading Las Vegas to its third championship in four years, Becky Hammon put herself on the select list of all-time WNBA coaching greats.
Her three titles are just behind record holders Van Chancellor and Cheryl Reeve. Chancellor coached
the Houston Comets to the league's first four championships, and Reeve led the Minnesota Lynx to four titles over seven seasons. Hammon is tied with former Aces coach Bill Laimbeer, who captured his championships with the Detroit Shock.
Give Hammon a shot at a title and she is nearly unbeatable.
She owns the best record in WNBA Finals (10-2), and her 9-1 record in playoff series tops even Phil Jackson's NBA mark of 86.2%.
“The thing I always trust, we're not going to get outcoached,” guard Jewell Loyd said.
That was proven in the finals.
Hammon threw a zone defense at Phoenix in the second half of Game 1 even though her team hadn't worked on it. The surprise switch confused the Mercury, and the Aces rallied for the victory. A win secured when Kiah Stokes was put in for the final 14 seconds — her only 14 seconds that game — for defensive purposes to deny the Mercury a quality final shot.
In Game 3 in Phoenix, the Aces had the ball with the game tied in the final seconds. With the clock winding down, the Aces' offense appeared confused and Hammon called timeout rather than let the final five seconds play out. She put the ball in the hands of four-time MVP A'ja Wilson, who delivered the series' defining moment with the winning shot with 0.3 seconds left.
“She's like the queen of adjustments,” point guard Chelsea Gray said. “She's got so many tricks and philosophies and different things that she can do in the playoffs and in a series. I'll take us in a series any day.”
But it's not just strategy, which Hammon said is a small percentage of coaching. Hammon said she has a combination of stubbornness and ability to be highly flexible that she found a way to marry.
Her ability to lead was tested this season like no other in her four seasons in Las Vegas. The Aces were 14-14 and coming off a 53-point loss to Minnesota — the worst defeat for a home team in league history. Forget holding the championship trophy in October, the Aces looked like they might be headed toward a rebuild.
Players such as Wilson stepped up to keep the team intact, but Hammon did her part, too, in not only saving the season, but leading the Aces to a 16-game winning streak to end the regular season.
It was probably her best coaching job.
“Yes in so far as this season had less to do with ‘Xs’ and ‘Os’ and more to do with what 90% of coaching is, which is managing people, trying to articulate, trying to get the group to be cohesive, to be a group,” Hammon said. “It was a lot more mental, emotional, read the room in what does my team need from me? Does my team need me to be strong? Do they need my fire right now? Do they need my confidence right now? Do they need my discipline right now? Do they need hugs right now?”
Hammon knew she had trust built up with core players Wilson, Gray and Jackie Young, that she could coach them hard because they knew her motivation was coming from a good place. Establishing that trust with newcomers took more time.
But it happened. The players followed the lead of their coach whose jersey hangs in the Michelob Ultra Arena rafters from her Hall of Fame playing days when the organization was based in San Antonio.
Hammon took her bond with the players to another level when she included them in game planning, with Wilson taking a particularly notable role.
“Becky's heart and her mind about the game, it's always about the next person,” Wilson said. “Our motto this year was ‘others.’ We always wanted to focus on other people because it's not going to be just you that wins a championship. It's not going to be just you that wins a game. It's going to take everybody, and so for Becky to instill that trust in us, it didn't come by any surprise."
Friday's parade shows that approach works.
Very little hasn't worked since Aces owner Mark Davis made Hammon the league's first $1 million-a-year coach in 2022.
Talk about worth the money.
But Hammon doesn't like to discuss where she might rank in WNBA coaching history, saying there is plenty of work left to be done.
“I never want to get stagnant and not have growth, so typically I try to stay far away from comparisons in general,” Hammon said. "I just try to be myself and try to be my best version of myself, and try to be the best coach I can be for the players that I'm leading. But, no, it's not something I think about. Most of the time when somebody tells me something, it's new to me. I'm not looking up those stats or numbers or anything like that.”
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